Featherstone Quiltworks

As I go through photos, I keep finding more sights to share.

We were in Italy for ten days, and visited Venice (2 nights), Florence (2 nights), Assisi (one night), and Rome (4 nights).  We also had a side trip to Pisa and a lovely visit to the Tabarrini Winery in the Umbrian region.  (I know that only adds up to nine nights, but the flight over is basically the first night.)  Rome is so richly endowed with sights to see, we could have spent a month just in Rome.

The Spanish Steps from the bottom:

and from the top:

Sandy C. asked if we were on a tour or off on our own.  Thankfully, we were with a tour group out of Minneapolis.  We were so glad to have wonderful guides taking care of us.  We had a guide who traveled with us from Minneapolis, ensured all the luggage got where it was supposed to go, that none of us got “lost”, that people with special food needs got what they were supposed to get, etc.

Once we were in Italy, an Italian guide joined us for the full trip.  She was extremely knowledgeable, kept us apprised of any customs or rules we should be aware of, secured the tickets we needed for admission to all the various places, and basically coordinated everything on the Italy end of things.

Then in each of the cities, we picked up another guide specifically for that city.  Those guides were amazing.  Their English was very good, and it added so much to our experience to have an expert help us understand what we were seeing.  They go through years of extensive schooling before they are able to be tour guides.  They are extremely knowledgeable on their history, art, and architecture.  We also had a generous amount of free time where we could go off on our own for additional sight-seeing/shopping/eating — or maybe all three!

There were 22 of us traveling from Minneapolis (Sean and Joan are missing from this picture, and guides Mary and Helga are taking the pictures).  Here we are in Venice:

And of course we all had cameras in our hands all the time.  A few of us were standing in front of a statue in Assisi, and out came the cameras:

We had our own personal paparazzi!

–Sue

Wednesday’s Puzzle on Thursday.  Kinda fits my life lately.

We had a surprise destination on our Italy trip:  Pisa!  It was about an hour out of the way, but it was worth it to see such a well-known structure.  And despite efforts in recent years to halt the leaning to save the building, it is definitely still leaning!

Many of the cities were walled in at one time. A lot of the walls are still there as you go through the cities.  Pisa’s walls are still standing, and it makes for a breath-taking entrance.  You can see the The Tower of Pisa (a bell tower) leaning towards the right from behind the cathedral.

A closer look:

And as a puzzle.  I don’t usually use what JigZone calls the Euro cut because it is definitely more difficult, but it seemed appropriate after having so many Euros go through our hands last week.  Go ahead and try it.  Click on the puzzle to begin.  I KNOW you can do it!  (And a tip:  when piecing together the gray on the sides, pay attention to the gradient — it’s either light to dark or dark to light.)

And another chance to go to Wikipedia to read more about The Tower of Pisa.  It has a very interesting history.

–Sue

Friend and neighbor Karen advised us to be sure and try the hot chocolate.  So we did.  Four times.  It is nothing like the hot chocolate we know here at home, which is a milky, sweet cocoa drink.  This is like lots of milk chocolate melted into a little milk.  You “drink” it with a little spoon, and you’ll wish you could lick the cup.  Well, at least I had that wish!  They serve it with a packet of sugar in case you’d like to sweeten it, but it’s wonderful just as it’s served.  Mmmmm.

This giant pizza (30″ or 36″ across) was displayed in a window.  We often had pizza and wine for lunch.  Their crust is perfectly thin, just a bit of sauce or fresh tomatoes, maybe some basil, then a light sprinkle of cheese, and always in a big wood-fired oven.  Perfect.  Or “perfetto”!

Gelato — Italian ice cream.  The flavors are wonderfully fresh.  Another mmmmm.

Pastries.  The pictures say it all.

We stopped at a vineyard (actually it was a ways into the Umbrian countryside — a whole ‘nother posting”) for a wine tasting.  What they served with the wine was almost as fantastic as the wine itself.   You’ll recognize the bruchetta (tomatoes on olive-oiled & grilled toast), grilled toast, pancetta (the meat).  The dish in the upper left is a cold egg dish.  Scrambled eggs with strips of red onion were cooked in a thin layer and they cut into strips.  Delicious!

Fast-forward to our Farewell Dinner.  I wanted to photograph the courses as they were served.  Typical of me, I would occasionally forget and eat half the course before taking a picture (that’s why I cropped)!  First course was the antipasto:

Second course was an asparagus risotto.  No kidding, I could eat this dish three times a day, every day!

This course, pasta.  They always served pasta where we would serve a salad (usually as a first course in a less-fancy restaurant).  Their pastas were less saucy than ours, a little more al dente, and truly delicious.  (This particular one had more sauce than we typically saw.)

After all that, the main course!  Chicken, potatoes, and peas.

Dessert?  Of course!  Choice of three, or you could have them all!

–Sue

Doesn’t that sound fun? First up is a shop full of hand-blown and hand-made Murano glass in Venice.  I love this picture because it’s like looking at two bulls in a china shop — Jim and John sitting there, perhaps feeling just a bit out of place.

Now we’re in Florence:  Can you see me wearing these shoes at the longarm — or at Target?

I absolutely loved this shop!  It was floor to ceiling with tassels, tapestries, and trims.

This shop in Sienna was absolutely charming, filled with all kinds of china pieces and decorative items.  By the way, all these specialty shops are quite tiny, smaller than our coffee shops.

I saw quite a few glove shops, but this one was the prettiest.  And the shopkeeper actually stepped outside while I took a photo!

And in Rome:

Tomorrow come back hungry; we’re going to talk about the FOOD!

–Sue

One word sums up Venice:  Water.  Here you can see how high the water is in relation to the buildings.  It almost looks like the city is floating:

Of course you know about the canals and gondolas.  In this photo you can see how the water comes right up to (and probably inside) the buildings.  Also note the little bridge over the canal.  As you walk along, you get some extra exercise walking over these bridges at every juncture.

Some canals have sort of a sidewalk alongside of the buildings:

St. Mark’s Square is the main tourist area in Venice.  It’s built so when it rains, the water seeps down between the pavers of the square and drain away.  It also works in reverse, however.  When the tide is up, water comes back up into the plaza.

The Venetians take it all in stride, however, and quickly place portable raised sidewalks in the areas where the water gets too high.  Venice is really charming and considered one of the most romantic cities.  The narrow streets are lined with lots of interesting shops and eateries.  Since there are no vehicles on the streets in Venice, it makes it quite pleasant to be a pedestrian without the fear of being run down every time you try to cross a street!  I’ll tell you about the drivers another day…

Tomorrow we’ll visit my favorite shops from the trip.  I did a lot of shopping — NOT a lot of buying.  Just as much fun!

–Sue

On our trip through Italy, we toured through many churches and museums.  In some places, photography was forbidden (and they mean it!  Learn how to turn your flash on and off ahead of time.).  In some areas photography was okay, but no flash.  And many allowed flash photography.

Sometimes I would take a flash photo, and if I wasn’t sure it turned out well, I would repeat the photo with no flash.

In St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City, photography is allowed because there are no paintings.  There appear to be paintings, but they are actually mosaics.  I thought this photo of the interior of the dome of St. Peter’s was an interesting comparison.  First, with flash:

Second time, without flash:

Both photos are okay, but I prefer the second one with no flash.  It looks richer and a little brighter to me.  Sometimes, though, I think flash works out better, and sometimes no flash results in an overly golden look (which can be pretty or you can correct it with editing).

Another consideration is due to the length of exposure time needed in a low-light situation without flash, you need to hold very still.  If possible, steady yourself against a wall or something solid.  (For comparison, the exposure time with flash was 1/30th of a second; without flash was 1/10th of a second.)

–Sue

Normally, how you get to your vacation hotel would not be interesting enough to blog about.  Unless you’re going to Venice.  I will zip you ahead to the landing at the Marco Polo Airport, and you get to skip the umpteen-hour flight.

There were quilt patterns everywhere I looked!  A lovely crazy-quilt patchwork, complete with some embroidered embellishment:

Then an applique’d plane with a little free-motion meandering:

We don’t land on the island.  We need to get there.  “Water Taxi, please!”

After a 20-minute boat ride, we arrive at a pier.  We unload and walk to the hotel (and I was so glad we had at least one tour guide with us at all times!).  Our checked bags arrive shortly.  After a short time to freshen up, we embarked on a walking tour of Venice.  That’s for tomorrow’s post.

Venice is a remarkable city.  There are NO cars, buses, delivery trucks, scooters.  There are boats and feet.  We used our feet a lot.

–Sue

And back to Home Sweet Home!  It was a wonderful ten days of some of the best that Italy has to offer, and I’ll share some of the highlights periodically over the next couple of weeks.

Just two things to share today, one about Italy:  I love the quilt designs I found everywhere in the mosaic tile work in the Papal Basilica of Mary Major, located in the heart of Rome.  A sample of one of my favorite “quilt patterns”:

The second tidbit is that I entered three photos in the Eye of the Quilter photograph competition.  Selected photos will be in a display at the Houston Quilt Show the end of this month.  I just got an e-mail that two of my photos were chosen!  Woo-hoo!  I won’t be at the show, but it’s nice to know that a couple of my pictures will be there.  (I’m not showing which photos they are until after the show, but I will tell you that one was of a bug and the other one was an “experimental photo”.)

–Sue