Monday, May 18 Needless to say, after such a late night last night, we were off to a slow start this morning. By early afternoon, we had finally gotten moving. The other day when we were at the aquarium, we had noticed the exhibition hall next door was featuring a traveling DaVinci science exhibit. Another family friend had seen the exhibit when it was in France and had said it was wonderful, so Eric and Christi decided to go see it today. We dragged Andronikos and John with us.

Christi is ashamed to admit this, but she had no idea that DaVinci was a renowned scientist and inventor. She thought he was only a renowned artist. Generally speaking, people have artistic talents or scientific talents (left brain/right brain dominance), and it is incredibly rare to find someone with such amazing gifts at both ends of the mental spectrum. Because she knew so little about him, Christi found the exhibit to be absolutely mesmerizing. Everyone else liked the exhibit, too.

There were some videos telling about Da Vinci’s various accomplishments in all fields and about his overall life. As a total side note, he was probably gay. He never married and had a life long male companion. As another side note, the Mona Lisa was his favorite piece of art. It wasn’t commissioned, so he made it for himself and kept it for his entire life.

Anyway, most of the displays were essentially pages from his notebooks, where he wrote detailed observations about how things work or came up with engineering plans for assorted inventions he had dreamed up. There were also models of some of the inventions.

To give you a few examples of his study on how things worked, for many years Da Vinci studied the human body. He would sneak into mausoleums to dissect bodies of newly deceased people. He sketched each body in extreme detail, inside and out, including every organ, blood vein, etc. One of his biggest complaints was that the bodies decomposed faster than he could dissect and sketch and he had a hard time getting a complete sketch of any one body. Here is a sample sketch.

He also did the same detailed dissections and drawings on assorted animals. Another detailed study he did was on the flow of water. He would put dye in flowing water to track where it went and what caused it to move the way it did. The water study was inspired by engineering work he did in designing and building canals and bridges. Here is a model of a swinging bridge he designed.

But the part that we all found fascinating was the wide assortment of things he invented. We can’t get over his foresight and visionary abilities. Much of DaVinci’s work was as a naval engineer, and he came up with all kinds of inventions to aid in on the water warfare, including snorkels, fins, a diving suit with a metal breast plate to protect against water pressure, double hulls on boats (then revolutionary and today standard), underwater cutters to destroy others’ hulls, and probably a submarine (he alluded to the submarine but never detailed it, saying it was too dangerous for men to have). He also invented a machine gun, steam powered cannon, tanks, and siege ladders. And those are just a few examples. Here is his machine gun:

Da Vinci also invented the bicycle, the helicopter, the hang glider, the parachute, printing press, wind meters, odometers, and many other things that were way before his time. Here is his hang glider:

And all the while, he was still doing his artwork. Talk about an incredible person!

In the evening, all the out of town guests went to Rythmeno for a big dinner. Tomorrow some of the guests would be leaving, so it was a final farewell of sorts. Costas picked an adorable taverna on the water, in the heart of the historic Venetian waterfront portion of town. Since the last time we were in Rythmeno we didn’t take many photos, here are a few of the waterfront. There is an outer harbor and an inner harbor. The first shot is of some shops that line the outer harbor. The second is of the entrance into the inner harbor, where it is super protected. The last picture is of some of the shops that line the inner harbor.

We had a huge meal. After dinner, we walked around the oldest part of the city, taking in the charm and history. It was a nice night for a walk and a lovely setting. The Venetian architecture and appointments are pretty, and the authentic Venetian buildings, fountains and so forth that are left definitely exude oodles of charm. At one point, we walked by a philo dough factory, so we stopped and watched them work for a while. They were stretching the dough into incredibly large and thin layers. Of course, the paper thin layers are what make philo such a fine pastry. After watching how much work it is, I would never want to try to make my own philo dough!

It was a good end to a good day.