Mosaic Heaven

Today and tomorrow, we're in Ravenna Italy, an incredible port I candidly had never heard of till this trip. It was a replacement for the port of Venice after Venice closed its cruise port permanently due to the erosive impact on that sinking city. We've been to Venice before, so we're OK with that. And Ravenna was venicesque, without the waterways and gondolas. It was also impeccably clean! I like that about a city. The other notable point about Ravenna was how incredibly friendly and helpful everyone was. Wow! We never had to ask for directions, locals would see us studying the map and would ask if we needed help. I could live here!!!!

A few posts ago, I discussed the difference between a traveler and a tourist. Today we tried to be neither. We wanted to be a "local". In the end, we were 50% tourist and 50% local.

The tourist part of Ravenna was terrific. Ravenna has 8 UNESCO sites and you know how I feel about UNESCO sites....LOVE THEM!!! In case you missed the post on UNESCO, here's their mission statement, "The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) seeks to encourage the identification, protection and preservation of cultural and natural heritage around the world considered to be of outstanding value to humanity. This is embodied in an international treaty called the Convention concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, adopted by UNESCO in 1972."

2 days ago, we were touching 1000 year old frescos. Today we experienced mosaics almost as old. We tend to see mosaics on a floor or possibly a wall. Here they were on the ceiling too. Intricate and huge murals depicting mostly religious scenes were carefully preserved and amazing.

But I'm ahead of myself.

We docked about 8am and were off by 9am. The cruiseline provided shuttles into downtown Ravenna. A nice benefit. We immediately found our way to the main plaza where they had an open air market with cheeses, cured meats and artisianal breads, where we sampled many delicious items. We scoped out what we're were going to buy for lunch. After that, we began our "touristing" aka sightseeing. We visited 6 of the 8 UNESCO sites in the city. We purchased 1 ticket for all sites, 12.5 euro for each of us. That's a great deal. Google Ravenna unesco if you want site details. They are known for their Byzantine Era mosaics. Mind boggling, intricate, colorful, huge and beautiful. I wondered to myself, is painting an intricate fresco on a ceiling more or less difficult than tiling an intricate mosaic? So much goes into both.

Again, I took over 100 pics and can't decide which ones to share. These pics may look like paintings but they are all mosaics!!!

Incredible!!!!!!

Here are some non-mosaic frescos and other art work and artifacts.

And the beautiful architecture!!! The Byzantines were known for octagonal and tall round structures.

Then it was time for a late lunch. This is one of our "local" detours from being a tourist. I preplanned a wine and charcuterie lunch for us, bringing some of it from the ship's breakfast bar and purchasing the remainder in Ravenna. We returned to the marketplace, purchased a few special items and then set out for a place to picnic. We brought a blanket and found a nice park. It was a beautiful sunny day here after it was predicted to be cool and rainy. Here's a pic from our wonderful lunch, which included cured meat, coissants, fresh onion bread, cheese, fruit, dried figs, dried dates and walnuts. And of course, a good chianti. It was quite good.

After lunch we continued to be Locals and (drum roll please) got our hair cut. It's very expensive on the ship ($200 for both of us) and they're a bit snooty at the spa. We thought how cool would it be to get our hair cut in Italy. So we did. 30 euro including tip for both of us. Here's the after pic.

So all in all, it was a great day. To top it off, we returned to the plaza and got the biggest and best cannoli we've ever had.

No post tomorrow as we're still in Ravenna. Monday we're in Slovenia and have a private tour booked with 2 other couples. Should be fun. Till then....