Closing Out A Journey, Sensuously

A lovely product that's out there in the world has taken our photographer's work and turned it into amazing gifts for family. The 7 x 7" book I designed arrived today as a birthday gift for my Mom. It's a chronology of amazing photos of our wedding day that Margaret took. For a Beta, these folks have figured A LOT out. My apologies to readers of both my blogs, I've already ranted about Blurb!

Not only does Mom love it, she praised the design which I did myself- it's so easy to do! Maybe, someday when I have time, I'll find myself actually making one of these for me and David to enjoy. For now, I've got a few more of these in the queue.

This will be my final post, unless I get some terribly brilliant idea that can't possibly be handled by my improvised perspective (with no commitment to topic, I can hardly go wrong).

I will leave you with a sweet parting story. Anyone with Italian heritage should celebrate the romance of this Venetian practice. It sure would be a cool thing to re-enact in a wedding.

This golden galleon (shown here in Venice's Naval History Museum) is a replica of the Bucintoro. On Ascension Day, May 17th in Italy civic, religious and military VIPs would sail this ship out from St. Mark's for a marriage ceremony with the sea.

As part of the ceremony, they would actually throw and then drag a metal ring symbolizing marriage to the sea through the water behind the ship. There seems to be a discrepancy between the Naval History Museum's dating this ceremony back to 1277 vs. Wikipedia's version which places the start date for the ritual at 1311.

Thank you for taking part in our wedding journey. All 900+ photos (2.31GB) worth of images we captured during the month will be coming on-line gradually on our Flickr page, in addition to the podcast of the concert Dave gave in France.
It was an amazing 31-day journey through 10 countries and we're blessed to be able to share it with you in this way.

Ancient Water, Venetian Water

On our way to Italy today, we visited Postojnska Jama (Postojna Cave), the world’s third largest cave behind Carlsbad and Mammoth in the states. Pictures were unfortunately not allowed inside, but it was as awesome as Blanchard Springs in Arkansas. 

Did you know that caves are, as this had been, safe places to be during an earthquake because they are hollow? Slovenia has 21,000 known caves with 300 new ones discovered each year. This is earthquake and natural hot springs country. Some of the stalactites and stalagmites we saw take 10-30 years to grow one millimeter, other formations like the limestone curtain shapes take 100 years to grow a millimeter. It was amazing to see rock that predates Christ. We headed into Italy, entering first through Trieste ending in Venice. Arriving the evening of June 18^th, we also spent the 19^th and 20^th of June in the city directly with a transition to Tessera for the night of the 20^th. 

Perhaps because it is June, Venice’s beauty is all the more tragic. People go to see it but there are so many people there taking it in, that it’s far beyond its human capacity in the touristy areas of the city. While car free, the boats and smell of diesel, noise and canal stench takes away from the experience. I’m not sure the future of this place unless somehow it is treated more like something precious and a larger entity intervenes. Our hotel, while optimally located suffered from mold and inability to properly handle the mid 80s humidity. I wish our stay had been much shorter. 

Venice didn’t disappoint me with its artsy and traditional food creations. I now have a third Venetian mask for my collection.

The Naval history museum which is partially translated and even has a Swedish section is time well spent. The museum has a very impressive collection of armaments from wars and model boats. The oldest pieces on hand are 17^th century vessels and a lovely room devoted to the evolution of the modern gondola.