….thanks to Amanda for hosting Friendly Friday Photo Challenge
The best alleys are in Italy, especially Venice.
Alley in front of our hotel.
Alley leading to our hotel.
Bologna
Assisi
London, England
…..I can’t believe it but this will be the last photo challenge posted by WordPress
How do you choose your all time favourites from over 22 000 photos? I’ve managed to narrow it down to four but I’m sure that I’ll come across others that I like as much.
….. thanks to Jennifer Nicole Wells
For this week’s photo challenge Jennifer chose the word Horse. Last summer I photographed a number of horses in Italy. They were all in large public squares and were obviously working horses.
……thanks Cee for this week’s theme
…..this week’s theme for WordPress’ weekly photo challenge is Path
“A path is a prior interpretation of the best way to traverse a landscape.”
― Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking
……our trip to Italy this summer gave us numerous opportunities to photograph roofs
…thanks to.Norm 2.0 for hosting Thursday Doors
Just when I thought I had used up all my photos of Italian doors I found some that I had missed from Venice. I loved the detail above the doors.
…..the most famous being the gondola
There are about 10 different types of watercraft in Venice but the most commonly seen are the gondola, the vaporetto and the top0. The vaporetto is a water bus that transports people from one end of the island to the other and is way more economical than hiring a gondola. The topo is a barge that transports goods to the businesses and residences of Venice.
There are also specialty boats for garbage collection, construction barges, police and ambulance boats, fire boats and car ferries.
Although beautiful and romantic, the gondola is strictly for rich tourists. At 200 euros for a 45 minute trip I consider it a luxury expense.
Service Boats and Personal Watercrafts
Ciao!
…. even though we only stayed two days I seem to have many more photos to share
It was hard to squeeze in everything in two days, in fact it was impossible. Taking tours was out of the question. I was just happy to see many of the must see places first hand. On our second day we toured the Grand Canal, San Marco and the Rialto Bridge (under construction). We drank cappuccino at the famous Caffe Florian (inside because it was much cheaper and just as delicious), walked past the Doge’s Palace and the Bridge of Sighs, walked through the Campo Santa Margherita and had lunch at a fabulous bistro, La Zucca, near the Rialto Bridge that specialized in vegetarian and pumpkin dishes.
Piazza San Marco and Caffe Florian
Sites Along the Grand Canal
Rialto Bridge, Markets and La Zucca
….one of my favourite art galleries in all of Italy
I guess I shouldn’t have said ‘all of Italy’ when I’ve only seen a small portion of the country. I had never heard of Peggy Guggenheim before this trip. Of course I knew of the famous Guggenheim Museum in New York but I had no idea that there was another Guggenheim in Venice.
Peggy Guggenheim was an avid collector of modern art and in an eight year period she amassed a collection of art by Kandinsky, Jackson Pollock, Picasso, Calder, Henry Moore, Motherwell and Max Ernst, just to name a few, who represented Cubist, Surrealist and Abstract Expressionist movements in art.
She moved to Venice after WWII and set up a gallery of her collection at Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, on the Grand Canal. In the summers she opened her home to the public and when she died in 1979 she left her estate to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation on the condition that the collection would remain intact in Venice and would be recognized as hers. The Foundation assumed responsibility for both the collection and for Guggenheim’s palazzo.
In 2015 a movie of her colourful and controversial life was made. Here is the trailer.
I think I enjoyed this collection so much because it was full of modern artists that I admire very much. The Palazzo itself was light and airy and the outdoor sculpture garden was serene and calming. Being on the Grand Canal added another element of vitality and I could just imagine Peggy sitting on the balcony with her dogs observing the gondolas and small water crafts making their way through the green waters of Venice.
Mama Cormier 