Venice Art Biennale:Tian Tian Wang, Lacasapark’s Top 5

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Tian Tian Wang represents China. (Arsenal)

Massive scale of herb or fruit called Buda’s hand.

53rd Art Biennale in Venice: Raquel Paiewonsky, Lacasapark’s Top 5

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Raquel Paiewonsky: respresnts Domenican Republic. (Arsenal)

53rd Venice Art Biennale

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The 2 main places that are housing the 53rd Venice Art Biennale are the Arsenal and the Garden. This has been typical format to hold all that art exhibits during the Biennale but there are also other many smaller venues through out the Venice you can go and check out. Pretty much my general 2 cents about the shows is “superb” and “inspiring”. Of course there are better ones than others but the juxtapose of world wide recognized contemporary modern arts and the one of the most antique city as a blank canvas to present the Biennale is quite beautiful and clever.

The Main entrance to the Arsenal. The ticket price for the adult is 18 Euro to see both the Arsenal and the Garden and other many little places are for free.

Pop up espresso bars.

Arsenal as back ground…

Arrival by Water Taxi: Venice

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Yes, that’s our Water Taxi! Yabadoo!

Our room with a view to the canal.

Trulli: Alberobello, Italy

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Trulli is one of 2 very important old architecture styles( the other one is Masserie) to build homes only can be found in Taranto, Brindisi and Bari area of Puglia in Italy which dates back to almost 5000 years ago. You can see still many Trulli style homes in a town called “Alberobello”, which means a “beautiful tree” in Puglia. I have traveled so many towns and cities of Italy, but Trulli is definitely different from anything I have seen so far. The yearly white washed round structured walls and beautifully stacked up grey stone cone shaped roofs make quite a curious and enchanting vibe. They are usually small and not too tall yet earth quake safe and cool for the summer and warm for the winter.

The inside of cone shaped roof.

The town Alberobello has been assigned to be a UNESCO sight in 1996 with a title” World Heritage Town”.

Check out this photo gallery for more photos of Trulli, http://www.pbase.com/antorug/image/85955460

Each roof would have this fancy little detailed pinnacles. Rounded, pointed, star shaped, cross shaped, crescent shaped…. The tale of in the function of the pinnacles and the real reason for which dry stone walling was used, is that this technique was imposed for the pinnacles to be hooked with a rope and the cones could be dismantled quickly to avoid notoriously high taxation on new homes in old times.

The symbolic signs written on the roofs represent Solar symbols as well as flowers, doves, ships and even pierced hearts, that bring us back to a primordial, ancient and poor religiousness that looks for protection against the evils.

The Largest Trulli construction in the town. The Trulli church of Alberobello.

You will still see quite a bit of Trulli homes for use of storage in the farms or even a fancy B&Bs in the Puglia area. They are usually small constructions but like this church some of them are quite grand. You should go check it out yourself. It’s quite amazing.

Savelletri, Puglia: Trappeto, the beach

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The passage way to the beach.

The entrance.

The hat travels.

10:30!

Court yard restaurant.

Lamps made with shells.

Lunch. Linguini alle vongole. mmmm

Back to the beach.

Savelletri, Puglia: 300 years old olive trees and emerald green ocean

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The more south it gets the more beautiful everything is. That’s what everyone in Puglia says. Puglia is quite big and we are already thinking to go back and explore more focusing on way further down the south. But for the time being in 4 day trips in Puglia, we had done quite well. Savelletri is about 1 hour car drive further down south of Bitonto, where huge ancient olive trees still growing with mark of turn of the centuries that trees have survived.

300 years old olive trees. They are grand in terms of size and also character compare to other young trees as 20 to 30 year old ones. They are beautiful as watching a wisely aging great men. They are enormous and they are fantastic.

Arriving to Savelletri, You will come across the many Masserie (traditional pugliese farm house). This is one of solid and rustic entrance to one of Masserie. Usually they are olive tree farms.

After passing through beautiful olive tree fields and Masserie, You will hit this another emerald colored beautiful ocean. Savelletri would have both sand and rocky beaches. It’s quite a contrast to see green emerald colored water from incredibly red land.

The town.

Ostuni, Puglia: The White city

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As it’s nick name White City already explains, Ostuni is painted in all white along it’s smooth hilly lines, and bright and vivid color of Oleanders and colorful doors of residents surroundings make the city even look whiter.

Bar “Riccardo”. You would never ever imagine there would be such a bar like this in this rustic town. Bright turq color bean bags sitting along the long and narrow stepped hill, cutting edge modern decor interiored bar spaces( there is 1 big main and are 3 smaller separated bar rooms along the both side of the stepped isle), and all our favorite old school songs like off the walls and more. The bar sean wraps around the entire isle. It’s quite amazing.

We ordered Beppe’s favorite aperitivo, Prosecco and usual stuzzichini, small bites like dips, cheese, olives and mini sandiwiches. The sun was going down and good friends around with a well chilled bottole of prosecco. The life is beautiful!!

Polignano, Puglia, Italy

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Polignano is absolutely amazing. It’s absolutely gorgeous. It’s about 50Km away from the Bitonto, our base during trip in Puglia. This is a view from the one of the terrace on the edge of the town which is built on the top of the cliff.

We were here for a good half day swimming, diving and sipping beers and chatting. It’s just amazing. I must say, I loved the people. The real people around us. The fat, chubby, skinny, tanned, still pale ( Tania), happy, tired, card playing, laughing and everything else. I loved the people and real houses that real people living inside looking down the most beautiful bay I ever seen. It’s rocky but they are warm, clean, white and round. They feel warm as just baked bread and they are welcoming. I’m in absolutely in love with every moment.

This is the exact spot where we all jumped into the water. What you see is a cave underneath where it connects to the water from the rock field. It’s a short cut to the spot from the field. Polignano holds yearly world wide diving competition. We saw some crazy kids diving in from the craziest height of the cliff.