Yours always, Venezia

This weekend ACM took all of us to Venice for the weekend. There are not enough words for how amazing it was, but I'll try to pen them down. Er, type it out.

An introduction to Venice.

The view from our balcony.

Venice is definitely one heck of a place. It's so different from any city I've been to and probably any city I'll ever go see. There is water literally everywhere. There are no cars, no buses, no motorbikes; just boats. And water. And people. So many people, most of which are tourists. Once we got there, we stayed in a quaint little hotel called Hotel Messner. We had picked our roommates beforehand and my room, in my opinion, was the best. My roommate and I were the only ones who got a balcony that looked out onto the water. Anybody could see us right from down below, but I loved being able to just step out and enjoy the mornings before breakfast.

When we first got to Venice, we went straight to the island of Murano that is known especially for making glass. The glass there was amazing and I know almost everyone in the program splurged a little more than they might have originally planned to on that island. I am definitely a part of that group, but it was all so beautiful. We watched a glass-blowing demonstration, and though that could be so awesome to watch for anyone who hasn't seen it before, it wasn't new for me. What was new to me was the sculpting the guy did. He formed a horse and a swan out of hot glass in less than five minutes each. It was like watching life form right before my eyes.

The horse on the left and the still-hot
swan on the right.

The colors used for the glass.

After that show, he led us (predictably) to the gift shop where they had Murano glass for decent prices. They apparently had it cheaper for tourists there, and I believe it after shopping around the main island of Venice. I bought one too many things on the island, and then we left for the hotel. 

After dropping our stuff off and taking a little break from all the traveling we'd done to get there, we went to check out Palazzo Ducale with the professors. It was lovely and beautiful like every palazzo in Italy, but we couldn't take any pictures. There were so many rooms to see that my brain got a little overwhelmed with all the visual stimulation. 

Basilica di San Marco

We had some free time afterwards and we mostly took that time to try and find our way around. I had planned on taking a nap, but ended up getting something to eat and then wandering around. I met up with some other people from the program and we talked in Piazza San Marco until it was time for us to meet at the Basilica di San Marco. The inside and outside of the Basilica was absolutely breath-taking, and we had the entire church all to ourselves. We got to watch the interior light up, revealing its lavishly-decorated domes one by one and its high ceilings and beautifully crafted arches. The high altar was revealed by a slow turn by the guard and I could swear my jaw dropped at the intensity of the design. The craftsman really wanted his altar to be for God, although Jodie later told us it had been stolen from Constantinople. Seriously though, who wouldn't want to steal that for their own church? It fit right into the scheme of the interior anyway. 

After that, we went and had dinner at the hotel and we all pretty much knocked out afterwards. It had been a long day for all of us. 

A panorama photo of the altarpiece.

One little part of the high ceilings. The
domes and arches are ALL over inside.

Piazza San Marco at night.

The next day we had most of the day free to explore. After a morning visit to the Basilica dei Frari and the Scuola di San Rocco, we split up and got lunch before checking out the list of places we had decided to go to the night before. ACM had given us a list of places to check out that we could get our tickets reimbursed for later, so of course those were the first on our list. Lunch was at an awesome little place that I can't remember the name of, but it didn't have a cover charge and it served seafood, something Venice is, and rightly so, known for. Being from the west coast, I know what fresh seafood tastes like, and the "frutti di mare" that was in my pasta was definitely fresh and delicious. I think I'm going to keep missing it until I get fresh seafood again. 

After lunch, we went back to the Basilica to go up to the second level where there was a little museum and we could step outside and get a great view of Piazza San Marco. It was a warm day and the sun felt really nice after being insider the cooler church. It was also a great day for taking pictures, and I'm really glad for that. 

The view from the top of the Basilica. The hint of my finger makes it legit.
Photography skills. What up.

After looking around the upper level of the Basilica di San Marco, we split up once again, half of them going to the Guggenheim Museum and the rest of us going to an archaeological museum near San Marco. It was a large museum and I hadn't expected that, but it showed a lot of the palace where a royal family used to live and then lots of old statues, coins, books, etc. It all seemed kind of thrown together randomly, but it was a cool find. We spent a lot of time in there because there was just so much to look at. Looking at things from the past always makes me wonder of how it's going to be in the future. We have much better records of how things are now for the future, but we still keep trying to piece together the ancient past. It's amazing to see how systems worked back then and how things were made. Will it be that mind-boggling for a student two thousand years from now when they look at artifacts from the early 2000s? These are the things I wonder about. 

The Peggy Guggenheim Museum was next and we spent another long time there looking at all the crazy art inside. The art was very modern and was breather from all of the religious iconography we had been looking at. I love all the iconography, don't get me wrong, but seeing something different after five weeks of it was kind of nice. Some of the art pieces went way over my head, but they had a little terrace that was right on the Grand Canal. It was undoubtedly my favorite part of the whole museum. 

The wishing tree.

We were pretty pooped after all the walking around, but by then it was time for a little nap and then dinner. With all of us being in the same hotel as our friends, we spent a lot of the night talking until sleep and thoughts of tomorrow overpowered us. 

The next day felt a little more rushed. We had to get out of the hotel and deposit our stuff in a storage area, and then went to tour the Galleria dell'Accademia. It was more paintings inside another museum that I really liked, but I was itching to use my free time to go see more parts of Venice. 

Not our gondola, but this is what they
generally look like. Fancy.

Once the tour was done, we went to lunch once more, walking around aimlessly for at least forty-five minutes before finding a Mediterranean restaurant for a decent price, and then went to find a gondola to ride. Not one of those water taxis, but a legit expensive gondola. Personally, I don't think it was worth the money we spent even if it was split between five people, but at least, if you ride it once, you can say you did. The view was beautiful and I got to see parts of Venice you can only see from the water. Our gondolier was also pretty funny and he gave us a mini tour, though he didn't sing for us. The ride was very peaceful once we went down the smaller canals.

I felt like I was entering another world.

After that, we did a bit of more rushed shopping before meeting up with everyone again to pick up our bags and leave the island. We took a boat to the train station and then the two-and-a-half hour train ride back to beloved Firenze. As beautiful as Venice was, I don't think I could ever live there. Comparing Venice to Florence, though Venice does have an otherworldly feel and a lovely charm to it, Florence has my heart not only because it's beautiful and the center of art, but because it is more real to me. Venice is a dream; Florence keeps me grounded. 

In Pictures from Italy, Charles Dickens titles his trip to Venice, "An Italian Dream." Dickens can articulate much better than I can, so I end with his words: 

"I have, many and many a time, thought since, of this strange Dream upon the water: half-wondering if it lie there yet, and if its name be VENICE."