SATURDAY POSTER

Peace

As the visitor exits the upper cathedral in Assisi, the wide green expanse of lawn with the word PAX, Peace, fills the eye. A soft and gentle place, and several depictions of Mary with the infant Jesus are seen along the walk back down toward the parking area. A stunningly beautiful place.

Bologna Evening

Bologna is a wonderful city for food, and the chef who prepared our big dinner there was superb. A good portion of the city built additions to older homes in order to make rooms that could be rented to university students. The result in certain neighborhoods was the portico look seen here.

Ferrarra and Bologna

Along the road to Bologna we stopped in Ferrarra, where the town square is host to the sculpture of the Mad Monk. In Bologna, Pope St. Gregory overlooks the piazza; it was he that orchestrated the modern calendar back in George Washington's time. The calendar we use today is called the Gregorian Calendar.

Leaning Tower

In prior posts we noticed that there are more Pietas than the one I expected to see; on Burano I saw a Leaning Tower that I did not expect to see. The entire island is as visually exciting and colorful as these images suggest.

Murano and Burano

A boat ride on the Grand Canal took us to Murano, where the famed glass company had a wonderful demonstration for us, a seen in the horse formed almost by magic in front of our eyes. Then the island of Burano, wonderfully colorful in the July sun, where we had what our tour guide called a Lunchy Dinner. Bellisimo!

San Marco

The center of Venice is St. Mark's Square in English, Piazza San Marco in Italian, and is every bit as exciting and beautiful as advertised.

Grand Canal

After another look up a side canal, we headed into the Grand Canal and toward the Lido Island, the location of our hotel. On the way, we saw this larger-than-life modern sculptor's message on the futility of war, with the soldier's dwarfed by the impervious giant controlling hand.

From the Canal

From the canal, one sees so many styles and colors of building that it is hard to take it all in. Among them, in the upper image, we see the Rialto Bridge, the supposed scene of THE MERCHANT OF VENICE, a popular play by Shakespeare.

City of Canals

From Verona we went directly to Venice, where our gondolas and gondoliere were waiting for us. A picturesque view of the city from the canals was a highlight of the trip.

Verona

No one thinks that Shakespeare visited Italy, of course, but several plays were set in the faraway magical land. Romeo and Juliet lived in Verona, and the playwright did not see anything like the real town in his mind, but the fact is that the beautiful place straddling the Adige River draws tons of tourists because of the star-crossed lovers. The river has several wires strung across it near the bridge we walked on, and literally hundreds of loving couples have pledged their love by hanging a marked lock onto a wire.

The balcony ascribed to the Capulet family had tourists on it when I was there, but shooting between tourists gave me an empty balcony. Near the balcony, one level down, the statue seen here of Juliet is the subject of many photographs. I imagined what she would look like, up there, and this is the result!

Pavia

Leaving Turin, we stopped at a Cistercian Abbey in Pavia, where the seven active monks live quiet lives of work and prayer. Here we see the beauty of their central flower garden in the first image, and the harshness of the individual cells as seen in the primitive sink.

On to Turin

After Pisa, we headed to Turin. There was no tour to see the Shroud of Turin, which is not on normal display, and no one seemed to know if we could see anything. So we walked to a Cathedral, asked a few questions, and found the altar where the famed shroud is stored. The square shape above that altar is a reproduction of the face in the shroud. A wonderful find for us.

The image of the sunflowers reminds us of the beauty of northern Italy, where large fields of flowers are growing all summer for use in sunflower oil. I had no idea that would be a major cash crop.

City of Art and Architecture

A city of art and architecture, Florence is filled with buildings that are architectural works of art in their own right, and many of them are adorned or filled with works of art of all shapes and sizes. These two edifices are cathedrals; elsewhere, in a nondescript academy of art building, one can see the original DAVID, one of Michelangelo's true masterpieces.

Faces

Some faces we saw in Italy would include the mime we saw outside one of our fine restaurants, one where I ate pizza if I recall, and our excellent Trafalgar Tour Guide, Marco Cini. He was the architect of the trip and did an outstanding job!