Venice – Cleaning Up, Heading Home - Sunday, 7/10

Sunday morning I also got up early to take photos before breakfast. When I went back to one of the places I had been the day before, I found the streets had quite a few people on them; many more then I expected for a Sunday morning. As I explored further and observed the people, I remembered the fireworks gala. They were revelers left over from the night before! The tip off was that they were carrying things you’d take to an event like ice chests, chairs, left over food, etc. Then it all made sense; Italians start partying late, party hard and many of them don’t stop until the next morning! This was confirmed to me once night in Corciano after we got back from Venice where there was a band playing outdoors literally until 5:00 am in the morning. They kept waking up everyone in the villa that night with the noise.

Back to Venice… While I was out, I saw another interesting event: garbage collectors cleaning up after the event. They actually sweep up the garbage with the type of broom you see witches riding on for Halloween. I saw these brooms used by people in many of the town we visited. I found it fascinating! I followed this one lady around quite by accident. She would sweep all the garbage to the nearest garbage can and then dumped it in a larger rolling bin. She took the bin to the pickup point where she met the garbage “barge” that then picked up the bin and dumped it in the boat. Then she continued to the next piazza in the same way. Now that’s garbage collection Venice style. Check out the photos!

As I continued my photography journey to interesting places, I ran into Jason painting. He had painted in this spot a number of years ago and wanted to paint it again on our trip. While I was there, I noticed a woman hanging around where he was painting. Come to find out, she was a revealer at the fireworks that night before and when she got back to the friend’s house where she was staying, the door was locked; she didn’t want to knock and wake them up so she just waited outside. Since she was nice looking, I asked if she would pose for me. Fortunately for me, she spoke English so I could communicate with her. She was happy to oblige me as she wanted a photo of herself to commemorate her visit to Venice. So I took some photos of her in different places and she gave me her email address to her pictures to. This photo of her is standing at her friend’s door.

When I was done with my photos, Jason was done with his painting and we headed back to the hotel for some breakfast. Here’s a breakfast picture of some tired souls from our group. From the front left clockwise are Jen, Sola, Shawn and Brandon. After breakfast Craig and I took off again for another couple hours of photo shooting. We met back at the hotel at 1:00 to begin our trip home.

By then, I was tired and tired of taking pictures so the only people pictures I got of our departure from Venice were of Jason with two of his sons while we were waiting for the vaporetto stop beside the canal; Grayson is the one with the backpack and Jason is corralling Tyler, their two-year-old, from to keep him from running into the canal. We took the vaporetto back to the parking garage where the vans were parked and headed back to Corciano.