D10 Murano, Burano

12/22 Havily raining all day
Venice, Murano, Burano

We went the 2 islands of Venice today, but it was always raining so that we had to carry umbrella whole day and watch out for the pool on the roads. It was humid and easily get wet. The islands were called Murano, the glass island and Burano, the lace and colorful island; both of them are the must seen spots if you were in Venice for the first time.

Murano, the island of glass was full of glass factories and galleries. It is said that the glass factories were in the main island of Venice and the government considered the hazzard to fire so that they forced the factories moved to the island. Furthermore, the craftmen were skillful so that the government forbid the craftmen immagrate to other places.

Open glass factory

Made glass vast

Glass gallery

Until today, Murano is famous for its craft of glasses. But since there were so many tourists every year, some of the street vendors import China-made glasses in-island and sell them to tourists. Ironically, almost all the Chinese crafts were labelled “Made in Italy” or “Murano Glass”, but the real ones don’t.

Christmas star, made of glasses

Of course we took the boats to the islands, and the fog, the chilly cold wind and the green-blue sea made the scene like an desert world.

Lonely sea

But the world is worthy to wait, after we arrive Burano, the lace island, the rain stopped and the world became brighter! Because of the color!

Colorful houses and the canal

In the past, the fishermen had to fish almost everyday to make a living, but the island was foggy so that the women painted their houses in different, distinguishable colors made it’s easier to recognize their houses.

Bright colors!

Adorable ;)

And the women of the fisermen mad laces to make a living, and that became a legacy of articrafts. We spent one or two hours walking on the colorful world, just try not to ruin the joyness of the day. But it started to rain after the went back to the main island of Venice.

Took a boat

It was 9pm that we left Venice, the adventurous world. It’s so sad that we spent so little time in Venice and wish to come back for sure. From now on, the my journey partner will be Pony only, and I bet we’ll have a great time since our personality is similiar to each other.

Sleep in the night train

Looking forward to Vienna and Christmas.

D9 Labyrinthine above the water

12/21 cloudy to heavily rain
Venice, Murano & Burano island

Everyone said that Venice is a place of getting lost, almost every tourist even local could lost in an anonymous street, canal or bridge. The address system made the situation even worse, they separate district with different number and divided classification system with a long number, so even if you got the right address, doesn’t means that you’ll find the right way. A street maybe called “calle”, “ruga” or “salizzada”.

Still, we arrived the city in the midnight. But thanks to Flora’s kindly help, we marched through enormous canals, bridges and paths between buildings, then found our hotel is located at the middle of a 1-meter-wide street. Although it’s like an elbow training to carry our lugguges up and down the roads, fled in the streets was fun.

Accademia bridge

There were many boatmen yelling “Gondola” to tourists, they dressed like sailors in black and white stiped shirts and big rounded hat. We would like to give it a try, taking gondola in Venice is just like riding a motorbike in Rome and bicycling in Amsterdam is a must do. The boatmen provide us a special discount price, 60E for half hour, which means 20E per person. That’s way too expensive.

A city with no cars

As a pedestrain, it is carefree to walk on the streets of Venice, there are no cars or traffics you should be worried, so that walk or taking boats become 2 major ways to visit any spots. There are only 3 bridge cross the major canal, so that sometimes you’ve seen your destination but gotta find a bridge to go across the canal, which may cost you a de-tour or maybe 40 minutes more, including getting lose.

Leaning campanile

On the first morning in Venice, we went to the Fisherman market for seafoods! Since Venice is next to the sea side, the quality of seafoods are guaranteed. We bought half kilo of big shrimps, a middle sized calamary, 4 scallops, half kilo shell fish and some pieces of fish meat for 30E.

Freshly fished!

In the afternoon, we tried not to do anything, not to set any destinations but walking in the small alleys. To be honest, get lost was our goal. Streets after streets, sometimes go through a small path and the other plaza comes to you. It’s wonderful to get lost in Venice.

Masks for the carnival

Monogram of Venice, lion with wings

Weird door knob

Ice cream <3

Chess, cats vs dogs

In the evening, we went back to Flora’s and cooked the seafoods together. That was the most amazing dinner we ever had during the tour, and one of the cheapest one. Flora made us her world class Tiramisu, taste like heaven. We chitchatted about everything on the diner table, and girls always like to discuss about their future :/

Full of seafoods

Wonderful Tiramisu

That night was wonderful, even if the weather was cold outside with rain.

D7&8 Florence with renaissance

12/19, 20 Sunny all day with snow on the ground
Florence

Florence was the origin city of Renaissance back in the 14th century, so it has many artistic treasures and pretigious museums. In mandarin, there was a famous Chinese writer translated the name of this city as Emerald, just like a jew stone on the European map.

We arrived this city in the middle of the night, after a short break at the train station, we tried to approach our hostel in the city center. While we walked alone the road, we found beside covered with heavy snow, the city was in extreme silence and the Christmas tree shined in the dark night, like a lighthouse for the lost ones. It was elegant and breathtaken.

The first morning, we went to the most beautiful in the world, Venus. Galleria degli Uffizi presented the world-famous painting “the birth of Venus” by Botticelli. The peaceful, satisfactory expression of Venus was impressive, I looked at her for almost 10 minutes and she’s still natural and elegant.

Venus on the cover of books (See David on the left)

After the cultural experience, we went to the old bridge to see the river view of Florence. There are many jewelry shops on the bridge but I didn’t see many people inside the shop buying things.

the cloud made the tower looked like chimney

Then we turned to the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore, the facade of this cathedral like a fairy tale. This cathedral was one of the most important icon of Florence city. Not only because of the building itself, but the mural of the final judgement.

Facade of Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore

We also had a delicious Tuscany lunch at one restaurant recommended by local people. There are quite a lof of differences between French and Italien restaurant, for example, in Italy they don’t serve cold entree but hot first dishes like stew rice or pasta; and the amount of food is much more than France. The servants are also different, in Italy, the servants are more friendly and sometimes flirt with female customers are allowed, you will never see that happened in France.

  Country style decoration

My main dish: boiled beef with chilly & onion

The first day was finished after the lunch, we were too full and too lazy to walk, so that we went back to hostel and enjoy tje sweet heater and nice dinner served by the hostel.

Girls asked local police to take photos

Jupiter in the night

Famous bronze hog

The second day morning was non-cultural activities, we went to the leather market for shopping and beef-stomach sandwich, then heading for Gucci outlet for bargains.

Yummy beef stomach sandwich

The Italiens were friendly to us, but we’ve heard that they don’t like Chinese people since there are so many Chinese smuggling into Italy for immagrants and they worked kick ass hard and took many job opportunities. Besides some of the Chinese people often did imappropriate behaviors when they’re abroad. So that the misundersanding between Italien and Chinese were more deeper.

Bumped into Alison in the train station

After the crazy outlet shopping (I bought a pair of shoes in TOD’S for 85E), we planed to take the train to Venice, and inccidentally we met Alison at the train station. It’s glad that we met old friends together without any appointment.

I lost my favorit knit hat in the station of Venice, so sad.

D6 Jesus was a cross maker

12/18 Sunny all day
Rome, Vaticano

Blinding me his song remains reminding me, he's a bandit and a heartbreaker. Oh but Jesus was a crossmaker.

Today is the day that I close to the god. I have no specific religion, mainly Taoism with my family, but sometimes I’d like to church for praying, but wouldn’t believe any words of the holy Bible. That’s my personal oopinion. Still, I believe that people need to have faith. And sometimes holding a faith can create many beautiful things in the world, like the cathedral, the gospel music or amaing paintings. Most my European friends believe in specific religion, either Catholic or protestants, but people in Asia, especially among youth, we are not that active in religious activities nor do we belongs to any communion. I’d rather all the almighty gods, the Allah, the Jesus or buddha were coming from the other planet, so that they would got the power to rebirth or foreseeing.

We went to Vatican today and spent most of time in Vatican museum and Basilica di San Pietro. The distance between me and god were close.

Basilica di San Pietro

The Vantican museum has a huge collection of Christian relic, usually for a serious visitor, 6 hours might not be enough for the whole museum. There are so many world-heritage treasure on display.

Mummy

I booked an audio guide with me and spent about 2 hours visiting the museum. The first collection exhibition was Egyptian relics, I didn’t know how the ancient Egyptian connected to modern Christianity but after the explanation, I got a little clue.

Balls covered with leaf

Since I wasn’t 100% interested in knowing everything about Christianity, I had my own fun in visiting the museum. I found most of the ancient Roman sculptures were naked, but sometimes they tried to make it up with leaves. The photo up there was an example of how they tried to cover the balls with a small maple leaf. It’s so funny that the artist would even make puberty hair but cover the genitalia/penis.

Beard

Modern days we will take people with beard as non-professional or imformal. But for ancient guys, YOU MUST HAVE BEARD to show yuorself. I’ve never have beard in my life, nor did I use shavers, so that it’s hard to imagine how will I look like if I got beard. I bet that would be sexy.

Muscline

Almost all the people worked out very often so that they wouldn’t have bellies or too much fat on the body. They got abs, biceps and strong pectorals. It seems they spent most of the time exercising or training in the gym.

Upset faces

I don’t know that why their lives were so tough, the frown and felt sad about everything, just like one of the smurfs. Not only in the sculpture but the characters in the paintings were not happy for ages.

Drawings on the ceiling

They tried to decorate every walls or ceilings with mythical stories. Those are the expression of the love to god, but sometimes annoying. Imagine living in a room with dozens of people with vivid expression , they looked at you when you’re reading, eating, taking a damp or something. That’s weird!

The most famous thing in the museum is the Last Judgement in Sistine Chapel. Many people came here just for the famous painting.

The Last Judgment is a fresco by Michelangelo on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City. It took four years to complete and was executed from 1537 to 1541. Michelangelo began working on it three decades after having finished the ceiling of the chapel.

Last Judgement

But to me, the Creation of Adam was moving. Having an iconic standing equalled only by Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, the hands of God and Adam being reproduced in countless imitations.

Creation of Adam

I am glad that I came here to see the painting with bare eyes. I witnessed the marvelous religious creation of the love of god. I felt joyful.

St. Peter’s Basilica

The next destination was St. Peter’s Basilica, the other world-famous site. The official administration ask every visitor go through the X-ray machine and bag check. They said that coz Vantican is a different “country” :p

Inside temple of St. Peter’s

There were many tourists in the building and every’s taking photos of everything. So did I, the problem is that I didn’t know any stories behind them, for example the magnificent sculptures, if you didn’t know the background story of how the artist made and why they made those sculptures, those things would be something good but meaning nothing.

Roof!

So that I decided to climb to the top of the building, I’ve heard that there will be panoramic views of Rome city, really looking forward to it! To climb the stairs, 5E fee is obligatory and you have to climb almost 400 stairways to the top. That’s exhausted but totally worthy.

Photos from the top

That’s the end of the day and we went to Florence for the next stop. Rome is a nice city to visit tho I spent most of the time doing tourist things, but still, I can feel the city’s old but energetic.

I asked Pier why you just got 2 lines of metro? He answered that the government would like to construct more public transporation, but there are so so many ancient sites in the city so that they gotta dig deeper and deeper so that wouldn’t ruin the base of the sites.