Venezia!

Tuesday

Today we got up bright and early and traveled to Venice.  We took a fancy train so it only took 5 hours or so, and our seats reclined and we had trays to play card games on!  We stepped out of the train station and got on a ferry that would take us to the hotel in Lido.  We aren’t staying on the main islands because everything shuts down at night, we’re in a more residential area and it’s just lovely besides the smell of mildew in my room.  I’m sharing a bed with Kelsey as always (yes, our beds are still pushed together back at Santa Chiara, hope the cleaning ladies have fun with that).  The weather in Venice is what I would call extremely confused.  There was a fog so thick we couldn’t see any of the scenery from the boat, like we were cruising right into a horror film.  It wasn’t raining, but rather there was a constant mist on us, not enough for an umbrella, but enough to curl my hair and keep my jacket damp.  Tomorrow I am busting out the bright coral rain jacket I stole from my mom – watch out fashionable Italians! Here comes American tourist!

Speaking of American tourists, there have been a lot more in Venice than in any other place in Italy so far.  I assume that is because of how close we are to Spring Break.  Usually it’s British tourists that are still halfway fashionable.  Andres and I started a new game today, it’s called “American or not.”  We target people we think are tourists and ask each other, “American, or not?”  Usually it’s the ones with a tacky baseball cap and an oversized sweatshirt on, or ones with ridiculous travel gear.  After we make a decision, we walk towards them and listen to how they speak.  It gets pretty entertaining.  Now that I’ve been here for a month, I can pick out a tourist, in particular an American one, in a split second.  On a side note, do NOT wear a clingy dress that is above your mid-thigh in the middle of February (especially if you are an overweight mother of an 8 year old), and do not have 3 suitcases while trying to get off a regional train.  I was embarrassed to be an American when I saw those two things happen in the same situation.

Anyways, back to Venice.  We saw St. Mark’s Square and the Doge’s Palace today.  We toured the inside of the Doge’s Palace, more artwork and politics talk.  Then we toured around Venice.  We went through all the winding streets of shops, and it was very difficult to not leave our tour guide and go shopping.  Rick Steves told me to get lost in Venice, because it is an island and there’s only so far you can go, and I plan to do just that sometime this week.  We went to a bridge and took pictures and saw some gondolas and saw a water taxi get pulled over by a police boat.  We saw the building that they filmed Casino Royale at, the one that gets demolished at the end.  It’s still standing.

We were released from our tour guide and we went shopping a bit and saw lots of sparkly things, like masks and jewels and Murano glass everything.  Then we headed back to our island, Lido, which is actually the biggest one in Venice.  Look at a map, it’s quite surprising!  We went to a Chinese restaurant for dinner – don’t judge me.  We found out that our TV gets CNN in English so the rest of the evening was spent watching news and relaxing.

Tomorrow we go to Murano in the morning to see all this glass blowing business!  In the afternoon I think we go inside St. Mark’s.  Woo hoo!

Wednesday

Today we got up early, ate a huge breakfast provided by Hotel Riviera, and then went to Murano.  I’m sure you have heard about Murano glass.  As soon as we arrived, we were directed to a warehouse where they were blowing glass.  Pretty sure it was super sketch and a tourist trap, but it was pouring rain so we went where they sent us.  We saw our first official Murano glass blowing, and there was a show room with lots of pretty things! Plus all the jewelry was half off! We went to other shops and in most of them you could see the glass blowing happening in the back of the show rooms! 

After we went to Murano we had to go back to the main islands for a tour of San Marco.  It was lots of art history and no pictures allowed, so not much to talk about. Saw some cool models of the church and some original sculptures and went on a balcony and saw some mosaics and sparkly walls and stuff.  I think I was a little disappointed by the church because it was completely set up for tourism.  You couldn’t wander around like most churches, this one had a path you had to follow – I felt like a cow in a fence being herded around.  By the time we got out of the church the rain had cleared up, and we walked around Venice and went through lots of little streets and saw lots of beautiful views even though it was really overcast. 

Then we had two hours before we had a concert to get to, so a few of us girls went to eat at a little restaurant where you will be proud to hear I tried a salmon penne pasta and fish.  It was super tasty!  Then we got some gelato and shopped in the Murano glass shops before grabbing a boat to the concert.  Unfortunately, one of the boats that we were going to take was shut down for the night due to high tides, so we had to take the boat that stops at every stop and we barely showed up just in time for the concert.  The concert we went to was a classical strings concert, and it was really cool! It wasn’t quite Devil Went Down to Georgia but it was a neat experience, and it was in a church which made it even better. 

When we got out of the concert, the water was almost up to the level of the streets, and the docks were floating as high as is capable for them.  We made it back to our island safely and hung out at a bar across the street from our hotel for a while before heading to bed to prepare for another day in Venice.

Thursday

Kelsey and I slept in a bit today, and met up with Heather and Marissa to go to a place called Ca’ d’Oro (House of Gold).  You can Google this house if you want to learn about it, because I don’t remember it from history class.  We got in for free because today is the 150^th anniversary of the uniting of Italy!  Everyone had their flags flying out their windows and there were tons of Italians out because most museums let them in free.  The Ca’ d’Oro has been turned into a museum of historical art, which we didn’t know before going to it.  We skipped most of the art and had a photo shoot on the balconies, and a man working inside let us open the 1000-year-old windows to take pictures from. 

After the Ca’ d’Oro, we grabbed some lunch to go and looked around in the shops.  We went to the Peggy Guggenheim museum to meet up with the group for our afternoon tour.  The museum was mostly modern art with a lot of inappropriate topics.  I really enjoyed it, which surprised me because I’m usually more interested in the history of things.  We saw some Picaso’s, and other famous people I don’t remember.  We went to the garden after we were done with the museum tour where we found Peggy’s grave, right next to the grave of her 17 dogs, right next to a wish tree!  I wrote a wish on a receipt and stuck it to a branch, so I guess now I just wait for Peggy’s ghost to make it come true?

Since today is St. Patrick’s Day, we made plans with the other K-State group from Orvieto to go to an Irish Pub.  We tracked them down (after an hour and a half of terrible directions) and then split up to shop a bit with plans to meet at “The Irish Pub” later that evening.  Well, we made our way to an Irish pub, but apparently Italians love the Irish because there are multiple “Irish Pubs.”  The one we went to had green beer, so we couldn’t resist celebrating our Irish heritage, and each of us got a small green beer to-go.  We began walking to the other Irish pub, and finally found a huge obnoxious group of loud Americans with ridiculous green hats on.  We had fun finally catching up with them and hanging out, and then we spent a couple hours making our way back to our island. 

Forgot to mention that somewhere in that mini pub crawl of ours, we came to a spot where we needed to get to a boat stop a couple buildings over.  We could see the boat stop, but there was one spot in the sidewalk blocked off by rod iron gates.  We could have walked all the way around the buildings and back tracked for a few minutes, which would have been fine, but we opted to step off the sidewalk, hold on to the rod iron fence, and shimmy across the other side of it before hopping back onto the sidewalk.  The second one we came to posed a bit of a problem, seeing as the sidewalk jutted out and the fence left no room on the other side to step onto.  So, we held on to the fence and slowly each of us made our way to the boat stop, hanging over the Grand Canal on our way. 

I feel like I probably should have left that out to let my mom sleep easier, but this long post needs a little spicing up.  Tomorrow we check out at 10:30 am, and then we are free for spring break! We will be spending one more night in Venice, and plans for tomorrow include climbing the tower of San Marco, lunch with Orvieto people, and shopping!  I’m on a mission for a sparkly Venetian mask.

Friday

Today we checked out of our hotel and headed to our new hotel for our extra night in Venice.  We took a nice long boat ride around the islands and soaked up some Venetian sunshine.  I don’t know how we lucked out on such good weather the last two days, considering it was supposed to be heavy rain or fog the whole time we were here.  We got off the boat and searched in all the tiny alleys (they call streets) for our new hotel.  It took us a while, but we finally found the main office where we were supposed to check in. 

When we got to the office it wasn’t like a normal hotel, but instead one small room with a desk and some cabinets.  She took us outside to the door next to the office, where there was an empty foyer area and a stair case.  We climbed up the stairs with all our baggage to the top floor (gasping for air after the first flight) where she typed in a code and let us inside.  Our hotel rooms are two of four rooms in an apartment, where we share a bathroom with two other rooms, and there is a full kitchen with snacks supplied.  For 25 euro a night, I’d say we lucked out! We’re the only ones here (3 guys and 5 girls), and there was a cleaning lady here when we showed up so everything is nice and fresh.  The bathroom is the nicest one we’ve seen (complete with a rotating seat cover), no mold in sight and a bidet as a bonus!  Speaking of bidets, tonight we spent half an hour learning how to use one (thanks to WikiHOW and its step-by-step instruction and informational video). 

The bedrooms are much nicer than the rooms at hostels, obviously, and each have their own sink, desk and armoire.  The girl room has two twin beds pushed together, a couch turned into a bed, and a cot with a foam pad as a mattress (not fun for Beth but she might use some couch cushions to add some padding).  Kelsey and I have been cuddling for weeks now, so we got the big bed. 

After we took a breather and lightened our load, we went to Piazza San Marco to go to the top of the tower.  We stood in line for a good while, and then crammed into an elevator to go up (the stairs are no longer used).  When we got to the top, we looked at the sites and took lots of pictures.  After we had been up there for a while, we heard another bell tower going off.  Just as Sarah was saying, “I wonder which tower that is,”  the tower we were in started shaking and a loud booming sound went off directly above our heads.  I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me that we were going to a bell tower just before noon, but with all the natural disasters going on, for a good few seconds I thought there was an earthquake or something.  The bells in Italy ring all the time, with no particular melody and no particular number of times, so I lost some of my hearing ability while I was about 6 feet from the huge bell going off. 

We took the elevator back down and went to the Hard Rock Café for lunch.  I have no guilt in going to an American restaurant in Venice, because it was the most delicious grilled chicken and bacon sandwich I have ever had.  (It wasn’t until about 10pm that I realized it was Friday, sorry Jesus).  We got free water WITH ICE, which is a luxury here, you have no idea.  After lunch, we realized we had lost a few hours somewhere because all of a sudden it was 4pm.  The boys have gotten tired of us complaining about how terrible they are at planning things, so today they let us lead the way.  We went shopping.  I marked some things off my list of wants/needs, including an ADORABLE pair of coral flats that have a big flower on them, and a cute red skirt with bows on the pockets.  As I am typing this I just realized I forgot to buy a mask while here…bummer.

It began to get dark and shops started to shut down so we went back to our hotel.  The boys went and got dinner for everyone, one giant cheese pizza.  We sat in the kitchen area of our apartment/hotel and played card games for a while before everyone headed to bed.  We have a really early morning to get a boat to catch a bus to the airport to catch our plane in time, so I must go to bed now!  Flight around 10:30am to Barcelona.  Farewell Venice!

Cara Marie

Totally forgot to mention a new gelato flavor I tried: Dark Chocolate and Caramel. Success!

Also, no spills recently, although my sandwich today did completely fall apart and I looked like a barbarian eating it.