Venice 2017: The Accademia Walk

So, do you really want to know why this wasn't posted yesterday (my normal Thursday posting)?????  (** see below if you really want to know)

Believe it or not, I've always known I'd go back to our Venice trip from a year ago, simply because I hadn't finished it.  Maybe I just needed to move on from it then.  But now that I have the time, I'm inspired again by that place.

On our 3rd day, Sunday, March 26, we took the Accademia walk in our tour book,

starting at the Rialto Bridge at the top down to the Accademia Bridge to the south (red dots).

On Facebook back then I showed this collage.

The Rialto Bridge is top-left.  The Accademia Bridge is bottom-right.

I also showed this collage on Facebook, adding to the "humanity" of the place.

This is what I posted today on Shutterchance, at the Rialto Bridge.
How can you not love Venice!

Facebook?  That may be another story for some of you, right?

Accademia itself is an art gallery, founded in 1750 and moved in 1807 to its present location.

When most tourists hear Accademia, they think art.

But Astrid and I were there on the walk to see everything else except the museum.

Like graffiti, for instance, which is its own art, right?

That particular walk offered up a feast of gable stones.

The Dutch have their own version of such stones, as you know, but these, too, fascinate me.

Sometimes I isolate a particular image for my Shutterchance blog.  That's fun for me.

But see what I mean?  

I'm sure every single one tells a story.

Look at Astrid, straddling one of the alleys.

THIS is the Accademia area.

Full of its own art everywhere you look.

Of course, you could say that's true of ALL of Venice!

But that little boy (above) with his camera, in particular, stole my heart.



Art in all its many forms!

There was so much more, including some of the buildings and churches of the area,

maybe for another day/post.

When we finished the walk, we took the time to hop on a vaporetto to nearby Piazza San Marco.

But that deserves a post all on its own!

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

**  Suffice it to say, yesterday I lost an entire folder of images (including everything I processed and their collages!) for this 3rd day of our Venice trip.  LOST.  As in not to be found anywhere (apart from paying for them to be recovered, which I'm too cheap to do).  The FOLDER was NOT lost/moved.  Just the images in it.  A total mystery.

The good news is that I have a backup of all the original photos on another external hard drive, as well as on Picasa.  But it took me till today to figure out that I could refresh my images on Picasa (something it usually does automatically) to find the processed images and collages.  Then it was a matter of getting them back into the (empty) folder for this post.  (sigh)

Oh well, live and learn.  Next time I will back up the processed images to my other hard drive immediately after each folder is done!

VENICE 2017: The San Michele Island Cemetery

So, after lunch on Murano (last post), we hopped on the vaporetto for the 1.5 km. ride to the San Michele island, which we had passed that morning.

See how close it is, halfway between Venice and Murano.  (Wiki image)

But how many tourists ever visit San Michele???

You can actually see the island easily from the northern coast of Venice.

What you see is a walled island...and what's inside is a cemetery.

Have you ever heard of an island that is a cemetery?

It became a cemetery in 1807 "when under French occupation it was decreed that burial on the mainland...was unsanitary." 

The Church of San Michele from 1469 is the main landmark of the island,

the first Renaissance church in Venice.

See how close the Murano lighthouse appears behind it (top-right).

In fact, on our way to Murano that morning, look what we saw leaving the cemetery stop.

There had just been a service, after which the casket was being transported back to Venice.

Because of increasing lack of space, most bodies are now buried on the mainland.

But later, there's the Murano lighthouse again, when we left after lunch,

and then quickly rounded the church on our way to the San Michele vaporetto stop.

The entrance through the wall is immediately there upon disembarking.

And then?  Where to begin!

Because it was right there, we decided to start with the church,

passing through the 15th century cloister.

We wondered if the flowers were from the morning's service?

You know how much we love these places of worship...

like museums to us who view them without a Roman Catholic upbringing.

Then we started to wander about.

There are three different cemeteries on the island and this is the Roman Catholic section.

We hate seeing the graves for children, of course...or for anyone, for that matter.

But we knew famous foreigners were also buried there:

Ezra Pound, Sergei Diaghilev and Igor Stravinsky, for example.

We found the latter two, with their tell-tale signs of music and ballet, in the Greek Orthodox section.

As you'd expect, we often came to the wall's perimeter of the cemetery 

and had to turn into a new direction....

leading us to sections totally different from the last,

like to the 7 war graves from WWI.

This is the Protestant section of the cemetery.  Can you tell?

This San Cristoforo church originally belonged to San Cristoforo della Pace, 

another island that was eventually merged together with San Michele for the cemetery.

The original church was demolished and rebuilt in the mid-19th century,

but we did not visit it.

Lining the walls to the church were more tombs...

and then the other end of the cemetery.

I'm sure we missed a lot but we got the gist, which is what we had come to see.

As we left, we had a better view of the floating statue we had seen earlier:

It's the Barque of Dante created by Georgy Frangulyan in 2007.

"The composition is based on the episode from The Divine Comedy in which Dante and Virgil

cross the river Acheron, and the water boils with damned souls.  Virgil of bronze shows Dante

to the island of San Michele, where the famous Venetian cemetery is situated."

Supposedly it's the only statue in the world standing in the water.

It was created for the 52nd Venice Biennale but will now remain there forever.

A fitting close to an afternoon at the San Michele cemetery!

VENICE 2017: Murano

As you see, I'm moving along as soon as I get a new batch of images done, determined to get through the Venice-Verona trip as quickly as possible.  The method to my madness is partly because we have a short trip to Cornwall, England, coming up next week for 5 days.  Not that I'll finish Venice by then, of course...but you get the picture!

Almost everyone who makes it to Venice tries to also make the fast hop-over by vaporetto to Murano, just 3.5 km away in the Venetian lagoon.

Others will also make it further to Burano the same day, which I did in a past life.  

You can do both in one day...but I'm glad this time we didn't.
(We did Burano 2 days later, which I've already shown you here.)

As I recall, there are 4 stops in Murano for the vaporetto waterbuses.

Since Murano is known for its glass, you can't miss it whichever stop you use, I'm sure.

Everywhere you go, storefront windows are displaying their goods.

And glass factories are hoping you will watch their glassblowing shows.

Murano is one of those touristy places, depending on YOU as their customers.

WE, however, know all about glassblowing from the Netherlands and had no interest in glass.

Or so we thought!

Suddenly, Astrid wondered if she could find a snail for her DIL who collects them.

So into one store we went...and because we did indeed buy a snail,

we became privy to their behind-the-scenes showrooms,

as well as to our own private show of their resident glassblower.

Lucky us.  And totally unexpected.

But as I said, we were not there for Murano's glass.

We were on a mission...

a little bit further along the main canal,

past the bell tower of San Giacomo and it's blue glass sculpture,

past this, that, and the other small bridges,

to the BIG bridge, they said.  THIS one, with good views along the canal.

Then we saw it:  the Basilica dei Santi Maria e Donato, founded in the 7th century.

This was more important to us than all the glass in the world.

We were not disappointed!

It's known for its Veneto-Byzantine columns,

and its mosaic  floor, dating from 1140, incorporating fragments of ancient glass 

from the island's foundries.

It's a Gothic ship's keel roof.

You know me by now; I love all the wood.

I'm sure everything means something, inside and out.

(Like listening is more important than seeing or speaking?)

Notice how such places always work up an appetite!

All of that in the morning and then it was time to set off again for the afternoon...

to the cemetery on the island we had passed coming in, San Michele.

But first, some passing scenes as we left Murano and its landmark lighthouse from 1934...

and other churches we did not visit, like the Santa Maria degli Angeli (top row),

and the San Pietro Martire (bottom row).

Another morning of being "short of eyes."  HA!

Let's hear it for the guys...and gals!