Home » Italy » 4. day. The Guggenheim Museum and a visit to Antonio's.

The Guggenheim Collection

Today Helle is the early riser and we're at the breakfast table a few minutes past 8. There are new guests every day; most seem to stay for 1-3 days only and with so few guests you cannot help notice.

4. day. The Guggenheim Museum and a visit to Antonio's.

Eric
2005-12-08 19:28:06

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The Guggenheim Collection

Today Helle is the early riser and we're at the breakfast table a few minutes past 8. There are new guests every day; most seem to stay for 1-3 days only and with so few guests you cannot help notice.

I phone Antonio as agreed and my concern as to how, where and how much evaporates. Antonio has planned everything: we are to visit his home to see his chess library, and then we can either go to the chess club or he can show us around in the neighbourhood. We agree on a time between 5 and 5.30, and he explains how to find his home, which is just beside Ca' d'Oro, one of the famous palazzi along Canal Grande.

We decide to visit the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, which is said to be an impressive collection of modern art - Picasso, Ernst etc., which Peggy Guggenheim bought for her Venetian home (now the museum) in a vain attempt to battle the growth of her fortune.

Beautiful houses near the Guggenheim Collection (66 kb)The vaporetto carries us to Salute. It isn't far and we're at the gate 20 minutes early - they open at 10. It is already 35°C in the sun so we track the shade in our search for a bar, where we can kill time and an espresso. We need not search for long. An espresso at the bar costs 80 cents, which is cheap, but a coffee bean's incarnation as espresso is short-lived, and outside we find a shadowy bench where we kill time watching some men struggling with a new and huge fridge for the bar we just visited.

The Guggenheim museum is beautiful and efficiently air-conditioned, however it is not the breakthrough that teaches us to appreciate modern art. We like a few pictures, but despite being painted by the brightest stars on the sky of modern art most works leave barbarians like us untouched. Shamelessly we are more fascinated by the beautiful terrazzo floors with marble in various colours and patterns with mother of pearl.

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