Day 12 - Venice, Italy

Sailing into Venice was a highlight of the trip. After sailing all night, we arrived up the grand canal in Venice around 11:30 a.m. while Italian opera music played over the ship's loudspeakers. After we arrived, we began our "mission." Read on to see how we tracked down an Insect-o-cutor from Stone Mountain, Georgia in Venice, Italy.

The view of all the buildings, boats, and canals was amazing!

Here are a bunch of gondola's lined up to give rides to tourists. We didn't have time to ride in a gondola though -- this is one more thing we said we'd do "next time"!

One of the reasons that we didn't have much extra time is that we were on a mission! We had to find the Biennale art exposition that was somewhere in Venice. The reason we had to find this particular art show is that one of the exhibits supposedly included one model of the Insect-o-cutor (industrial bug zapper) made by my sister's husband's company in Stone Mountain, Georgia. We knew the name of the artist, Daniel Ortega from Mexico, and the exhibition -- so we set off to find the bug zapper art with the Georgia bug zapper.

While we were wandering around Venice, I stopped at an ATM -- we just can't seem to keep the Euro's in stock -- but I couldn't figure out why the ATM wouldn't take my ATM card. (I knew I wasn't over my daily limit this time!) Well it turns out that it wasn't an ATM -- it was a VCR tape rental machine. I just saw the word "bank," the "$" sign and a place to put my card. It took me longer than I care to admit to figure out why it wasn't working. I thought it was pretty interesting so I took a picture of it:

After that, we finally found the exhibit. It was huge with eight different buildings. The one we were looking for was in #7. This is the entrance. Jen stayed near the entrance and read her book -- now I know how my mom felt on family sight-seeing trips when I was always more interested in my book than the tourist attraction!

This is the building the exhibit is in.

I got to the building -- but I couldn't find the exhibit. The room was basically a big empty building.

I asked the guy working there where the Ortega piece was and he showed me the sign on the side of the way, but there was nothing there.

Weird. Was this thing next to the sign the art? Hmmm. Then, across the building, on the opposite wall, there was another sign just like it.

But still no bug zapper . . . . Then the guy pointed up and said something in Italian. I looked up -- and there it was!

That's modern art for you. A bug zapper hanging from the ceiling. (Yep, that was it.) I stayed there for awhile, but unfortunately no bugs got zapped, so I didn't get to test the claim that all the lights would go out.

After we we went to the art exhibition, it was time to go shopping. It was great walking along all the streets and bridges over the canals checking out all the shops.

Eventually, we made it to the main plaza.

One of the highlights there is feeding the pigeons!

It was pretty funny with all the pigeons landing on you and eating out of your hand!

At one end of the plaza is the big bell tower. I wanted to go in the elevator up to the top, but Jen wanted to stay down in the plaza at the cafe sipping wine.

So we both got our way. Here is the picture of Jen from the top of the tower:

Here are some other views from the top:

This is the cathedral in the Plaza:

For some reason, I always think it's funny seeing a McDonald's in these places.