Venice Italy- travel photography

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Venice Italy- travel photography

Our first stop in Italy was Treviso, a small town about an hour north of Venice. We stayed in a charming bed and breakfast where I enjoyed my first real Italian cappuccino. Treviso was a pleasant, quiet place where hardly anyone spoke English and the clouds echoed with the sound of midday bells. The next day we caught the train to Venice to meet with my friends, Venice locals, Alessia and Giovanni. Alessia asked me to shoot their wedding in Camel in 2013, which was one of my all time favorite weddings because it was more of an intimate elopement that was recorded beautifully by the Best video production Toronto. They were so helpful on our travels. They planned our visit and even set us up with a lovely hotel room for free in return for me shooting the hotel. It was so generous. After checking into our room, they greeted us and we walked around the complicated alleys in rain. The city looked as if it hasn’t changed in 500 years. Everything had a varnish of time and experience. The green canals glowed with a salty cocktail of Mediterranean sea and fresh river water.

On a sunny morning while enjoying breakfast at our hotel, I got a call from Alessia offering to take us to the Island or Murano and Burano. These neighnoring island are famous for their old world craftsmanship. Murano is the glass island. We got the special opportunity to go directly into the makers workshop and saw firsthand the artist create intricate glass chandeliers and other stunning pieces by lighting up kilns and pouring hot glass and molding it just so. It was so burning hot there, you could melt right into the glass yourself. Burano is the lace island which is also brilliantly and vividly painted. Many small shops sold delicate lace pieces for hundreds of euros. That night Alessia invited us back to her gorgeous place right on the a canal for dinner. She has three cats which I could not have been happier to see, since I was having severe kitty withdrawals.

I have never been so lost in my life as I was in Venice. I’m someone who needs to orient herself and know where she is at all times. But Venice had me completely turned around. At times it was frustrating passing the SAME mask store that looked just like all the other masks stores; turning around in circles. Or trying to find this amazingly delicious gelato place that seemed to disappear the next time I tried to find it. Venice is a vanishing act that looks familiar and yet different with every turn.

I will always be eternally grateful to Alessia for introducing us to cicchetti. In Venice, the over crowding of tourists drive up the restaurant prices and pull down the overall food quality, so most places are overpriced and mediocre, BUT cicchettti bars are EVERYTHING. Cicchetti are fresh Venetian “tapas” served in bars to standing customers for only a couple euros each. They are usually things like a piece of tuna or white fish on bread, large prawns on skewers, and osters; whatever they find fresh at the market that day. You walk into the bar, order a spritz, a famous Venetian wine based, sparkling cocktail drink that everyone drinks here, and then pick out what you’d like from the clear display case. We went on a cicchetti crawl and hit up about 5 bars, but we were reoccurring customers at one particularly amazing place where we went almost every single night to the point where the manger began to recognize us. We also decided to try Cafe Florian, the very old, ridiculously famous cafe where poets and intellectuals have dined for 300 years. We ordered a tiny mint hot chocolate and yes it was very overpriced. But the experience was nice and the interior was intricately painted and carefully protected behind glass. I’m also pretty certain I ate my weight in gelato. When they have European kit-kat gelato, it’s hard to say no.

Next, the last leg of our journey, London…

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Xoxo,

Michelle

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