Vicenza - Theater Indoors and Out

Thursday, July 12th

Before we left the States, I thought it would be a good idea to have the girls plan some of our day trips on their own - to give them some ownership of where we go and what we see -because I was worried I would feel like I was dragging them to sights and trying to keep them entertained.  That hasn't been the case at all, but they were excited for the challenge anyway and planned yesterday's whole trip to Vicenza.  They chose a hard city because there are really that many destinations in Vicenza, but we had a great day!



We took the 1:30 train from Treviso and arrived in Vicenza (after a wonderful hour of reading our books) around 2:40, in need of lunch.  We walked along the main street, Corso Palladio (named for the architect that features heavily throughout the town), and popped into several bars before finding a place that satifisfied all to eat.  As I've mentioned, Rachel has been really enthralled by all the things you can get out of a vending machine here, but this was the first time we'd seen a Pringles vending machine!


We then walked the rest of the main drag to the end where the Teatro Olimpico  stands - the first ever enclosed theater with the oldest stage set in the world still standing on the stage - the lone surviving Renaissance Theater.  Though it appears to be marble, the whole thing is made of wood and stucco plaster.   It was truly amazing to see, and I am sure I can't fully appreciate how novel the whole thing was at the time in terms of perspective etc. The theater is made to look like you are outside in a Roman arena and the ceiling is painted like the sky.  We all said that even if this was the only thing we saw in Vicenza, it was well worth the trip!

Afterwards, we walked over, loosely following a walking tour of Pallidio's other buildings in town, to the archeological museum and poked around for a bit.  Both girls felt like they needed to sit a while, but decided we could walk as far as a gelato shop before sitting down.  We went back to one we had seen earlier in the day and had some MAGNIFICENT gelato - white chocolate with wild berries, coconut with white chocolate and hazelnuts, and chocolate chip.  

Jim was meeting us for dinner in Vicenza but not for another couple of hours, so we walked over to the Giardini Salvi - and eventually got a bench in the shade.  We sat down and took out our books  happy to spend some quiet time in the gardens.   Suddenly some music started playing, a woman started singing, and some really unassuming looking people started to dance.  We couldn't really figure it out...the first we saw were just two people using one of the park benches as their stage and doing a finely choreographed number.  The group of dancers kept growing and changing, and they moved all over the gardens performing different numbers in different areas.  We thought it might be a rehearsal for a music video of some sort, but we really weren't sure what was going on.  At one point someone who looked in charge shook his finger at me when I took out my camera, so I kept it in my lap, pointed it in the vaguely right direction, and took a few anyway.  Some even turned out to have some people in them!   I almost left without getting to the bottom of it, but that wouldn't really be true to my nature...so I went over to chat with the sound guys who turned to only speak French - I couldn't even pretend to know what they were saying.  So, though I had been trying to be discreet with my questions (so as to not embarrass my daugther) they called over someone who spoke English who turned out to the be main singer/dancer.  He told me that they were performing there later that night - a dance troupe, Naturalis Labor, that moves around the park as part of their show: Mon Amour!  

We walked backed past the Duomo through really cute streets to the Piazza Signori to meet Jim for dinner.  His drive from work was almost 90 minutes but it was fun to be able to share our adventures with him.  We found a place that had French Fry Pizza on the menu that Rachel just had to order and it looked exactly as it sounds (but tasted better).  We took Jim back to sample our MAGIFICENT gelato (we all got the same flavors again and Jim tried a delicious caramel).  Our walk back to the car took us passed the Giardini Salvi and we poked our heads through the garden gates to watch a little of Mon Amour! which suddenly looked much more professional with dancers in costumes and the lighting turned on.