Textiles and Bicycles

This was my favorite thing to hear in Italy…the sing-songy and warm way in which it was said was so lovely to hear.
So I’m back from my trip to Delhi, Rome and Venice.
I was in Delhi for my cousin’s wedding, which as I predicted was absolutely exhausting. From a combination of the jetlag, the traveling from the bride’s city to my cousin’s home city twice, and all of the many long ceremonies, I must have gotten 10 hours of sleep the entire week. No joke.

My cousin and his lovely wife:

They seemed quite happy even though they were no doubt 100 times more exhausted than I was–and seeing that was exactly why I went. Totally worth it.

The real fun was when I met my man in Italy and traveled around Rome and Venice.
Rome may be my new favorite city. The architectural beauty was something I always heard about and after 5 years of high school Latin, the ancient city was something else that I knew was a draw.

But there were other things I found fantastic:

1. The urban form
I’m an urban planner and the fact that everyone drove smart cars or walked was so amazing to see. This was what I thought was great about Venice too–nothing motorized off the water. It was a complete pedestrian city.
I love that this was an actual street with it’s own name in Venice:

I have to say that I wasn’t completely enamored with Venice. I thought it was unbelievably beautiful, but it seemed like Disneyland…something that continues to run to feed tourists and has fallen victim to the more and more common urban transformation into a shopping mall. My perception softened a little on Friday: trash day, where small motor boats move through the canals picking up trash from actual households. It was nice to see a normal function of a real city in action and to see it in the truly unique Venetian fashion.

2. Attention to Detail
While Italy seems to be filled with gorgeous details like micro-mosaics (which are incredible), gilded ceilings, and massive sculptures, there were other little details I thought were so cool:

This isn’t the best picture, but in Rome (and possibly elsewhere in Italy) they actually take the time and resources to paint the building facade onto the scaffolding when a building is having work done…

My favorite detail was this:

The little girl on the sign has a bow in her hair. And look how happy they are!!  Yay, we crossing the street to go to school! Weeee!
I love Rome.

I’ll have more to come on this trip. Such as, in Venice, I happened upon a yarn store and bought some gorgeous cotton/silk/viscose Italian yarn for my dress version of Nora Gaughan’s Anais. I haven’t made enough progress to share yet though.

Check out my flickr page for more photos of my trip.