Memorial Day in Northern Italy

After spending 10 days in Spain with our long-time friends Mike & Anna, we went to Italy with some new friends, Jacob and Jessi Berg. We drove down together, took a small detour to Lucern, but made it to Italy in good time. We got to see two very different sides of Italy. We went from the pottery-producing small town of Nove on Saturday to touristy Venice on Sunday. We would have pictures of our favorite pottery place, La Ceramica VBC, but both Tally and I accidentally erased them. Oh well, I guess we'll have to go back. At the ceramic store you can watch them shape, fire, and hand paint the pottery. Then you walk upstairs and see all the beautiful masterpieces. They make a lot of the pottery for Williams-Sonoma, Tiffany & Co., Banana Republic (Jade, did you know they sold dishes?), Mikasa, etc. Tally and I picked out our future beach house dinnerware. We got a neat cake plate, 2 mosaic trivets (hot plates) and a little pink polka-dotted piggy bank for the babe. That will be our gift to her...but we'll have to fill it up with money first.

We stayed with Jessi's parents, Frank & Beth. They were so wonderful to us and made us feel at home. Plus, they showed us several cool towns nearby that are little gems of the Italian countryside. Frank is a retired US colonel so he took us on the Army post to show us what things are like for some of our overseas soldiers. We ate lunch on base which was quite a treat since it was American food. 2,000 soldiers from the post had just been deployed so it was kind of a ghost town. It was sad to think some of them might not come back. We are grateful for their sacrifice and pray they come back safely.

After the base, we went and saw a little town called Piazzola Sul Brenta. This is the plaza with what looks like an old palace.

We bought gelato (yum!)and as we were walking around, it started sprinkling. On our way back to the car, the sprinkling became sudden downpour and we all got soaked. When we got back to the house, the pool the guys set up was full of water and ready for fun. Although the rain had let up, it wasn't warm enough to go swimming but we put our feet in!

On Sunday, the forecast called for a full day of rain but we took our chances and went to Venice anyway. So did everyone else. It only rained for a few minutes which was fantastic because we forgot an umbrella.

Everyone gets their picture taken with the pigeons, but Tally thinks birds are the dirtiest creatures in the world. Can you tell?
San Marco Basilica

An archway on the outside of San Marco Basilica

We love the gondolas and were amazed by how many boats there are around Venice. I guess Italy usually taxes boats with a luxury tax but Venice is exempt because boats aren't a luxury - they're a necessity.

In response to Elisa's comment - YES! We went to Murano, the glass-making island. We got to watch a demonstration. Here's one of the guy making a snail.
On Monday, we drove around and saw a couple small towns. Our favorite was (name, Jessi?), where we went in a room where Galileo once hid out and had meetings with other scholars. It has now been added onto and turned into a restaurant. How does someone buy a place like that? That would be cool to own a piece of history. This is a wine cellar below that used to just be a cave that filtered cold air into the room above. It's good to know they had air conditioning methods in ancient times too.

Jessie loves her Gelato

Galileo's observatory...too bad for scaffolding.

We ate a lot of great Italian food. This is a huge olive tree in front of one of the restaurants we ate at.

We also got to see Padova, Vicenza, Citadella, Camisano, and other places that I can't even remember the names of. It was fun to hang out with the Bergs and the Pettys and watch little Abram as he begins to crawl and maybe walk soon? He also discovered his middle finger and sometimes flips everyone off without knowing it. In the picture below, it looks like he's doing it the Italian way too! It's pretty cute. We're so glad the Bergs live close to us in Zurich and can't wait to hang out with them again. Ciao!