Their Circular Life: The Future of Travel Photography?

by Willy Volk on

Their Circular Life is pretty much the coolest voyeurism you can engage in — without breaking the law. Created by installing a camera and a microphone in one place and letting them both run for 24 hours, Their Circular Life is more than simple time-lapse photography. Users can listen to sound bites taken from the scene, and speed up or slow down the action. You can even stop the action altogether and linger for a while. Personally, I’d like to linger here on Venice’s Campo S. Barnaba. I bet that building with its light on serves up delicious espressos.

So far, only 5 urban Italian locations have been added to the site. However, users are encouraged to provide their own contributions to the site: guidelines and source files are included. I think Their Circular Life is a brilliant way to demonstrate the soul of a place: rather than simply browse a few snapshots, you get to see how that place lives for 24 hours. Is giving life to a destination for 24 hours the future of travel photography? I sure hope so.

Kill Flies with a Map of Milan, Italy

by Justin Glow on

From the Why not? department: “the quintessential lifestyle navigator,” Charles & Marie, are stocking a fly swatter patterned with a Milan, Italy street map. Yes, those little lines you see represent streets in Milan, so that you can — SNAP! — smash a fly at the corner of Via Senato and Corso Venezia if you so choose. Much cooler, if you ask me, than killing flies with a regular old fly swatter from K-Mart.

The swatter comes in blue, green, orange, violet, and white, and costs $15 USD, but is currently sold out.

[via BoingBoing]

Hase, the Pink Italian Bunny Rabbit

by Justin Glow on

What’s more Italian than a 200-foot-long pink bunny rabbit? Since you asked, everything. But that’s okay, because it’s art.

This plush, Pepto Bismol-colored toy named Hase was built on the side of Colletto Fava hill in Italy’s northern Piedmont region, where it will remain, barring fungus overgrowth or arson, until 2025. Hikers who frequent the hill are urged to climb on the rabbit and relax before continuing on their journey, while livestock are urged to not eat Hase, as it is constructed out of straw-stuffed fabric. [Via s-n-t-c]

Convent Stays in Italy: An Inexpensive Option

by Jamie Rhein on

Several years ago, just like in this recent article about staying in convents in Italy, I did stay in a convent in Rome, and not because I fancied being a nun. We’d heard that convents were wonderfully pleasant, inexpensive places to stay. It was a pleasant place to stay and inexpensive, but we should have noticed that this information was coming from a person who goes to bed early. There were a few downsides. One was the curfew. I can’t remember how early it was, but 8:30 p.m. sounds about right. Rings true. Not a bad time if you don’t want to stay out, or if you don’t want to eat dinner at a leisurely pace. If any of you have been to Italy, you might know that dining out at night doesn’t happen until fairly late.

To make it back to the convent before curfew time, we would find any place we could that was serving dinner, shovel down food at a break neck pace, drink wine like we were doing shots and run like heck to the convent’s doors so we wouldn’t get locked out. Also, even though we were traveling co-ed, the rooms are single sexed and single beds–at least where we were staying.

Despite the curfew, convents are an option for a place to stay where you can get some peace and quiet in peace and quiet. We were left on our own more or less, so the overall feel was homey-and peaceful–and quiet.

Here is another article I found in Go World Travel with information about convent and monastery stays.

Venice’s First Female Gondolier…Is A German Who Can’t Drive

by Willy Volk on

I’m all for non-discrimination in the workplace, but from where I’m sitting it sounds like, in the case of Alexandra Hai, the Italian courts made a fundamental mistake. Apparently, after a 10-year struggle, this German woman has breached one of Italy’s oldest male-only clubs to become Venice’s first female gondolier. Although she can’t sing and has yet to pass her gondola-steering exam, a regional court recently ruled that she can ferry guests along the city’s famous canals.

During her ordeal, Hai claims she faced rude gondoliers and discrimination on the part of the Italian Gondola Association, which she believes conspired to exclude her from the profession — males-only since 1094. However, Roberto Luppi, president of the IGA, dismisses this, claiming, “It is very important to be able to steer a gondola. That is why we have the exam.”

According to the exuberant Hai, “I am delighted. It has been my mission. I promise not to wear jeans and I have a beautiful gondola, clean and built according to tradition.” While I applaud Hai’s persistence, I’m curious to know if tourists will prefer a gondolier who can pass their “driver’s test.”

[Thanks, Karen!]