Venezia: Take Two

It's amazing how different Venice is in the spring when it's warm and sunny compared to Venice during Carnivale when it's far below freezing.

As much as I loved Carnivale, I was so excited to have the chance to return to Venice for a full weekend and actually explore the islands, rather than just going from store to bar to restaurant to store in a futile attempt to avoid hypothermia. Also, I was super excited to spend the weekend with our whole CCI group again. This was the first weekend since Rome in January (I'm not counting Milan because that was a day trip) where all fifteen of us (plus our three honorary CCI-mates) spent the weekend together. It was much better than Rome in that respect because we now know each other, rather than in Rome where we were still in that awkward "I just met you" phase.

Anyhow, we met Petra and her boyfriend at the train station at 8:00 Friday morning and arrived in Venice around 10:30. From there, we took a half hour ferry ride to the main island to check into our hostel, Don Orione Artigianelli. The hostel actually turned out to be a religious guest house and cultural center, which I thought was an odd place to put up fifty college students, but so it goes.

It was a nice place, and I stayed in a decently sized room with Bethany, Erika, and Yelena. We had just enough time here to put our things in storage (our room wasn't ready) grab sandwiches at a cafe down the street, then regroup with Petra for a tour of the Peggy Guggenheim Museum, just a short walk from Don Orione.

The museum was very cool. We split into two groups here, and my group had a wonderful tour guide. She was a theatre major from Puerto Rico, and she was very enthusiastic, which made the tour all the more entertaining. We got to see all kinds of modern art, which was refreshing after looking at Renaissance art every week. Although I really don't understand modern art at all. I also didn't recognize the names of most of the artists, besides Jackson Pollack. We saw the Pollack collection and, even though our guide explained him to us, I still don't see why he's so famous... But other than that, I enjoyed the paintings we saw and liked the explanations our guide gave of them, even if I couldn't always see what she told us we were supposed to see. (For example, one painting is a series of blocks in various shades of gray pieced together like the game Railroad Rushhour... and it's supposed to show a couple swing-dancing.)

After the museum, we had a free afternoon to do whatever we wanted. Most of us went back to Don Orione to check into our rooms and nap. After nap time, my room set off with Lydia, Caitlin, Jess, and Kate to explore. Before long, we ran into a gondolier who talked most of our group into riding a gondola. Kate and I were the only two to opt out since it was €30 per person for a twenty minute ride. It would be €50 per for music and a "guided tour."

While the other girls went on the ride, Kate and I looked for ghosts. Venice is apparently one of the most haunted places in the world. Erika told us this when we went in February, since she hunts ghosts in her free time (she has all kinds of freaky audio and videos on her computer from nights she's spent camping out in old prisons and asylums... it's creepy stuff). Kate and I, of course didn't find any ghosts, maybe since it was late afternoon and we didn't have our Ghostbusters gear. Instead, we checked out some stores and just enjoyed the nice day.

We met everyone back at the guest house shortly before group dinner at Taverna San Trovaso. This dinner was organized by the school, so we had several courses of traditional Venetian food and it was all delicious. We got bread, raw salmon antipasto, a seafood plate (fish, squid, and prawns), and tiramisu. It was so filling and we were all so tired from getting up early and walking around all day that my room went back to the guest house after dinner ended around 11:00. However, it had rained while we were in the restaurant, and we went outside to find the streets flooded where the canal rose over its edge. It was a very wet walk home and my socks and shoes got soaked.

Saturday, we got to sleep in a little bit, and didn't meet Petra and Rocky until 10:30, after breakfast. Our first stop was at the Church of the Frari, where we learned about the architecture and talked about the artwork inside. We followed that with a tour of San Marco (the main square where they had the giant block party during Carnivale). Once again, the area outside the Basilica of San Marco was flooded, so we had to walk across a dock they put up between a dry area of the piazza and the front door. Once again, we talked about frescoes, sculptures, and architecture.

We ended the tour with a walk across the Rialto Bridge, a Venetian icon, and saw a mask shop where they made the mask and some costumes from the movie Eyes Wide Shut, saw the manhole Daniel Craig climbs out of as James Bond in Casino Royal, and saw one of Woody Allen's houses.

Rialto Bridge, the first bridge in Venice.

Following our tour, we had free time again. Lydia and I explored around San Marco for a little while and visited the Bridge of Sighs, where condemned prisoners used to cross from the prison to the main square where they were publicly executed. Rocky said that this was a huge event back in the day before it went out of practice, and that people would come to the harbor from all areas of Venice to watch the executions from their boats.

Eventually we met up with Bethany, Yelena, Caitlin, Danielle, and Kristy, and the group of us sat around in a nice park by the Grand Canal for a while, then stopped for traditional Venetian spritzers on the way back to Don Orione.

We had a late CCI family dinner at Ristorante San Trovaso, where I got delicious seafood pasta and Lydia and I split profiteroles for dessert. It was dark once we finished with dinner, so it was time to ghost hunt.

Sort of. We wandered around for a bit, but since we couldn't find any ghosts, Lydia decided we would make our own. This turned out to be so much fun that we spent several hours creating ghosts in the neighborhoods near our guest house and along the canal. We got a lot of strange looks from locals and passing tourists since we were dancing to Lauren's iPod in between shots. And this is an example of the end results.

Lauren with ghosts.

Kate with ghosts.

Me as a ghost with Kate and Lauren.

Kate killing Glenn.

So yeah... That's that evening.

Yesterday was another early morning at the Scuola di San Rocco with Rocky, where we learned about flagellation and how it was outlawed in Venice during the Renaissance. We then went to the Gallerie dell'Accademia museum to see paintings by Tintoretto, Vasari, and Leonardo da Vinci (Vitruvian Man), among others. While we were looking at one exhibit, a man came up to Rocky and began asking him in Italian about a sign he noticed painted into one of the paintings in the exhibit. Of course, you could tell Rocky was loving the attention since he knows everything there is to know about everything involving art, and the man went away looking impressed, giving us all a thumbs up when he left. Good old Rocky, even schooling the Italians.

The one thing Rocky couldn't tell us when Erika asked him about it after the tour, was how to get to the island of Poveglia, rated the most haunted place in the world. We had asked several local Venetians about the island prior to this point, but they had all either ignored the question or told us not to ask about it. One woman even crossed herself when we asked her and walked away. The place is so haunted because, at the time of the Black Death in Europe, Venetians who caught the plague were exiled there to die in a plague colony alone on the island. Most of them starved to death or died of the elements before the plague had enough time to run its fatal course. Anyone even suspected of having the plague was sent there no questions asked. Eventually, the Venetians even began shipping prisoners there to die among the plague victims. Rumor has it you can hear the screams of the victims any time you get near the island, and the concierge at the guest house confirmed that he was familiar with this story. So Erika was all about Poveglia, of course, and we were all very curious as well, but alas, the only way to even get near the island is to take your own boat, or talk a local into giving you a ride.

When Erika asked, Rocky acknowledged that he knew a little bit about Poveglia's story, but didn't have any information to add to what we already knew. Sad day. At least we saw "ghosts" Saturday night.

...

The Accademia took up most of the morning. We had free time after that, but it was pouring, so we went back to the guest house to pack, then we sat outside in the courtyard under the awning and played Uno and charades for two hours until it was time to leave.

So it was a great weekend. Venice is by far one of the greatest places I've ever been, despite Rocky's complaints that it's nearly impossible to get around on foot (you're meant to see it from the water after all). It also amazes me that Venice even exists. There are no natural water or food sources and it's build entirely on mud (every tower in Venice leans - take that Pisa - as well as many of the buildings, and the floors of the oldest buildings are all warped due to constant flooding).

But it's so gorgeous and very cool... and thankfully this time around it wasn't nearly so cold.