Our Venitian Angel

When Heidi and I were in Venice this last May, we made a discovery.

Venice is famous for many things, one of which is their masks.

At first, we were looking at the small tourusty masks designed to be Christmas tree ornaments or other small, plastiky things. However, we had a hard time finding any masks that looked legit (ie not made in China out of plastic) that were so small.

Then we saw this mask, which changed everything:

We saw the mask above at a shop near the Realto Bridge and fell in love - and knew she should be the angel for our Christmas tree! Then we saw the price tag and were quite discouraged - she was well over 100 euro.

So, we spent much of the remainder of that day (our only full day in Venice) scouring the streets (and stores) for a beautiful mask that could take her place atop our Christmas tree. After taking samples from dozens of gelato shops, resting in the shade along a watery canal, and watching kids play musical chairs, we finally found this mask:

Which we promptly purchased and had wrapped for the trip back to the states. Isn't she beautiful? Not the beaming angel of the other mask, but quite beautiful in her own right!

This is she atop our Christmas tree (we decorated Thanksgiving night - I'm sure Heidi will be writing a post about that one of these days):

And as a funny closing note, there was a little tag attached to her with a message in 5 languages, and the English translation read:

Welcomes in our world,

where the respect of

the traditions and the

development of the

creativity, offer you an

origional product, that will

move up.

Oh, I miss poor translations... Here's what it should say in English, assuming they wanted it to be a translation of the Italian text:

Welcome to our world,

where the respect of traditions

and the development of creativity

offer you an original and unique product

that is sure to excite you.

Hope your Thanksgiving was great!