Piazza San Marco, Venice

After two solid days of galleries and pavilions, we were truly 'arted out.' It was time to visit Venice's main attractions at the Piazza San Marco (Saint Mark's Square), including the Campanile, the Basilica San Marco, and the Doge's Palace.  The Campanile was a quick elevator ride to the top, where we were blasted by freezing gusts of wind while looking out over Venice, and far beyond to snow-capped peaks.  We were surprised at how close Venice was to huge mountains.

We went to the Doge's Palace next.  Unfortunately, photography is prohibited inside.  The palace consists of a series of huge, dark wood-paneled council chambers with 40' walls and coffered ceilings.   The walls and ceilings are covered with massive paintings by some famous and not as famous artists.  A lot of the original paintings by more famous artists, such as Tintoretto, were destroyed in a fire, so the current paintings are a mix of the ones that survived, and, new replacement paintings.

I really enjoyed some of the paintings of sieges and sea battles.  My favorite painting depicted the battle of Lepanto in 1571. Some historians assert that Turkish victory could have led to Western Europe being overrun, as had happened to the Byzantine Empire a little more than a century earlier.  You can view a sadly inadequate reproduction of the painting here:  Battle of Lepanto - Andrea Vicentino  In the actual painting, you can see details such as how soldiers continued to fight with multiple arrows in them, the actual clothes leaders of both sides were wearing, flags waving from the tops of masts, oars of the galleys, the ropes of the rigging, etc.  The painting is probably 50 feet long and 25 feet high - truly eye-max. You could spend hours discovering all the details in this painting.

We've been to numerous churches, cathedrals, and basilicas all over the world, but we'd never seen anything quite like the Basilica San Marcos.  The Christian Byzantine Empire, based in what was known as Constantinople (now Istanbul), was a great power for the first few centuries of the Venetian Empire, and was a major influence on this Basilica.  Architects and artisans traveled between the cities and worked together, so whenever one or the other came up with something great, the other would copy and improvise on it.

The basilica has four domes surrounding a central dome, which is a characteristic Byzantine design; very unusual for a Western European church.  Aside from the Byzantine design, the basilica's distinguishing characteristic is the overwhelming vista of gold mosaic covering the entire upper interior, including the arches and insides of all the domes.  Embedded in this all-encompassing gold ceiling mosaic are countless mosaics depicting biblical and patriotic themes.  The overall effect is amazing.  In the photos below, there is NO PAINT!  I love it so much because it's all mosaic work.

These two are closer up, so you can see some of the separate pieces of stone in the mosaic.  Did I mention there's NO PAINT in these photos!?

This is the front of a navy building adjacent to the entrance of the Arsenal harbor.  Venetians have an affinity for Poseidon, god of the oceans, and the lion of Saint Mark is the symbol of the Venetian republic. There are winged lions everywhere you look in Venice.

Another winged lion, with the clock tower in Piazza San Marco behind it.

Winged lion with halo even.  The book is said to represent all sorts of things, such as law, or the republic.  Maybe it was a nascent concept of a constitution, because Venice was not a monarchy based on inheritance, like most of Europe.  The doge was selected by a council of the rich and powerful.

A view of the Campanile (bell tower) looking past one of the columns of the Doge's Palace.

The side of the basilica, with the front of the Doge's Palace in the foreground.  The little mushroom hats at the top of the domes are an exotic touch, but even the shape of the domes themselves is odd - their height is extended by a cylindrical section at the base, then they curve inward.  There is a gap of maybe 20-40 feet between the dome's interior and exterior.  There is a whole truss of huge wooden beams between the inner and outer parts of the domes.

Here's a view of the domes from above, looking down from the Campanile.  The one to the rear is covered in scaffolding.

Here's a cutaway view of the domes so you can see what I mean about the inside and outside of the domes being completely separate.  This illustration is from a paper by Luigi Fregonese and Laura Taffurelli, describing how the team used laser scanners to construct a detailed three-dimensional model of the dome support structure.

Mandatory Venice gondola photo....

The famous winged lion of Venice, symbol of the republic, with pigeon.

That evening, the sun attempted to escape the grip of the clouds, but never quite made it.

When it was time to go home, we had fun taking the airport boat shuttle.  It was a small boat with room for about 14 passengers.  It had a sunken enclosed cabin, with cushioned white pleather seats in an oval facing each other along the sides.  Above the backs of the seats was a thin row of windows.  For the first half of the trip, while we were still in the Grand Canal of Venice, most of the people in our boat turned around and knelt in the seats so they could watch the boats, palazzos, and people.  Once we reached open water, it was just gentle rocking, darkness, and the sound of the waves sloshing on the hull.  Then we pulled up to a brightly lit pier like a bus stop and hopped off.  From there, it was a seven minute walk (the signs said so) to the front door of the terminal.  Highly recommended!

"Thanksgiving" Dinner in Paris

Since we're in France, with no family nearby, we signed up for a “Thanksgiving” dinner organized on Meetup  As the date grew nearer, it became clear from the broken English in the reminder emails that instead of an American, it was a French person organizing it.  I suppose to make a little money.  About 40 people paid the prepay, and about 30 showed up.  The organizer found a restaurant where we could all eat – about 30 people in a space the size of a small bedroom.  They had two long tables so close together you could barely move in any direction.  

We got there at the scheduled hour, 8 PM.  After standing around chatting for over an hour, we sat down.  We were seated next to two married couples living in Paris, each with an American wife and French husband.  Finally, around 9:45 PM, the first course arrived.  It was a huge bowl of mushroom soup, accompanied by a little toasted wonder bread sandwich of caramelized onions.  We were all laughing and saying, "of course, we always have mushroom soup and onion sandwiches for Thanksgiving!"  

Since there were thirty of us and only one cook and one server, it took quite a while to serve each course. It was about 10:15 before the next course arrived. We each got a huge platter with a thigh of turkey that was pretty good, some too-sweet sweet potatoes, a little piece of corn on the cob, two Brussels sprouts, sliced carrots, cranberry sauce with real cranberries, and a strange watery stuffing that actually tasted pretty good.  Finally, around 11PM, we got a piece of pumpkin pie that was made with barely-baked pumpkin-guts in their natural stringy state, and very little sugar.  It was revolting!  We were like kids stuck at the dining room table until we finished the vegetables we didn't want to eat.  Everyone took one or two bites and then ate a little of the crust and left the rest.  We finally got done after 11:30 PM, and made it home by 12:15 or so. 

 

But we met two nice couples in the process, so it was worth it. One couple had gotten married only a month before.  The wife is from LA, and the husband is from Paris.  They met and married within about 6 months!  She just moved here a month ago.  She's gone from being a single lawyer in LA to being a married English tutor living in a bachelor pad in Paris in the space of a few months.

  

Venice Biennale in Cool, Cloudy November

We met up with friends Jonathan and Robyn in Venice over the Veteran's Day weekend.  It was mostly cloudy most of the time, completely dark by 5 PM, and rained a little, but that was better than the forecast - lots of rain.  Also, our friends who've visited Venice in the summer recently said it was packed to the gills, sweaty, and smelled strongly of sewers.  So, visiting during the cool and cloudy season turned out to be a pretty good idea.  Not to say we didn't get the occasional whiff of sewer, but that's probably inevitable in a floating city.

Jennifer has always wanted to see Venice, and I've wanted to go check out the Venice Biennale, a worldwide art expo held every two years.  Countries from all over the world send a show of a small number of their artists.  The Biennale has expanded to hundreds of thousands of square feet of exhibition space in a variety of venues.  The largest venue uses the warehouses of the Arsenal, the old shipyard of the Venetian Republic, where they used to produce a fully-outfitted warship in a single day.  Another huge venue is a park, the Giardini, with one large building shared by many countries, and around 30 other exhibition halls dedicated to specific countries, such as Russia, England, France, South Korea, Japan, Finland, Hungary, etc.  Then there are many free exhibitions in historic palazzos all over the city.  We spent two entire days touring all of the above.  We probably covered about 70% of what there was to see, and that was rushing through a lot of it.

I'll start with an odd one.  A series of detailed architectural drawings about 3' high and 2' wide from 1930's California.  When he was young, Achilles G. Rizzoli went to the 1915 San Francisco Panama-Pacific International Exposition and saw "Tower of Jewels", a 435' tall, gem-encrusted building erected as the centerpiece of the expo.  This experience eventually inspired him to express the personalities of people he knew by portraying them as he imagined they would look if they were a work of architecture.  Here's an example, entitled "Mrs. Geo. Powleson Symbolically Portrayed/The Mother Tower of Jewels, In Appreciation for Her Remark 'You are a jewel.' Uttered March 6, 1935."

They didn't mess around for those expos!  Millions of people attended from all over the world.  It was partly a celebration of San Fran's recovery from the fire and earthquake.  Here's a link to some color photos (very unusual in 1915) of the expo.  Expo Autochrome Photos

We all liked this artist's small pottery figures - about a foot tall or so.  These were made in the 80's by the Japanese artist Shinichi Sawada.  It was a bit disturbing to read that he has a severe form of autism, but it seems he's found his niche.  They're mixture of innocence and menace.  They have a strong resemblance to some "primitive" art of Africa and Oceana.  I wonder if he'd ever seen art from those traditions.

We also enjoyed this site-specific installation by Bill Culbert of New Zealand, in a beautiful old palazzo. A little reminiscent of a medieval alchemist's workshop.

Ironically, out of all the country pavilions we saw, the Venice Pavilion was one of our favorites.  It was nearly the last place we visited.  The show was dedicated to the Venetian tradition of weaving.  Here's a cool example - a nude woman fashioned from maroon thread that appears to float in the air.  Yiqing Yin is the artist.

This next photo is the inside of a walk-in closet-sized pod covered in beautiful Venetian fabric.  You walk inside and see this glowing mosaic multiplied by mirrors all around you.  Anna Battista is the artist.

More info on the Venice Pavilion.

Here we are walking back in a light rain, exhausted from 8 hours of art.

The sun fought mightily to give us a decent sunset that night, but the clouds won.

Next up, the central plaza of Venice, Piazza San Marco, and all its attractions.

Paris: City of Second-Hand Smoke

Well, this article is nothing other than one long complaint, so be forewarned.  Fall has arrived in Paris, but today the temperature is unseasonably warm.  It's 63 degrees right now.  Everyone in Paris is dreading the long, rainy, cloudy, dark winter.  The local papers are full of winter survival guide articles recommending plenty of sleep, exercise, good diet, and special lights to simulate the sun. So, on a day like today, though it's cloudy and sprinkling off and on, it's key to get out and soak up the "outdoors."

Unfortunately, sitting outside in Paris is a hazard to your lungs, as all the smokers are there.  They can't smoke inside, so they sit at the tables outside.  I've been sitting here for an hour and a half.  Though there are only two tables next to me (the others are on the other side of the sidewalk), there have been only a few minutes without anyone smoking.  As soon as one or two people leave, another one or two sit down.  Ack!

Even though I've been here for seven months now, I'm no more accustomed to all the second-hand smoke than when I arrived.  I must have been more accustomed to smoke when I was younger and went to the occasional smoke-filled bar.  Now, the smoke causes a sharp burning deep in the back of my throat that makes me want to cough.  But, I try to suppress it, first to avoid offending the smokers, and second, to avoid seeming like a wimp.

Night Visit to Versailles

We took the 45-minute train ride from Paris to Versailles when friends Chi and Ryan came to town.   We arrived around 7 PM and took a brief tour with traditional music and costume dancing.  The tour started with a guy in a powdered wig and an embroidered silk costume speaking only in French.  He brought the very large group into a huge insanely ornate room, and started demonstrating the male and female bows appropriate when encountering French royalty.  He only spoke in French, but you could get the gist of it by watching him.  Before I caught on, I made a fool of myself doing the ladies bow, only to realize that the men's bow was next.  So, I did that one too.  Anyway, the thing is, I totally recognized these bows, probably from movies, and also realized they're completely different from the bows for British royalty.  I guess I always lumped all bowing together.

The traditional dancers used the Hall of Mirrors, which is about 200 feet long, with 60 chandeliers, and floor-to-ceiling mullioned windows looking out over the miles of manicured lawns, paths, sculptures and fountains we would walk through later that night.

A couple of shots of the dancers.

By the time we got outside, it was dusk.   

There were statues everywhere. 

After dark, we walked for miles on gravel paths from one fountain to the next.  There were thousands of people 

This fountain terminates the central "boulevard" of the gardens, with the Hall of Mirrors more than half  on the other end, a half mile up the hill.  The scale of these gardens is hard to digest.   

This was the most otherworldly feature of the parks that night.  A circular courtyard surrounded by columns, filled with steam from dry ice, and illuminated with high-speed sweeps of green lasers.  It was fun to watch.  

They capped the night off with a few fireworks.  Here's one of my handheld experimental shots.

Funny poster in Paris Metro

This ten-foot tall poster is plastered all over the Paris Metro.  I think it's an ad for a play.  

Second Glacier Hike in Vestlandet, Norway

The other glacier we hiked on in Norway has receded almost a mile from the lake.  In the 80's, it used to come down to the lake.  So, we had a long walk to get to the base.  We had a woman guide from Nepal.  She and her husband work in Norway in the summer and go back to Nepal in the winter.  Not many tourists in Norway in the winter!

This glacier winds back and forth down from the "ice cap" at the top of the mountain.  An ice cap is an area of compacted ice in a valley that doesn't move.  Ice caps fill entire valleys and are often thousands of feet deep, sometimes more than a mile deep!  It's hard to imagine so much ice.  A glacier is the overflow of the ice cap, created when the valley overflows with ice, from years of snow, hail, and rain piled onto a valley that is already full.

Unlike the other glacier, this one is steep, so the hiking was a little harder.  Again, our group of 8 were all roped together, with crampons on our boots and ice axes in our hands. We really didn't need the ice axes, but they looked cool.  There was another hike we didn't have time for that involved using ice axes to climb walls of ice.  Jennifer said she wasn't interested in doing that one, so I'd have to go by myself if I ever got the chance.

The glacier as we approached the face.  The black on top is mostly rock dust, not dirt.  It looks coal black close up.  Note the group hiking in the upper left corner.

  Getting closer.

Here's a funny one.  These idiots jumped the safety barrier and went up to take pictures of each other touching the glacier.  Jennifer said they reminded her of the people on safari that went to get closer pictures with lions and got eaten.  Glaciers can break apart at any time, so we might have got to see them crushed by a few tons of ice.  No luck. I'm just jealous, of course.

Below is one of the numerous sinks on the glacier.  Meltwater runs along the glacier until it can find somewhere to go.  Tiny cracks eventually turn into wells hundreds of feet deep, draining the water all the way to the rock beneath the glacier.  I'd love to go rappelling down one of these!

Next time I go on a glacier hike, it's going to be inside the ice caves!  I've been wanting to do that every time, and every time they say "It's not safe now." 

Pure blue ice.  Mmm mmm.  

First Glacier Hike in Vestlandet (Westlands), Norway

Maybe it's because I come from Houston, where naturally occurring ice is treated as the end of the world by the local media, but I've always loved natural ice.  I can't get enough of icicles and frozen lakes and streams. Glaciers are the most awesome ice around.  Thousands of years old, hundreds of feet thick, flowing like a slow motion river down a valley, and glowing bright blue.  Who can resist such an awesome and beautiful thing!  We've seen lots of them; barely hanging on to steep Himalayas, or even falling off in one case, and we've seen lots of calving of the Perito Moreno glacier near Calafate, Argentina.  So, when we planned our trip to Norway, I got all excited about visiting some glaciers.

While we were there, we took two glacier hikes on two different glaciers.  If you guessed that they've both receded quite a bit in recent years, you'd be right.  The first glacier, oddly named Nigards Glacier, or Nigardsbreen in Norwegian, flows from the ice cap, down the side of a steep mountain, and ends up near a lake.  The second glacier, Styggevatnet, is close to the top of the mountain and has a gradual slope, ending in a jagged, 100-foot blue ice face.

We knew the Styggevatnet hike involved kayaking.  What we didn't realize until the day of the hike was that it was 7 kilometers of kayaking, each way!  To get to the start of the kayaking, our caravan of about 8 cars drove for a half out on a road that dwindled to a gravelly switchback near the top of a steep valley. When we opened the car door, we were slapped in the face by a freezing, wet 40 MPH wind.  That was a rude shock.  The idea of sitting in a wet kayak with that cold wind numbing my fingers was not too appealing.    Luckily, after spending almost an hour getting geared up, the guides saved a few lives by canceling the trip.

The next day, the weather was better.  Here's the view from our starting point - the glacier is the expanse of white with the shadows of clouds sliding across it.  It's 7 kilometers away.  I asked why we couldn't just hike there, but they said there are lots of steep, slick places that would require climbing equipment and would be even slower.

Here's how it looked as we approached.  The face is about the height of a ten story building.

After we had lunch, we took off the kayaking gear, and put on the crampons, and got roped together.  Number one rule of Glacier Hike Club - "Don't Step on the Rope!".  There's a rope in the pic.  This was one of the hairier passages - a tricky step in a narrow trench, with deep crevasses within a foot on each side. 

In the photograph below, you can see a group of about 8 people with another group.  They're on the upper left part of the glacier.  This gives a much better idea of the scale of the glacier.

This photograph illustrates the depth of the crevasses.

Here you can see the rope in action as Jennifer leans over a crevasse.  Everyone got to take turns leaning over the abyss. Two people set their feet and lean back while one person looks over the side.  That was fun.

I'll save the second glacier hike for the next post.  Lots of blue ice coming up!  Click here to see the second glacier hike photos.