Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Everything in Venice is leaning, Part 1

So on Sept 20 and 21, our group took a weekend trip to Venice. Venice, the city that floats on water. After an extremely long bus ride, we transfered to a water taxi. Every form of transportation in Venice was a boat/ship: water bus, water taxi, gondolas, motor boats. I was in heaven. Before we went into Venice proper, we visited a small island next to the city, Murano. Murano is the island where the Venitian glass is made. We watched a glass-blowing demonstration and then and a little bit of free time to explore the island. Every couple of feet there was a gift shop selling everything made of glass. You want a glass pen--got it. Glass flower--got it. Want to drop 3000 euro and buy a glass chandlier--go ahead. Everything was gorgeous though. After Murano, we took the water taxi to Venice proper and checked into our hotel. Not a big surprise there; it looked like an American hotel. Thank God there were toliet seats on the toliets. The cool thing about my room was that it overlooked the tiny street on which our hotel was located. From here we traveled through the city to the Piazza San Marco. First observation: streets in Venice are not even close to straight. Second observation: you want grandeur and breath-taking views, go to Piazza San Marco. I have plenty of pictures of it at all hours of the day so you can see what I mean. The piazza was surrounded on three sides by this huge pillared building, and then it opened up to the Church of San Marco. We met a tour guide here who took us through the "town hall" of the city, for lack of the proper name. The most interesting part of this tour was that we toured the jail cells below the building. These drafty, stone cells were actually used up until the 1940s. I couldn't believe that. We got free time after our tour. After turning down Burger King for lunch, I ended up eating pizza and gelato. The group I was with had mixed opinions on what to do next, and I ended up wandering away...through the non-logical layout of the city. Needless to say, I became lost in some residential sector of the city--which didn't bother me until it was about 10 minutes before we had to regroup for our next tour. But, Megan has an amazing sense of direction (and with the help of a compass and a map with no compass rose) and she made it to the tour on time.
I have to take a moment and pause before I describe this next experience. It was absolutely amazing. Our art history professor here is amazing and knows how to pull strings to get us into cool places. For Venice, she got it so that we had the entire Church of San Marco to ourselves, with no other tourists. It was about 1900 when we went into the church, and it was getting dark. We were told to sit down in the main part of the church while they turned on the lights. Side note: the ceiling in the church are gorgeous; all mosaic with pieces covered with gold foil. So we sit down. First they turn off all the day lights, so we are sitting in complete darkness. Then they start turning the lights on, a little at a time. We are sitting in complete silence, and the church slowly lights up...first dim, then a little brighter, and then the lights on the side, and the lights in the back, until the entire church is lit. It was an absolutely breath taking experience.
After the church, we all kind of meandered our way back to the hotel. Then, after "freshening up" we went out to experience the night life of Venice. My group found this piazza that was pretty much all pubs. It was pretty cool.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You weren't kidding, that's a lot. Quite an abrupt end to the end of the first part about Venice though. More, we want more!!