Italy Souvenirs

Okay, I still owe you my Italy cocktail recipes, but I’m feeling a little lazy, so instead, here are my souvenirs!

My sister had told me to look out for the L’Erbolario chain of stores with lovely natural perfumes. She and my niece had loved their perfumes from a trip a few years ago, so I re-upped their supply and picked something for myself as well. And — hooray! — they were generous with the samples.

We had a lovely boat tour to visit Murano, the island known for glass-making, and Burano, known for its lace-making. We loved seeing the glass-blowing live and in-person.

Afterwards we walked around the showroom where they were clearly hoping that we had much more disposable income to drop on glass art than we actually had. Which is too bad for everyone, because if I were wealthier I absolutely would have bought more. Instead, I contented myself with a lovely little ring.

It is prettier in person, actually: beautiful reds and golds.

This was a fun, tour, though. We would have liked more time to explore these islands. Here’s Burano, where every family paints their home a different color, and if more than one family lives in the same building, the building is multiple colors.

Which reminds me, have I mentioned that Venice is lovely?

It’s so very lovely.

Also lovely at night.

And finally, my favorite souvenir is from a market stall in Florence. A woman was selling bunches of jeans jackets and other jackets with pieces of tapestry art on them. My original plan was a jeans jacket (I haven’t had one for years and I miss owning one) with a close-up of Venus’ face by Botticelli (since we were in Italy), but there wasn’t one that fit quite right. But I love what I ended up with instead:

It’s a bit lighter than denim, which works well, and I’m a lifelong fan of this color green. And I like this Klimt so much that we have a poster of it in our room, so I’m okay with buying an Austrian artist in Italy.

I am also exceptionally fortunate because while all of my souvenir picks were for me-me-me, Cute W chose art prints that will be in our house where we can share them (we’re still figuring out how to reshuffle our pictures, but here they are):