Riding a taxi down the Grand Canal
Today is Yvonne's birthday!!! It also happens to be the one day that Ben and Isabel are also in Venice so we make plans with them to hang out for the day. We decide that we want to check out the biennale which is an art exhibition that takes place every other year in Venice.
A piece from 'Treasures From the Wreck of the Unbelievable'
We met up with Ben and Isabel first thing in the morning to go check out Damien Hirst's exhibit in the Punta della Dogana before heading over to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection. While neither of these were part of the biennale, they were both very cool to check out. The Hirst exhibit was titled 'Treasures From the Wreck of the Unbelievable' which was based on a made up shipwreck and the art shown were the pieces discovered in the wreck. Kind of a cool idea with some pretty impressive pieces. The Peggy Guggenheim was a totally different pace. Instead this museum was her former home and it was showing her personal eclectic collection of art which was pretty impressive to see. In both cases, not only was the artwork impressive, but the buildings themselves were worth seeing alone.
Yvonne, a work of art!
From those two museums we head out to lunch across the Grand Canal. Ben and Isabel got a good recommendation that we decided to check out, Corte Sconta. Our meal here was really incredible. Lots of fresh seafood and we even tried out a dish local to Venice called Sarde in Saòr, which is basically sweet and sour sardines. The meal was great and on our way through one of the alleys we stumbled upon a ceramics shop with the work of an artists named Merlin Alessandro that caught the attention of Ben and Isabel. We explored the shop and bit, and they bought a bunch of new dishes/cups which was some pretty cool stuff.
Yvonne & Dan at The Giardini
After lunch we walked over to one of the biennale sites at The Giardini. Neither of us really knew what to expect, but were pleasantly surprised by it all. This location is a large garden/ground with a bunch of small pavilions scatted around. Each pavilion was dedicated to one artist from each country that sent an artist to the exhibition. You can think of it as a bunch of bite-sized museums/exhibits, each with a pretty unique variety and style of work. The four of us explored a bunch of different pavilions before Ben and Isabel had to take off. We were enjoying ourselves there so much that we still stayed around after they left until they closed at 6pm.
Dinner at Vecia Cavana
Once we got out of the biennale, we started to walk back across the city to make our reservation at Vecia Cavana. The reservation was made by our friend Labe's father, who eats here often when coming to Venice. He also said he left us something nice there for Yvonne's birthday. We enjoyed another great meal here, the highlight was a really fantastic branzino. Then for dessert they brought out a cake and candles, and Labe's parents got us champagne. It was super nice of them to help us out, as well as leave this as a gift for us. We really enjoyed the meal, and then walked around Venice that night just taking our time to get back home. Yvonne was also on the hunt for some pesto potato chips, which we later figured we must have made up in our head since we never found them no matter how many places we checked. Overall, we had a lot of great experiences today and we were happy we could share them with Ben and Isabel, and even better it was all on Yvonne's birthday!
Yvonne, Ben, and Isabel on the Grand Canal