Venice: Art or Trash?

(Full disclosure, all of the photos in this post are taken by my cousin. All the ones I took were Lomo/are on my Facebook. Hope she doesn't sue me or something.)

Last weekend I went back to Italy. I just love me some Pizza. Also my cousin Mike had a little art show going on. Part of something called the Venice Biennale. No big deal.
ANYWAY. Basically it was an excuse to see some family and pretend like we are cultured/understand anything about art.

We flew into Venice late on Friday night. I almost lost my passport. We were way too chicken/tired to attempt any form of public transport so immediately blew 100 Euros on a Taxi right to the hotel. And when I say taxi I mean a car half the way there, then a boat. A Canal boat. Driving through Canals. In Venice. At like midnight on a clear warm summer night. Yea, it was pretty great. Probably worth not eating for a week.
We were dropped right at the back door of the hotel. Just off the Grand Canal. In Venice. Ok, I'm gonna stop being a dick now.
At this point we weren't entirely sure we were going to find friendly familial faces/beds or patches of floor to sleep on. Luckily Aunt Rose was waiting to greet us, even though it meant staying up half the night.

Much catching up followed. Hugs were exchanged. Plans for the weekend were discussed. Then eventually bed.

The next day our first stop was Palazzo Loredan dell' Ambasciatore, handily close to the hotel and also clearly sign posted:

Looking from the other side of the Grand Canal (maybe taken from a boat).

With Aunt Rose

We decided that this was definitely art. And definitely impressive.

There is always someone playing the piano.
You can hear it as you approach the pavilion, before you see anything.

This is moulded off Mike's brother Richard, aka Para.
He's definitely taller in real life.
And less Bronze.

Awkward, someone left their Crocs in the garden?
Actually art.
Actually Bronze.

Also, I am on youtube:

After fooling around with some Bulls we dropped Aunt Rose back at the hotel for her lunch date and decided to explore ourselves. 
The night before Mike had told us about a couple of the works that sounded interesting, unfortunately we hadn't thought to ask what they were called or where we might find them. 
One that I was particularly interested to see was a video installation where the artist had cut scenes from movies that showed the time and edited them together to show 24 hours. We saw something called "Around the Clock" or something similar on the programme and decided that must be it. It wasn't. We missioned to the other side of the city by vaporetto (public transport, aka a bus but on water) only to find a whole lot of stuff that we guess was sposed to be art but that pretty much went right over our heads.


The next day we took Aunt Rose to San Marco Square, the main square in Venice. We were instructed to visit the uber fancy restaurant, Florian's, as this is the place where the the Biennale was first dreamed up like a hundred something years ago. We ate dessert at like 11am. We had to pay 6 Euros per person for the pleasure of listening to a band that took a 10 minute break for every 5 minutes of playing time. We speculated that the reserved tables across from us were meant for Elton John. We were disappointed when a group of rich tourists were seated there instead. We paid 9 Euros for a bottle of Sprite. It was worth it.


In our attempt to get back to the hotel but also take a photo of mike's banner from the vaporetto we accidentally ended up on the wrong side of the canal. Luckily this meant we stumbled across some more art. This time we knew it definitely was art. I don't know about the other two, but I still didn't understand any of it. 


All too soon it was Monday morning and thanks to Ryanair we were back in London only and hour or so later than we were meant to be.


Wanna go back to Venice and like live on a Canal or something. That would be ideal.