12-Marzo-2006

Venezia was amazing. 118 small islands make up the city. There are no cars or buses allowed, “boat buses” as well as gondolas provide the transportation. But I guess I should start from the beginning. We made our early morning journey on Friday morning and arrived in Verona, home of Romeo and Juliet for lunch around 12:30pm. Verona wasn’t an overly big city so we saw the “manufactured” homes of Romeo and Juliet along with their tombs. Turns out that Juliet was an actual person, maybe not the one that was with Romeo, but a person glorified in Verona nonetheless. So they made her a house, put in a balcony and now charge an entry fee to view it. Funny stuff I thought. We didn’t pay the fee to venture inside, but we saw the courtyard where a statue of Juliet exists. Then we ventured to the market square, grabbed some lunch and climbed the bell tower that overlooked the city. Beautiful day, beautiful sites, just beautiful…

The last hour and a half to Venice flew by because we had movies to watch on the tour bus. I miss movies; they are amazing when they are in English. We made it to Venice at about 6:30pm and everyone was on their own for dinner. I hooked up with some people that are in my Italian class and we ventured forth to find a Trattoria. This is a type of restaurant that is family owned, typically has a few very good dishes and tends to be inexpensive. Venice is supposed to be one of the most expensive cities in Italy so we decided that cutting corners was good. We wandered for awhile and finally found a place that we could all agree on. Our trattoria experience was good but sort of selective. We did get to sample one of the Venetian beverage specialties, strawberry wine and it was great. We could not order certain food items because they were out or because there was only one person in the kitchen. All in all, it was a good time.

After that we decided to wander down to the main piazza. On the way we found the Rialto Bridge, which is the cities biggest bridge and definitely the most expensive. Then we went to Piazza San Marco, which has the basilica, the palace and a huge square. I’m really glad we got to see it at night because it was beautiful. The church definitely has the most ornately decorated outside that I have seen yet. By this time it was getting pretty late and cold so we headed back and called it a night.

In the morning our school paid for a tour guide and we got to go back to Piazza San Marco and we learned a whole lot of stuff, most of which I don’t remember, but I held on to some important facts. The weather was absolutely amazing and we learned a lot about the history of Venezia and Mark the Saint… whose body the Venetians stole from Egypt and brought back to worship. After the tour, we headed out to the island of Murano, which is famous for it’s glass blowing factories. The glass can be found about every three feet in Venezia but we thought seeing the place that it was made would be excellent as well. The boat ride was fantastic and the island was very much like Venezia. We luckily found a free glass blowing demonstration, which I understand is a feat in itself.

After we made it back to the “main islands” I found Casey and Jeff and we made our way to dinner. As we walked in and out of millions of glass shops, we found a shop owner that we particularly liked and asked if she could recommend a good place to eat. The place she recommended was absolutely fantastic. It was the first time since I’ve been in Italy that I wanted to go outside, throw up, and then come back and eat more. Casey had gnocchi, which is a very common restaurant dish but hard to find what is considered “really good,” it was amazing. Jeff and I got calozones the size of a small child. Okay, maybe not that big, but they were huge and delicious. I think I could have lived in that restaurant.

This morning was brutally cold and there was even snow. How this huge weather phenomena happened I’m not quite sure. Saturday was t-shirt weather and Sunday was I-didn’t-bring-enough-to-wear weather. Since it was crappie outside, a group of us decided to visit the Doge’s palace back in the San Marco Piazza. As I learned on the tour, a Doge is a very high person in the republic government body that ruled in Venezia. Turns out, Doge’s had to be rich and noble. A poor noble man could belong to the governing body, but only rich, noble men could be Doge’s. This was because the Doge had to “shower” money on the people of Venezia. I’m not sure of the frequency of this ritual, but the money was the Doge’s own. Only one Doge could rule at a time and they tended to select older Doge’s so that they wouldn’t have a significant amount of time in office before he died and another was put in his place. They seemed to operate similar to the way Pope’s are selected. The Doge that spent the most amount of time in his position lasted for 38 years. Impressive. Anyways, the palace was enormous and housed all of the government and courtrooms as well as a huge ballroom and the prison. The prison was first under the Palace but then they needed more space so another building was built across a small canal. A bridge was built to connect the two buildings that is called “The Bridge of Sighs.” This is because prisoners crossed the bridge not knowing when or if they would make it out again. The armory and the prison were very interesting parts. The sword collection was amazing. Also, all of the official rooms had beautiful frescos and gold trimmed everything. It was quite spectacular.

After that we wrapped our trip. The bus left at two and we made it back into Torino a little before eight. Now I’m avoiding my big paper due tomorrow as well as my homework. Imagine that. But I suppose I should return to it……… ciao ciao!