Venezia! (April 9-12)

Venezia!

(Click on the canal to see the rest of my pictures!)

April 9 - We got on our train in Florence and had a lovely ride through Tuscany up to Venice. The train was very nice and new, and Tuscany was very beautiful! I can see why people like it so much. I think I'd like to go back to Florence, maybe rent a car and see Tuscany. I was very excited to cross the Lagoon into Venice, since for some reason it seemed like a big deal in several movies. The weather was beautiful when we arrived in Venice and we turned to each other and said "Ahh, Venice!" Our hostel was out in the suburbs, about a fifteen minute bus ride away. When we got there, it was siesta time and the neighborhood was like a ghost town. Very strange! The hostel was really nice, in a new apartment complex. Our room was hella swanky (almost like a proper hotel room!) but we had to change to a not-awesome room the next night. Boo! Anyway! We headed back into the city and decided to do a walking tour from the guidebook. It was sort of a backroads way to San Marco that took us out to the Jewish district and past some churches of note. We walked down the quiet, tourist-free streets and meandered past some churches, in the general direction of Piazza San Marco. Of course we had a gelato break. Ooh, I had banana and chocolate flavors in one cone! Yum... (Here I will digress and tell you that I had actually been to Venice before. When I was six. For half a day. All I really remember is that it was burning hot and the tiny alleys were packed with people. We definitely went on the vaporetto and to San Marco, but that's all I can half-remember.) On the way to Piazza San Marco, we walked by the Bridge of Sighs, which was tragically covered in scaffolding, which - to add insult to injury - was itself covered by a giant advertisement for luxury sunglasses. So Lame. Emily was so angry, since her big attraction for Venice was the bridge! By the time we reached San Marco, the fog had rolled in HELLA thick and we could barely see anything. We called it quits for the day when we started feeling cold and clammy.

April 10 - We tried to buy some cereal from the grocery store across the street from the hostel, but it was a comedy of errors. The grocery seemed like it was never open, it had an odd selection of food and no one was helpful. We did manage to buy cereal, but it was this weird off-brand Nutella filled cereal that was sickeningly sweet. After that first day, we started eating it for desert. We took the Vaporetto #1 up the Grand Canal, the scenic tourist route. We saw all the great buildings, Venice has architecture from ten centuries. We went to San Marco and stood in line to see the inside of the Basilica, which was amazing! Every inch inside of it is covered in mosaics (and quite a lot of the outside too!), very amazing. We climbed up to the museum and went out on the terrace to enjoy the views of the piazza and the lagoon. After lunch, we visited the Palazzo Ducale, next to the Basilica, which is where the rulers of Venice lived, The Doge. As you might imagine, it was quite opulent. It had a really cool map room as well, with the maps painted right onto the wall, like in the Vatican. After that, we strolled over the Ponte Dell' Accademia to the Peggy Guggenheim Museum, which is now housed in the palazzo she used to live in on the Grand Canal. The museum had some really great modern art paintings and sculptures in it, plus there were a few sculptures in the garden. We really enjoyed the museum, in each room there was a picture of what the room looked like when Peggy lived there. Peggy lived there until her death in 1979 and is buried in the garden, along with her many beloved doggies. Once we'd soaked up as much 20th century art as we could handle, we walked over to the Ponte Rialto and enjoyed its beauty, though we did not so much enjoy the tacky tourist shops on it. The weather was amazing that day, the fog burned off about noon and then it was sunny and warm until 8pm!

April 11 - Last full day in Italy! We ate a breakfast of champions at the hostel - Italian ho-ho's! It was hella foggy this morning when we took the vaporetto over to the island of Murano to see the famous Venetian glass. We went in the first shop we found, but the saleswoman was snooty so we hightailed it out of there. The canals on Murano are lined with shops that sell glass. Glass vases and decorations for your house, glass jewelry, glass figurines, glass everything! We window shopped for a while and then went to the Glass Museum, which was really awesome. They had an exhibit on how glass is made, and so many amazing glass pieces. Apparently, there has been glass-making in Venice since the Roman times. There was a whole garden scene made from nothing by glass, it was huge, as big as a dining room table. Totally amazing. We walked and window shopped a bit more, after basking in the museum courtyard, and then had a delicious lunch capped by a delightful Tiramisu! Emily and I both bought necklaces and then, right before we left, we got to see a glass-blowing demonstration in a workshop! Very neat. When the Dale Chihuly exhibit was on at the DeYoung in SF, I saw a documentary about his workshop on PBS in the middle of night and watching glass-blowing is so neat!

April 12 - Last day in Italy, we got up early and went to the Ca d'Oro (Gold House), the prettiest palazzo on the Grand Canal. (When we were walking to the Ca d'Oro, we saw a hound dog who couldn't hold his emotions inside - he was very vocal and he kept howling! He was very cute.) It's now a museum that has many Renaissance paintings, tapestries and sculptures, plus great views of the Grand Canal from the balconies. Once we had our fill there, we wandered a bit toward San Marco and had an early lunch in a piazza. The church bells kept ringing and ringing because it was Easter Sunday. I took my leave of Emily (her flight was about 6 hours after mine) and flew back to Glasgow. All in all, a very very good trip!!

--Observations on Venice:
-The canals do smell bad! But since the weather was mild, it was only an occasional whiff of unpleasantness
-The Venetian masks were everywhere! Most were tacky tourist souvenirs, but some of them were amazingly elaborate
-Walking across the entire city (from San Marco to Piazzale Roma) took only about two hours
-We saw tons and tons of dogs in Venice, most were small
-Many more German-speaking tourists, far fewer Spaniards (who tend to mob tourist destinations)
-Italians are not into coffee to go - no Starbucks!