Venice! Venice!

What’s up, my peeps? It’s been awhile since I’ve last written. Not a lot happened, and then all of a sudden, a lot happened. I just returned from my art/architecture history class’s trip up north in Venice, Padua and Vicenza.

Since my last entry, a few friends and I had a terrific night out on the town. We bought some wine and wandered to the Ponte Vecchio and a long the river. It is absolutely breathtaking at night. I then had a thoroughly enjoyable walk back through a new part of town I hadn’t really explored, followed by a walk to my friend Jocie’s house at 12:30 and grabbed the last bus home, which got me back at around 1:30 am. It was quite a lovely evening, and we just spent it mostly wandering around the town. This town is so gorgeous, you can just wander forever.

BUT speaking of gorgeous towns! Venice! Wow. I woke up at 4:30 to catch a taxi at 4:50 and get to school at 5:20 to get on the bus that left at 5:30. Needless to say, I know associate Venice with shear exhaustion. The more beautiful parts of our trip were of course the places without the vast seas of tourists. For example, we got a little lost trying to find the place to meet back up with the group and wandered down some sides streets and saw some gorgeous, old condos. Some of these buildings have got to be at least a few hundred years old. They’re always being renovated but it’s amazing to observe the dichotomy between the new and old buildings. There were honestly too many amazing things about Venice for me to possibly include in any sort of timely fashion, but allow me to take you paint you a picture for your minds. Imagine, rolling out of bed, having a quick breakfast, getting ready and then walking down your sidewalk to your boat to drive to work. That’s what they do. Or they ride the bus. Which, incidentally, also happens to be a boat. This might sound stupid to say, but Venice is actually a real, functioning city with taxis and police and ambulances and people commuting to go back and forth from work. But they do it all in boats. Boat taxis, boat ambulances. It’s truly amazing to witness first hand. Also, every square inch of the city is so old, it is just mind-boggling. Every corner you turn, every building you walk by is old and beautiful. I got a ton of pictures of old brick peaking through plaster or cement that must have once fully covered them. It gives the entire town a wonderful rustic feeling.

TOURIST TIP! – If you need to use a restroom while in Venice, it will cost 1 Euro to use the public WC. That is utterly outrageous. If you try to use the bathrooms in the hotels, the employees working there will follow you and kick you out, no matter how sneaky you think you are being. There are really only two good choices. The first is to find a bar or restaurant that has a bathroom and buy a drink for 1 or 2 euro and use their restrooms. But my personal favorite is to find a McDonalds! If there is a McDonalds in a ½ mile radius of where you are standing, you will see a sign for that McDonalds. The McDonalds employees hate working there, because let’s face it, no one wants to be flipping burgers at McDonalds regardless of age, nationality, race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. Erego, McDonalds bathrooms are like stumbling upon a vile, smelly, presumably disease-ridden hidden treasure.

St. Marc’s basilica is gorgeous! And let me tell you, I have seen a lot of amazing churches so far on this trip. I’m starting to become spoiled, with thoughts such as “Oh, this church only has three domes.” Or “Oh, this church only has one person’s weight in gold to make up the mosaics on the ceiling.” Top 3 churches of the trip so far in order of least spectacular to most spectacular (keeping in mind, of course, that “least spectacular” is a relative term. They are all unbelievable.) :

3. The church of Anunzia - Florence

2. St. Marco’s basilica - Venice

1. St. Anthony’s Church – Padua (To be discussed later)

Stay turned for updates on this list. Pictures aren’t allowed in the St Marco’s or St. Anthony’s, but I was able to get a few photos of the church of the Anunzia. I recommend checking out photos online on google or something like that if you want to see some pics. St. Marc’s is enormous and combined with the huge square in front, is the focal point of all of Venice. The inside is supposed to represent the various levels of the Earth. Art on the floor and lower parts of the walls is paintings and statues of normal people. As you move higher, the paintings become more divine (larger, more Gold and more holy people). The ceiling is made of gold mosaics of Jesus and Mary and all sorts of important biblical figures that have slipped my mind. We see this theme of artistic, theological pyramids in a baptistery in Padua as well.

I spent the tail end of the summer having my breath taken away by landscapes untouched by the filth and decay of humanity. I could see the earth, pretty much how it looked to anyone or anything that may have come across it for hundreds of thousands of years. The beauty of the earth. Now, I find myself having my breath taken away by the unbelievable inorganic side of this world. Absorbing all the beauty hat mankind is capable of producing.

To all those curious, we did not float in a fancy boat down the Grand Canal paddled by a plump little Italian man named Luigi, while his cousin Giovanni sang to us and played on his accordion. We could’ve gotten that if we had been able to pay anywhere from 80-120 Euro (depending on the number of musicians/ where you want to go). Venice is expensive! Using my smeller for the lowest prices in an area, I scoped out a place where we were able to buy a delicious pizza for 4 Euros! My friend Luke paid 9.

Thus ends the tale of Venice. Gorgeous city. Big too. We didn’t have a chance to see most of it. We stayed at a hotel in the town of Vicenza, which was about 45 minutes away. It’s pretty crazy to imagine that when the Venetians decided to build a city, they found some islands in the middle of nowhere and built on the islands to use the surrounding water as a defense from enemies, but also to allow themselves to become one of the most powerful trade cities in the Mediterranean. They were brilliant!