Mom, me and Italy

Italy is such an amazing country. I feel so lucky to live in a place where going to Italy is a about as labor intensive as going from Minneapolis to the Spartz Family cabin. When mom came to visit, we spent two days in Venice before setting sail on the Adriatic Sea aboard the Arion small cruise vessel. We had a lovely time. This picture was taken of two door ways I really liked on two buildings I just loved for obvious reasons in a town/island called Bureno. It took us about 45 minutes to get from Venice to Bureno by water bus. The trip was well worth as the town is charming.


The picture below is Connie J Spartz enjoying the perfect Bureno weather and marveling at the size and number of the piles, on which Venice and many of the smaller islands like Bureno, are built. The picture to the right is the street that our hotel was on during our stay in Venice. I booked the room on the internet and we got really lucky with it. The location was perfect and if I get back to Venice, I will definitely choose to stay in that neighborhood again.

This is a very old house in Venice that might be just about to crumble into the canal below it. That would be a real shame because of all of the clean laundry that is probably barely dry as it is hanging out the windows and off the balcony. Europeans uses this method of clothes drying as opposed to discretely hanging garments from a proper and hidden back yard clothes line or, better yet in a dryer. My mom got the biggest kick out of seeing people's whites, darks and colors hanging out of windows above busy streets in Venice. She was so inspired she talked about trying to rig me up a clothes line out of my front windows. The English seem less likely to expose their wardrobe while drying it, they just drape clothing over furniture and air racks to dry. I would have been the first in Penge to embrace the quick dry public clothes line. It's too bad we forgot all about it by the time we got back to England.

I found the water taxis of Venice to be super cool and perhaps the most overpriced service I have so far come across in my life. My mom and I took three water rides, one of which was complimentary from our hotel, the other two were because we were running very late and feeling very panicked. I don't think it ever took more than 15 minutes to get where we were going and each time it cost 50 Euros, which is roughly the equivalent of 75 dollars. 75 bucks for 15 minutes in a boat. It's not bad work if you can get it. And how fun would it be to look this cool every day?!