Italian Jewelry and Metalwork

We saw tons of wonderful metalwork and jewelry in Italy. And we took many illegal photos of them.

There were pinhole spectacles in the Galileo Museum in Florence. You can take a virtual tour of the museum and look at the objects here.


A golden earring in the Archeology Museum in Perugia.


These pierced bowls from the Villa Giulia in Rome.


And, my personal favorite, amulets from the amulet collection at the Archeology Museum in Perugia. I blogged about them once, already, but it was such a cool collection that it bears mentioning again.

More images here.

Proof that it really is us who took all these pictures in Italy.

Here is a flickr set of us, in Italy.

We took the above shot at the Peggy Gugenheim sculpture garden in Venice.

So, how was the food?

Number one question people ask me about our trip is, "how was the food?" Well, it was pretty delicious.
I won't lie, three months of strictly Italian food gets old for Americans who are used to lots of variety, but in general, we had some pretty fantastic treats.

Like pecorino cheese from Pienza. Our favorite was the variety with black peppercorns.


And, from our favorite haunt in Cortona, Bar 500. N exclusively ate the pizza 500, which had sweet corn, roasted red peppers, spicy sausage, red onion and pecorino and mozzarella cheese.


Of course, there was gelato.

And wine and drinks galore; this is a festive sangria.

For more photos of our food treats, visit this set on flickr.

Like a party in a town.

Burano Italy, outside Venice, is known for its lace production, but the most interesting thing about it, in my opinion, was the bright coloring of the houses. More photos here.

That Tuscan sun does make for a pretty sky

a sunrise


a sunset


a storm.
All in Cortona. More pics here.

Oh, the animals!

Italy did not disappoint on the cooky animal front. See the flickr set for my complete collection.

This little fella is an Aye-aye and was in the collection of La Specola in Florence.


Here's a cowardly looking lion from Venice.


And a cow/prairie dog thing in Siena.

Italian Signs

This flickr set has pictures we took of signs in Italy, either because they were funny, or had interesting graphics.

This sign was in the Duomo museum in Siena.


This is from the Doge's residence in Venice. That's guy has a pretty impressive stream, if you ask me.


And in Viterbo, they have giant birds dropping babies onto cars. Scary stuff.

Faces from Italy

One of my favorite things in Italy were the faces and figures, both religious and otherwise. They stuck them everyone. Here are a couple of my favorites.
The doll above was at the antique market in Arezzo, and was selling for 1000 euro (about $1400!).

This reliquary was in Viterbo.


A face above a doorway in Orvieto.


And this stately man is from the Camposanto in Pisa. The rest of my face pics are in a set in my flickr.

Goodbye Italia!

We're back from Cortona now. We had a wonderful time, but will miss the friends we made and the beautiful scenery.

I've uploaded all 2000 or so photos we took over the last 3 months to my flickr and will try to post some of highlights here.