Venice - San Marco area

After we got checked in to our hotel we started wandering around.  Here are some pictures I took that afternoon.

One of the canals we crossed.  Yes that bell tower is leaning.

Entrance to Piazza San Marco - with St Marks' Campanile

Piazza San Marco

Another bell tower across the square

Campenile di San Marco

Some ornaments / masks / animal heads?

Close up of an alligator mask

Narrow streets (walkways) are every where

 whole row of ancient door knockers on the door to St Marks Cathedral

In side the entrance of St Marks Cathedral on the ceiling ad walls were these fabulous paintings and mosaics
This one shows the complete story of the creation with Adam and Eve in the outside ring.

Here is Noah and the flood

The would not allow pictures inside of the cathedral - but it was fabulous.  Most impressive was the gold and the mosaics - especially on the floor.  These pictures are from the inside the entryway.

Yes this a  mosaic marble floor with individual pieces laid to form this pattern.

One of the front doors to the cathedral

Then we went through the Doge's palace.  It was enormous.  This is the central square inside of the palace.

There were two wells?  Big enough to be baptismal fonts.

Statuary around the square

Formal stairs up to the court rooms and governing legislature

Every where  we go there is a depiction of St George killing the Dragon

A view of the Doge's palace square from up several floors

The back side of St marks Cathedral that is connected to the Doge's palace.

Not sure of the story of this.  But you can put your fingers into the his (or her) mouth.

Here is thier family tree - Yes, They kept track their ancestors 

More doors - of course!

We walked up these stairs.  Wonderfully decorated everywhere.

There was an armory and even a cannon!

The palace square and the connected cathedral.

We then went through several narrow corridors and found ourselves in the prison.

Comming back through the narrow corridors I realized that we are on the bridge of sighs.  You can see all of the tourists taking pictures of the famous Bridge of Sighs.

A shot of the Bridge of Sighs after we were back from the prison.

This is the other well?

After studying the figures I don't think it was a baptismal font. 

View of the personal Doge's entrance to the cathedral.

After all of that walking we were looking for a place to sit down and rest awhile before we went to dinner.  We could here some music way off in the distance so we followed it.  It was a famous restaurant in Piazza San Marco with a 5 piece orchestra.  Violin, clarinet, Bass, Piano and an Accordion.  They were great!  Playing lots of american standards type of music.  We pulled up a chair and sat down and enjoyed it.

After a while the waiter came up and asked us what we wanted to order.  We asked for two cokes.  They came on this silver tray.  They were tiny cokes - 250 ml (about 1 measuring cup each).  I knew it would be expensive.  The bill was 31 euros!  A little over $42.

I don't begrudge them at all for the bill.  We enjoyed over 2 sets of them playing.  The music was great!  The atmosphere was wonderful.  We were in Venice!  We had a great after noon.

Venice

March 17, 2014

Last week end we celebrated our wedding anniversary by taking a trip to Venice.  We hopped on the Metro, rode to the train station and then rode the fast train from Milano to Venice.  It was a fantastic trip!

 This is Milano Centrale.  The main train station just 10 metro stops from Famagosta

 It was just 2 1/2 hours to Venice.  A nice relaxing ride.  We hopped off the train and walked out of the train station and there was the Grand Canal.  We bought a 48 hr pass for each of us on the Vaperetto.

 We then hopped on the vaperetto and rode down the Grand Canal and soaked in the sights.

 This is the famed Rialto Bridge.  The main pedestrian bridge across the canal in the central part of Venice.

 The architecture of the main buildings  was very interesting

 Here is a carved Owl.  Big and Fat.

 These appear to be fresh frescos on this building

 Just like you always see in the pictures.

 One of the almost hundreds of churches in Venice.

We rode past Piazza San Marco - the main square in Venice.

I will end up with several posts on our trip to Venice.  Stay turned in.

Serrevalle Scrivia

March 9, 2014

Last weekend was cold and raining.  We had a bunch of stuff to do at the office so we decided to not go any where special  We did play a game of Settlers of Catan with the assistants.  It was fun.

This past week was very busy.  Tuesday we had new missionary training.  There were 19 new missionaries along with their trainers.  Peg only had to cook the dessert for this training lunch.  She made my favorite cookies - Oatmeal Raisin.  She made about 100 cookies so we had some for the office and of course for my own consumption.  Wednesday we closed an apartment in Milano (Vialle Monza).  This is an apartment that we have been renting for 19 years.  And during that time the landlord has made no improvements.  It is a dump.  We moved the elders out of this apartment a month or so ago and last week Peggy was able to come to an agreement with the owner.  We met two sets of elders there at 8 am and loaded up everything that we might save into the van.  We packed it to the ceiling.  I then drove to the Mission office where we unloaded the refrigerators and washing machine and some beds into the garage we rent below the office.  We then drove back to the apartment and tore apart all of the cupboards, dressers, tables, chairs, counter tops, sink, shelves, cabinets, and oven so we only had flat boards.  Somehow we were able to squeeze it all into the van and hauled it to the dump.  I got done about 4 pm.  Also this week we assisted in putting a missionary apartment binder together.  120 of them with all of the hints, helps, rules, guidance, ect for living in missionary apartments in Italy.  Peg was still working on this Saturday Morning.  I was busy the rest of the week catching up from two missed work days.

My plans for Saturday were to drive up to Monza and see John The Baptist's tooth.  But President and Sister Dibb invited us to go with them down to Serrevalle Scrivia where there is a giant outlet mall.  While of course I am not much of a shopper, it was OK.  Sister Dibb was still shopping strong after 3 hours.  Peg and I had stopped after about an 1.5 hours and got some gellato.

The mall was put together like a mall in California - all walkways were outside.  It was very nice and new.  Many many big expensive stores like Prada and the like.  Quite a few of the stores had guards at the doors that would only let people in as others left their store.  Of course these elite stores had lines waiting to get in.  I only looked in the windows of these stores.  There were coats that normally cost 2400 euros that were marked down to just 1200 euros.  "A real bargain".

Yes they had a Ferrari Store.  We did go in there.

 There were 2 Indy cars there.  I was surprised by how small they were.  Inside they sold all kinds of Ferrari trinkets. Coats, hats, clothes, etc - just about everything they could put a Ferrari logo on.

Here are two Ferrari mountain bikes.  The far one had front and rear suspension and was priced at 1650 Euros.  While the closer on was only front suspension and only cost 1250 euros.

When we met up with the Dibbs again we went to a restaurant in the shopping center.  It was OK.  Not horribly expensive.  Peg got the best plate which was Pasta with a Zucchini sauce.

After eating we drove to Alessandria where we attended a baptism. It was very nice.  We had been to this church building last December where we served a large Christmas dinner for a zone conference.  They used a portable baptismal font.  1st time I had ever seen that.  All in all it was a very good day.  

 Here is a picture of a "parked" car that we walked past on the way to church several weeks ago.

Varese

February 23, 2014

This week we got 19 new missionaries.  They are a wonderful group.  Very alert, attentive and bold.  None of them fell asleep during my training!  To sit through 45 minutes of training on money after flying overnight here from the states and stay awake is fabulous.  We also had 7 missionaries go home.  This makes the whole week very involved.  We do have the routine down, but with all of the training, meals, transportation and exciting chatter with these major changes in their lives, it does seem to wear out us old folks. I was exhausted Thursday night after it was over.  Friday was a day to catch up.

Saturday we decided to go to Varese, a city north west of Milano that is very near the Switzerland boarder.

 This is the civic center for Varese and it was a marker day there!  I was very impressed with the vendors.  They were very clean, and not the dirty lower quality vendors that we see in most cities.

 After walking through the vendor stalls we walked east toward what we thought was a church bell we heard ringing.  We walked around the corner and there was a bell tower.

 Just past the tower was this piazza with kids riding their bikes and playing ball.

 Turning around you can see the church and the base of the bell tower.

 Here is the bell tower from the other side.

 We could here a street performer singing Bob Dylan songs so we walked  that way.  He had a harmonica and a tired dog.  Here in the next piazza is a little carousel that kids and their parents were riding.

 We next could here a flute playing.  It was playing jazz.  After we walked a block or so we found her.  It was the same Jazz flute gal that we saw about a month ago near the Milano Duomo.  She is great!

Above you can see a sun dial that was etched into the sunny side of this building.  The black line and circle is the shadow from the grey fixture attached to the wall.  I think this a cool wish I had one so I could watch it though the seasons.

 Here is a door - not a great door, but it is open so you an see the way the little door within the big door works.

 We wandered back towards the car, walked past the church and went in.  Nice little church with some great stained glass.

One of the vendors at the market was making fresh mozzarella.  It was fascinating to see him swoop up the curds and shape them into a ball.  Of course they let us sample it and WOW it was fantastic.  We bought some and then bought some great bread from another vendor and drove down to the lake that is near Varese to eat our lunch.

 We found a spot to drive down from the road through a very narrow passage way where we could see the lake.  When it opened up there was a parking lot next to a rowing boat storage barn. Several boats were just getting ready to head out.  We parked, sat down on a bench by the lake, ate our bread and cheese in the sun and watched the boats.

 Peggy fed the ducks

 It was beautiful spot and a spectacular day.  This is FEBRUARY!  It was wonderful.

Same view as previous slide, but zoomed in to see the alps in the back ground