Last weekend I had an awesome time in Venice. When we got to the train station in Venice on Thursday night we had to take a boat to our hotel on the island of Lido south of Venice. The website said it was a ten minute boat road from Venice to Lido, but we later realized that it was 10 minutes from the last boat stop in Venice and an hour or more from the train station. Ha. It was a really cool introduction to Venice though getting to go down the Grand Canal and under Rialto Bridge at night. The city is so mysterious and strange. I loved it.
Friday we did Saint Mark’s Square and the basilica there. We saw the supposed casket of Saint Mark (like Matthew, MARK, Luke, and John). So that was pretty sweet. Went to Rialto bridge and did a lot of walking around the side streets all over Venice and really exploring the city. Doge’s palace was really cool. All kinds of amazing artwork with some really famous one’s by Tintoretto including the world’s largest oil painting. The armory in Doge’s was amazing. It was pretty much like any young boy’s dream getting to walk through room after room filled with suits of armor, swords, spears, maces, crossbows, swords that had pistols attached to them, a hidden briefcase gun, and a bunch of other sweet weapons. It was pretty crazy to think how many people the weapons that I was looking at had killed.
On Saturday we did the traditional gondola ride, which was sweet. Our gondolier had lived in Venice his whole life and his father was a gondolier before him so that was cool.
For our drawing class we read a book called Invisible Cities by Ital Calvino and it was all about Venice. Every page or two was describing a different “city” with an imaginary name, but you realize as you read the whole thing that every imaginary city is actually describing Venice so it was really cool going there after reading that book. One of the things it talked about was the city above and the city below. The city below is always mirroring everything in the city above and it is so true. The canals all reflect the city above just creates a really cool effect.
On Saturday morning before we went into the city from Lido we went to the Golden Beach on the south side of Lido. It was a beautiful beach…collected some shells.
Overall the trip to Venice was a lot of fun and super cool. I def. checked that one off of my bucket list. :)
These past two weeks I have been taking Poetry and Ekphrasis. I really love the prof who is funny and engaging and have grown to really appreciate poetry. Maybe once I do some revisions of my poems I’ll share a few on here. Ekphrasis, for those of you who don’t know what that is (I didn’t until I came here), is poetry on a piece of artwork (painting, sculpture, music, etc.).
It’s pretty crazy to think that everyone else is almost finished or already finished with the semester. I only have 6 weeks left here. :/ I’m excited to see everyone back home, but I’m going to be super sad leaving Italy. Time has flown by ever since I have been here.
I’ll get some more Venice pics up when I get a chance, but in the meantime here is one of me leaning on the tower in Saint Mark’s Square. Well, Ciao for now!
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