Gondola Ride Kit: Instructions for a Heightened Experience

I'd like to introduce you to my little-but-powerful artist's book called Gondola Ride Kit: Instructions for a Heightened Experience. It's an ironic guide for living one of Venice's quintessential experiences: the gondola ride. There's a map, instructions and a trouble shooting guide at the end as I take you through the lagoon city in a whole new way. To start, I recommend the experience during the winter months of November to February, not your typical touristic season in the lagoon city.

Some the sections are dedicated to the five senses. You must concentrate on each one as you ride along in the gondola.

Canal Grande, original illustration by artist

Route taken by artist and recommended departure site to find your gondolier. 

For those who have read Dante Alighieri's Inferno, there is Experience B with references to Virgil and Minos, among others.

It's a guide. It's a book. It's art.
Enjoy this fabulous and unique read! Get your own copy. Buy one for a friend for Christmas! It will make for  an amazing gift for anyone leaving for Venice this winter. It can also be considered a special memento or just lets you dream about Venice with a new point-of-view. Not to mention that this little book is part of major public collections like Tate Gallery. You'll have a piece of art that is the "stuff" of museums.

This is the first time I have directly written about a piece of my art on this blog. I feel it is the right time and very relevant to your interests in Italy and my neighboring city of Venice, where I used to live. This artist's book is on sale for a great small price via Internet now. For more information, please go to my ETSY shop: http://www.etsy.com/shop/irenewoodburyworks

Thank you for supporting me as an artist and spreading the word about Gondola Ride Kit.

Let me know what you think once you've gone for your own ride with manual in-hand.

Paduans Take Control of Historic Venetian Gem

Caffé Quadri, the historic café in Venice's Saint Mark's Square, is now being managed with a primary share by Alajmo SpA. This Paduan family and company runs the famous Le Calandre restaurant in Sarmeola di Rubano, just outside of Padua. The family of cooks/businessmen have taken the reins from Ligabue SpA, another historic business in the Venetian scene.

The new ownership's modo is, "Ciò che diventa era (What is to come, once was.)." They don't want to come in and change everything or make the Venetian landmark a copy of their famous Paduan space and dining experience.

Reasons for Ligabue's sell-out include too much recent acqua alta (high water, a.k.a. flood) damage over the past couple of years, including 202 out of 365 days of high water levels last year. (Saint Mark's Square is the lowest area in Venice so it gets flooded more often than any other place in the lagoon city.)

A blog post for Le Caladre which announces the merger is found here.

Photo from Flickr's Rita Crane Photography.

Let Lions Sleep

I was ready to become a lion "queen" this Carnival, which ends this year on Tuesday.

However I am letting the lions sleep: the costume and the woman. I got a cold with fever that has kept me under the sheets for the weekend. It has really been unfortunate because I haven't made myself a costume in years and I was really looking forward to using it.

Usually I go to the Venice carnival and take pictures of others' elaborate frocks while, this year, I was ready to disguise myself as an African animal and accompany my father along the calle for his first carnevale experience.

He had to go without me.

Now I am starting to feel better but have to maintain plans to take my father snowshoeing tomorrow in the Dolomites so there's no more window of opportunity for carnevale this year for me.

Beh, c'è sempre l'anno prossimo.
(Well, there's always next year.)

The costume will remain folded and wait for its debut in 2011.