Venice, Day 2: A little "Hollie"-day music, some art, and a lot of water!

Our second day in Venice began with a forecast for rain -- but that was okay!  The initial forecast has been for two days of rain, so we felt we were ahead of the game after the first beautiful day.

But while we thought we were prepared for rain, we didn't realize that Rain + Venice + December = we needed some serious galoshes!  Fortunately, the hotel was able to provide boots that fit everyone (even Adam and Joel's big feet).

We also had planned to spend the day in two of Venice's art museums, the Peggy Guggenheim collection and the Gallerie dell'Accademia.  Rain didn't matter there -- so, off to the bus stop!

Bus stop, wet day.
She's there, I say...

Please share my umbrella!

Bus come, bus go.
She stays, love grows, under my umbrella.

If you can't tell, that boat is a vaporetto (or "little steamer" for when they ran on steam!) and the box where Laura is standing is the "bus stop" -- a floating mooring for people to queue up and off of the boats.  It's not quite as scenic as a gondola, but extremely convenient once you've gotten a "bus pass."

Boats in Venice, incidentally, come in all shapes and sizes for the tasks that they perform.  The boat below, for instance, is a "garbage truck" with a mechanical arm to collect bins from collection points around the island!

So we went to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection which was another departure from what one normally sees in Italy; it's a collection of early 20th Century art collected by Guggenheim while she lived in Venice, and which she donated to the city upon her death.  It's maintained in her original home, and interspersed with the artwork are photos of how the pieces were organized in the house during the 1960's.

There were some wonderful stories as well; she owned two sets of earrings made by Alexander Calder and Yves Tanguy.  At a function she wore one of each, to demonstrate her impartiality between Surrealist and abstract art!

Again, we couldn't quite bring ourselves to take pictures when the "no pictures" sign was evident (despite others doing so), but here are two pictures of a portion of the house that adjoins the canals:

 

We then returned to St. Mark's in order to get a better sense of acqua alta -- the high water that marks this time of year in Venice.

In front of the campanile

Almost above the boots!

Venice's problems are threefold:  it's sinking due to compaction of the soil, the sea is rising, and lastly the tectonic plate that it sits on is "subducting" under another plate, so the island is actually tilting!

 

Nonetheless, we had fun -- and we hope that the MOSE System has a chance of preserving Venice for generations to come.

Oh, and Kendall continued his practice of chasing pigeons -- Italian pigeons will remember and fear him for generations to come!

Continuing with the art theme, we stopped into a couple of pavilions -- the Azerbaijani pavilion was fascinating, with wrought-iron sculptures that created images when lit or when viewed through a camera!

 

The one below was particularly striking since it told you where to stand and to view it through your camera in order to "flatten" the image:

Finally, we went to a special exhibition at the Accademia, where there were many drawings of Leonardo da Vinci that were rarely put on display.  We got to see "Virtruvian Man" -- and decided from his drawings that Leonardo was definitely a doodler.

 

Then another vaporetto back to Rialto,

a little hot, mulled wine to take the chill off,

and dinner at a traditional Venetian restaurant.  Squid ink pasta -- yum!

 

 

The smiling face in the plate told us we'd had another good day.

Stay tuned for Murano, glass not car!