Venetian Adventure

Me and Jamie on a Gondola

Masks.

This weekend was Jamie’s birthday weekend and so we decided to take a trip somewhere in Italy to celebrate.  Five of us, me, Jamie, Jenna, Yessenia, and Kathryn, left Thursday and Anne, Lauren, and Stephanie joined us on Saturday.  Our luck with using TrenItalia made the trip a breeze.  We took the bus to Termini and then the Metro to Tiburtini train station to get on the 10:00 (or 22:00) overnight train to Venice.  The train ride was actually pretty fun; the five of us were in a cabin with a nice older Italian gentleman named Ferdinando, who seemed to think he could make us understand Italian if he kept talking to us.  And he did keep talking, about everything from white hair, to love, to Juliard, all night.  But it was fun and we still managed to get some sleep. 

jenna and me on the "runway"

The train rolled into Venice at 5 am and since we couldn’t check into our hostel that early, we walked to Piazza San Marco (Saint Mark’s Square) to watch the sunrise on the Grand Canal.  It was beautiful and quiet, and despite weather forcasts, it didn’t rain during the day on Friday. 

As we walked through the Piazza, these workers in Green (who kept singing “siamo qui", “we are here”) were setting up these table-like things all around.  Naturally, we though these table things were runways (it was fashion week in Milan, why not in Venice?).  This was not the first time we were wrong about something in Italy.

When we had gotten pasteries and cappuccinos, we decided to try to check into our hostel, the lovely Venice Museum.  Once we found it, which was pretty challenging because Venice is definitely not a grid and deadends lead straight into canals, we were greeted by an Australian who looked like he’d just rolled out of bed.  Despite what we’d been told, it was too early to check in so we changed, left our stuff, and started exploring the city. 

Kathryn, me, jamie, and yessenia

Jenna had a great walking tour route we decided to try so we got to see a lot of the city and a ton of churches, which, even though I took pictures of them all, I probably couldn’t say much about except that they were all very beautiful. 

By then the sun had come out and was shining; the water was sparkling, it was warm, and we still had a whole day!  Before we went back to the hostel to crash, we went to the Peggy Gugenheim Museum and saw famous works by Picasso, Dali, Polluck, Ernst, and lots of other modern artists.

Then we went back to the lovely Venice Museum and crashed.  We woke up around 6 and I was so disoriented I thought it was the next day, and I was kind of upset because I thought we’d missed dinner!  But we hadn’t and we found a lovely little restaurant pretty close by.  I had spaghetti carbonara; it was great!  Then we went back to the hostel, showered, watched a dvd on Kathryn’s laptop, and fell asleep. 

Friday night was stormy and Saturday morning evidenced this.  We decided to walk to San Marco and check it out.  We were in for a surprise!  Once again, floods followed us to our destination.  Those table things we thought were runways?  Not runways—elevated sidewalks for when it floods.  Even though it was a little annoying to squeeze onto these sidewalk bridges, it was fun to watch people giggle as they waded through the water in the piazza or laugh as they carried each other.   

Jenna and I went up the Campodoglio Bell Tower.  We saw great views of Venice and Croatia and Slovenia.  It also happened to be 12 noon so we can confirm that the bells work.  After our bell-tower experience, I finally found a mask I liked after looking in every single gift shop (to the dismay of everyone in the group except Yessenia, who also loves window-shopping) and we celebrated my purchase and just being in Venice with bellini, a traditional Venetian drink of champagne and peach flavoring. 

The rest of the day was spent on a gondola and at Palazzo Ducale.  Our gondalier was named Sebastian and he loved to whistle and say, “look at me” and point out different sites, like Marco Polo’s house and Casanova’s house and the site of filming for Angelina Jolie’s new movie, The American. 

The Palazzo Ducale was the home of the Dodge or mayor of Venice and the center of political activity in Venice.  The Palazzo is famous for the Golden Staircase, the Bridge of Sighs…….and many other rooms.

Me and Jamie at Palazzo Ducale

me, jamie, Jenna, and Anne, getting our euros worth

Jamie, Me, Jenna at the Golden Stairs

 For dinner, we went to a cute place nearby called Mama Onesta.  Jenna and I decided to be adventurous and we had a lovely dish called “spaghetti with squid in their ink”.  It was basically pasta with black stuff on it; gross and not great but we can say we ate it!  That night we had to share our room with some strangers at the hostel (not an uncommon experience) but since we weren’t excited about turning in, we all shared a bottle of wine and the hostel didn’t seem so bad afterall. 

Me and Jenna eating Ink Pasta

On Sunday, we went to church at Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, a beautiful church where the artist Titian is buried.  

Then, we caught our 7-hour-long train and headed home to Rome.  It was a great weekend and we all remember Venice as "the city of magic, music, and water".  

Me and yessenia + masks!