Venice

I have 28 days left!

This weekend I went back to Venice, which I wasn't looking forward to in all honesty. Last time I was in Venice, I was only there for 1 day and it was full of tourists, and we shopped around most of the time, even though I was intrigued by the blown glass, almost all the shops were exactly the same! Well this time my experience was different! It is finally low season for tourists in Italy so it wasn't to crowded everywhere you turned. And the glass shops I used as a game almost. I knew I wanted to get gifts from Venice, but since all the shops had the same stuff, I made it my goal to find my souvenirs at the best price.

Friday we arrived in Venice and took a water taxi to our hotel, after dropping off our luggage we started our exploring. We spent the day in Piazza San Marco which is the popular spot in Venice! Here we started out trip in the Basilica San Marco! This church was beautiful, it was full of gold finishes and marble! We got to climb to the top of the church where there was a terrace, and the view from here was unbelievable. The square was filled with people and the columns lining the entire square were breath taking. We had a quick lunch break before we went to the palace. The palace was massive! The stair cases were extravagant and each room had lavish decorated ceilings. We finished our school trips at 3:30 that day and then I shopped till I dropped. I came home night one with 5 gifts, oh and the hike home was a bit difficult. The address to our hotel wouldn't come up as the correct location on the GPS, so we had to get back based on memory from hours earlier! Somehow we actually did so well getting back to the hotel, I think we took one wrong turn but we made it! Once we got to our street we had to look for the hotel we the alien in the doorway. For some reason when you entered our hotel we were greeting by the statue of an alien. It apparently is an art piece that travels around the world to different museums and for some reason its currently placed in this hotel. It doesn't go with ANYTHING else there considering everywhere else in the hotel had statues of religious figures. That night a group of us headed out for dinner where we just went right over the bridge to a restaurant where we spent 2 and a half hours chatting! We actually had the typical Italian dinner, start at 8 o'clock and it lasts hours! That night I got back to our hotel where one of my two roommates and I set up plans for getting ready the following morning! Our roommate that wasn't there we weren't to worried about because she had showered already since we arrived, then after she actually got back she showered again!

So Saturday I woke up at 7:50 and got ready for the day! I got finished in the bathroom at 8:05 and when I got out of the bathroom my roommates were going back and forth on who got to use the bathroom next! Then the roommate who had showered twice already said she just needed to brush her teeth and wash her face, so she entered the bathroom and after about 3 minutes the shower started, my one roommate got up and pounded on the bathroom door and thats when I decided that it was time for me to leave the room and go down to breakfast! Breakfast was only carbs. Croissants, pound bread, some cereal, and even brownies. Luckily there was some yogurt so I had a croissant with some honey and yogurt for breakfast! This day was honestly a LONG day! We started at the Academia museum which is a big museum of paintings. They had to split our group into two to enter the museum so I entered with our one Chaperone who told us just to explore until the other group came in with our leader who would provide us with all the information. WELL after being in SOOOOO many museums I've been struggling to find paintings interesting after this long. So she came in and a group of us gathered in a room with some seating and made plans for the evening! After the museum we had an hour for lunch, and instead of going somewhere to sit down we decided to grab something on the go so we could continue to shop! We had grown obsessed with the glass stores! So we shopped for 2 hours until we had to meet outside a church. I was shocked by this church! It was absolutely beautiful, there was an amazing place where the choir would sit to sing and it separated the actual mass place from the rest of the building. After the church we went to the School of art but here everyone was truly exhausted and no one had the desire to continue listening. After about ten minutes here I was dreading the fact that unlike the others my day had to continue because I had to go visit some places for architecture. So i asked my one chaperone, who I absolutely love by the way, if I could head out early so I could get a head start on the other places I had to visit. She was just like, OH yes of course! She is the sweetest thing can be. She helped me when I needed to go get my X-rays for my ankle and everyday since she asks me how I'm doing! So i hiked to meet Anna and Rachel to visit some places and unfortunately I was disappointed by these visits, and they were so expensive. Its been frustrating that since us three are the only architecture students this semester we have to pay our own way into these museums. But next semester the architecture students do their own trip and its all covered, So since the one museum was ten euro we decided not to enter the actual museum! We are college students and the school should at least reimburse us for these visits especially since they are mandatory for this course. After our visits we heading back the hotel before a big group of us went to dinner! We went to a place called OKE which specialized in Pizza! They had 30 different pizzas on the menu and you even had the option to create your own! It was a great dinner and one I will definitely remember since we spent it with so many friends!

Sunday was our last day in Venice and we went to another museum. In all honesty I was dreading another museum, but this one is one of my favorite museums I have been to during my time abroad. It is called the Punta della Dugana. And this museum had an exhibition currently that is of sculptures that were retrieved from an old ship wreck. They restored and recreated these sculptures for this museum and it was awesome. So this shipwreck was of artifacts that a slave had kept and they weren't discovered till 2005. The museum had videos of people extracting these pieces from the water, and it was mind-blowing. It was awesome, and I would tell anyone to go there. After this we had an hour of free time before we had to leave! We headed back towards the hotel were we crossed paths with a festival so there were tons of balloons and food stands and thats where we picked up lunch! Then of course we had to finish the weekend by once again doing some glass shopping!

This was my favorite of our three school trips and completely changed my opinion of Venice! I returned to Florence with 15 gifts, and Christmas shopping has been completed (we will see)!

I only have one day of classes this week because Wednesday marks thanksgiving break so we will be heading off to Paris and London Wednesday-Tuesday!