Day9-July10

Megan and I on the balcony of the Venetian palace (where Rubelli is)


Rubelli showroom


Model poses at Rubelli


Fortuny Showroom


Josie slipped here and her camera fell into the ocean. I felt SO bad! She had such a good attitude about it though and even wanted to take a picture by it on the way back.


The swimming pool for the Fortuny employees was empty and it had the SWEETEST steps!

our yummy yummy crepe! SOOO good! our new lds friend that we met in line...Tom...took our picture for us

This morning we didn’t have to leave until 9:00 so we got to sleep in a little bit and it was way nice. The breakfast in our hotel was amazing! I had scrambled eggs (which actually tasted normal this time—in Rome they were really weird), bacon, fruit, and lots of pastries. We started the day off by going to a textile design firm called Rubelli. It was really cool to see their showroom and they gave us a history of all their textiles. They try to use many patterns from ancient collections that they have and a lot of their fabrics are inspired by Venice or other places. For one of our study abroad assignments we have to create patterns that are inspired by each place we visit and so seeing all of their designs helped me a lot with trying to decide what to do. The people that showed us around we’re really fun and friendly and the showroom was located in a Venetian palace so after we were done looking at all the fabrics we took tons of pictures on the balcony overlooking the grand canal. It was cool. We had a break after that and a small group of us went to the grocery store and bought food for lunch. It was so nice to be able to get fruit and vegetables and yummy fresh stuff! I feel like all I’ve been eating is bread and pasta and gelato and that’s it. The prices were really reasonable too. My favorite feature of the grocery store was this little scale that you’d put your produce on to weigh it and then there was a bunch of buttons with pictures of each fruit and vegetable. When you’d push the button for whatever it was you were weighing, the machine would print out a little sticker with the calculated price. It was awesome! I felt like a little kid playing with a toy. Haha. We went back to the hotel to eat our purchases for lunch and I just had some fruit, salad, and bread. It was yummy. After our break we went to the Fortuny textile showroom which is really high-end and famous. Their fabrics were really beautiful and they are all handmade by some secret process. All the designs/patterns were developed by Mariano Fortuny in the 1800-1900s and they use all of the same original patterns, just with different colors. It was really cool. Even the factory that they make the textiles in is beautiful. It’s surrounded by gardens and there’s a swimming pool in the back for the employees. I thought that was pretty sweet. When we got done with that we came back to the hotel and Amanda and I just ate some more of our groceries for dinner. I tried to do some of my laundry in the bathroom sink of our hotel but all of the water kept draining out so it didn’t work too well. Haha. Oh well, at least I tried! Later we went outside and did some sketching. Then I was starving so we went to find a crepe stand...in our pajamas (aka running clothes)! haha. The crepe was oh so delicious and we ran into someone who was lds from new jersey. It was sweet. We were SO hyper afterwards and I haven't laughed so hard this entire trip! It was definitely a fantastic night. Venice is just magical.