We stroll past the Olivetti showroom which doesn't open til later and arrive in the square.
It's quite sparse at 9am in the morning. Not even a selfie stick man. Thinking we had been clever and dodged the crowds we head to St Marks, only to find it's only open between 2 and 4 on Sunday. Rather annoying.
We head out over the bridge of sighs and then the multiple other bridges that follow. I like to think of them as the bridge of oooohhh; the bridge of ahhhhh; and the bridge of woooooo. There's a funny moment on one of the bridges when sim is taking a selfie. A crowd of Chinese tourists descends on her wanting to take a photo too. We still have no idea where they came from. They just appeared. It's ridiculous here. Can't take a photo without a selfie stick or phone ruining it.
We stroll out along the waterfront to the arsenale area where the Venice architecture biennale is on. We stop for coffee as it doesn't open til 10. I'm enjoying the coffee at the counter experience, rather pleasant. We enter the Giardino and peruse the various nations pavilions. I'm rather excited by today, and sim, well... she's a trooper. We go between all the different pavilions, the highlight buildings are the Finnish, Nordic, Brazilian and Venezuelan pavilions, as well as Australia's new DCM designed black box.
From an exhibition point of view I quite enjoyed the French and Israeli pavilions, as well as the Swiss pavilion with is amorphous white blob of a construction that you can get in and inhabit. Australia's was good too. Very well curated and quite experiential compared to most others, which tended to offer large bodies of work and project responses. My only comment about Australia's pavilion is that I'm not sure how strongly it responded to the 'From the Front' brief.
After strolling the pavilions for a couple of hours we head into the arsenale building. It's full of projects from different architecture practices around the world that have responded in some way to the issues Aravena was illuding to with his From the Front brief. Many big firms are represented here, such as Piano, Rogers, SAANA and chipperfield. We see only a few.
After a little under 4 hours, Sim is a little over it. She's been pretty patient. A lot of the stuff we've seen has gone over my head so I'm not sure how much she took in.
Scarpa's garden structure at Arsenale.
Wandering back through the Giardini we see on the shoreline the Scarpa/Augusto Murer sculpture representing the 'partigiana'.
We head back a different route towards Castello, only to get confused and end up back on the waterfront. It really is a disorientating place. It starts to all feel familiar as if you've walked this narrow path before. It's a hard place to navigate if you're not heading to one of the key squares, as the signage only points you to San Marco or Rialto.
We stop for lunch at a small trattoria. It appears to be full of Italians so we see that as a good sign. The waiters are all dressed in white suit jackets and vests . I order a lasagna and sim an omelette, only to be told it's Sunday, no eggs today. Not sure what that means.
After lunch we head to St Marks to check out the church, joining the large line of people to get in. Entering the church I can't help but feel a sense of gloom as it's quite dark. The arched vaulted ceilings are lined with golden imagery and the dark rich timbers create a very solemn feel. I do notice the bulges and undulations in the floor, evidence of where the island is sinking as I was told by Dad. We've noted a lot of the buildings in the islands are quite crooked. One tower seemed to be almost falling over.
After queuing for half an hour to get in sim wants to do everything so we head upstairs to look at the terrace. Once reaching the top however we realise you can only get there through the museum which is €5 each. Bloody Catholic Church - everything costs money. No doubt when we eventually die and reach the gates of heaven we will be greeted nicely but at the same time with a handout for money.
We head out into the square and I head in to the Olivetti showroom to check out the Carlo Scarpa designed space. Sim wanders the square instead. It was designed for a typewriter and furniture company in the 70s. It's a beautifully detailed showroom with amazing use of concrete, timber and brass expressive elements.
We head out for some gelato - revisiting the place from last night as it was awesome.
Gelatoteca SuSo!
We then set off to find another Scarpa designed space, the Fondiazone Querini Stampalia. It's a modern and crisply detailed gallery that has been built within an old Venetian building. The interesting thing is the interweaving of old and new building and how Scarpa's modern detailing responds and draws on the old details of the existing. We only visit the gallery space that is part of the biennale, as it was going to cost extra to see the main collection of the gallery. Honestly, they would charge you to breathe here if they were allowed. Everything costs.
It's now 6pm and sims pretty architectured out, as are my feet. We've done 22km so far today. We think about hopping on a canal boat but at €80 for 30 minutes we skip it. We head back over to San Marco and walk along the river after contemplating heading to Burano on a ferry. The boats are crazy expensive here. As you may have guessed were pulling back on extravagances. Burning through euros like they're Aussie dollars these first couple of weeks!
We then head over to Rialto bridge to see if it's any better in the day. It isn't. Still, there's so many tourists taking photos, which i don't understand.
We decide to skip dinner, as we couldn and instead we head to the supermarket and buy some pecorino to go with our bottle of Brunello back at our hotel we bought in Tuscany which were gonna drink tonight. We don't wanna risk carrying it in our luggage as A; it's a €45 bottle of wine and B; we heard a horror story from Tom, the American Ned Flanders on our wine tour of Tuscany. He bought a bottle and it broke in his bag whilst dragging it over the cobbles of Rome. He had to buy all new clothes as it went all through his luggage.
We settle in for the evening, sipping away whilst doing some diaries and blogs and watching the euro.
Last night in Italy!
Buenosera
mat + sim
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