Venice Part One

Two days after my return from Barcelona, I packed my bag again for my almost two week fall break adventure. We left very early on Tuesday morning on a bus, Venice bound. On the way, we stopped at the Brion Vega Cemetery designed by Carlo Scarpa. It was basically an architecture student's dream project. We also stopped at a famous Italian Autogrill, which is a glorified bus stop/train station but much nicer. They have a coffee bar and sandwiches, even a small grocery store. We picked up our lunch here to eat at the cemetery and loved this new kind of building typology that we had never seen before (architecture nerd statement). 

 The project was designed with 3 parts to show the stages of life, this is the chapel with a skylight. 

 The cemetery was designed for a husband a wife. Here Scarpa depicts the two of them together as wells of water connecting through the landscape.

 After the cemetery, we continued our journey on to Venice. Once of the train, we took a Veporetto to our hotel in Lido. The vaporetto system in Venice is very much like a metro or subway system but obviously on water. It was a pretty wonderful way to travel. This was my first view of Venice; the best way to describe it is simply enchanting. 

 On our second day, after we went to the opera the night before (my first time at the opera so that was exciting), we went to the Biennale where there the majority of the worlds country's have a pavilion to display art and architecture. This year it was a display of modern art which  was very interesting. In each pavilion an artist or several from the respective country will display their work. It totality, the art tending to be very politically charged. It was a new contrast to the work that we had been seeing up until this point so we were all a bit surprised. My favorite pavilion was the nordic pavilion in which the designers maintained the existing trees and built the structure around the trunks. 

 Scarpa bridge and the girls

 Andrew and me at lunch at this very small restaurant called il ponte where we had an awesome combination of seafood, pasta, and sandwiches family style followed by a complimentary shot of grappa. It is safe to say that it warmed our souls on the cold and rainy day in Venice. 

 After our afternoon, Andrew and I travelled back to the train station to buy train tickets and stopped at Calatrava's bridge. It is made of frosted glass. We liked it. 

 Our dinner that evening was at another small place called La Zucca which means the pumpkin. I had the most amazing pumpkin and zucchini lasagna. I would highly recommend this place to all those who plan to go to Venice. 

 Afterward we celebrated my 22nd bday in Lido before we all departed for our own fall breaks. 

 San Marco Cathedral

 Our third day we went to the island Murano, which is famous for its glass sculpting. We found a shop that is said to have made the only Murano glass longhorns for one of the Texas' deans. I had to post this for my family as I thought we all deserved a pair but these sadly aren't for sale. 

 Glass sculpture in the piazza with Drew and Melissa

 Sunset...on my way to meet mom and Megan!

My next post will chronicle the adventures of S and M. I was instructed to title this part of my blog SNM by the two lovely ladies. The laughs were endless and I am not sure that this blog will ever do our time together justice. Life couldn't be better!