Venetian Weekend

On the weekend of January 25th we went to Venice for an overnight trip with our program, which we ended up extending an extra night. I know that I've kind of been failing in the blog department lately, but I'm catching up... I swear!

On that Thursday night, we decided not to go out so that we could get up bright and early (6:30 am!) to get to the train station for Venice on time. We went out to dinner at this place that everyone in our program had been raving about, nicknamed Tony's. It is across the river in Trastevere, close to John Cabot University. We'd done quite bit of exploring around our area, and although we loved everywhere we went, especially a place across the street called Gran Sasso, we decided to try something new. I did have some initial reservations about it- we'd heard that the restaurants in that area were delicious, but catered more to American students. Everyone raved about Tony's chicken parm though, and we all wanted to try some.

We had a little bit of trouble finding the place, but the area was so cute and fun to walk around that it was fine. Tony's was a lot smaller than we thought, but it smelled so good. All of the tables were covered in red and white checkered tablecloths, and when we sat down we ordered antipasto and bruschetta. By the time we ordered our chicken parm (Al got the gnocchi) we kind of were getting the feeling that this was a distinctly American place, as there was really only one Italian group in the restaurant surrounded by American students. Some of the kids in their were obnoxious too, and I was almost embarrassed for them and ourselves that we all had to be associated together. Also, Andrea, our housing director, had told us the first week to be careful of places that were run by Arabs, as they did not make genuine Italian food. Tony's fell into that category. When we got our chicken parm, it was super greasy and HUGE. By far the biggest meal we've had in Italy. They also brought us out more courses of desserts, which was nice, but no one could finish them. When we left, we realized that maybe people loved it so much because it was literally the kind of restaurant that you can find in the States. We'd gotten so used to our neighborhood's restaurants (and spoiled by them), that we realized this kind of restaurant wasn't exactly a place we'd want to go again while we were in Italy.

The next morning, we woke up bright and early to get over to the train station. Luckily, our metro stop is only two stops away from Termini, the main train station in Rome. We stopped and got a quick cappuccino at the place on the corner on the way up. The couple that own the cafe bar are super friendly, but speak no English. They always know our order, though, and joke around with us when we don't say a word right.

We met up outside the Nike store at Termini with our program, and the six of us were pleasantly surprised at how well we'd packed compared to everyone else. Some of the girls had packed a lot, but all of us had managed to fit everything into just a backpack and another small bag. When we got on the train, we all kind of got split up according to the seats that the program had saved for us. Me, Katherine, and Anna ended up together at a little table. As we were starting to get ready to go, a soccer (or football) team piled onto our end of the coach. We were literally surrounded, and I have to say, the ride ended up being pretty entertaining.

We arrived into Venice at around 11:30 am. I was so excited walking out of the train station. Venice is one of those places that is just so unique to anything else, and I was hoping that it would live up to my expectations. It definitely did.

I don't know why I was expecting the water to be so dark, like the Atlantic, maybe because it was chilly out? Well, I was very wrong. The water was a light blue turquoise color, made even prettier by the extra sunny day. We were later told that in the summer, Venice is one of the brightest places in Europe. Even sunglasses don't work well, and the mix of the bright blue sky and bright blue water is stunning.

All 50 of us loaded onto the water bus, and I was trying so hard not to take pictures because I knew I would want to take a thousand more later. As we took a seat in the water bus, still in port, there was a huge jolt and what looked to be another water bus hitting directly into us. Me, Katherine and Al secretly made fun of the drivers. Didn't they do this all the time? Then we realized that we weren't actually on the water bus, but a sort of bus stop, and the water bus that had hit us was simply a water bus coming to the stop. Oops. We all got on and sat in the front, outside, to try to take in all the views. After about a half an hour, we pulled into our stop and got off. Catarina, our CEA guide, brought us to our hotel. It was a very unique hotel... an old home for boys from the Renaissance that had been converted to a hotel a while ago. The hotel's name Don Orione, was the name of the priest that had started the home. We brought our stuff up to the hotel and went to grab a quick lunch before we went on a tour (mandatory for me for Art History, of Piazza San Marco and some other churches). We went out in the direction of the water and grabbed some caprese sandwiches and gelato.

The apse

The pigeons!

The tour with Professor Massini was actually a really great experience. Our first stop was the Piazza San Marco, which is probably the most famous attraction in Venice. It is a huge, open cobblestone square with the cathedral of St. Mark's (San Marco) at the far center. Once in the place of the doge's palace (the king of Venice), the remains of St. Mark were discovered and sent to Venice, where this cathedral was placed. When Venice was the most powerful empire in the Mediterranean, they decorated St. Mark's and the buildings in the piazza with conquests of their victories, most notably the sack of Constantinople. We got to go in and tour the basilica, and it was by far the most amazing one we've seen in Italy yet. The entire thing was covered in different colored mosaics and gold, and the apse, which we got to see for free, was unreal. It was covered in gold and rubies and diamonds and all different kinds of gems. I'm pretty sure I wasn't allowed to take pictures, but I still got away with a few.

After San Marco, we sat on these wide platforms and took pictures, and then headed over towards Rialto. On the way we stopped at a convent which once housed the daughters and sisters of wealthy aristocrats who could not afford to marry them off. While these families were wealthy, after having five or six daughters to marry off, the cost of the dowry just got to be too expensive. It was kind of depressing to know that these girls really had no choice in what they wanted to do. Once we toured that cathedral, we headed over to Rialto, which is one of the large shopping districts in the city. Venice is so cool because even if you're walking a block or five, you're going to have to cross a small canal over a bridge. The city literally is on top of water.

BEST PIZZA

We shopped around for a while, passing Prada, Fendi and Chanel to find masks for this weekend's Carnevale festivities. Apparently, the Venetian Carnevale is what all other Mardi Gras festivals are based on, from Spain to New Orleans. I managed to grab some souvenirs and a black and gold mask for myself, and we headed over to dinner with our program at a delicious pizza place. We were served appetizers of mozzarella balls (the Italians' favorite) and then were allowed to each order a pizza. I ordered a brie and walnut pizza, and tried some of Anna's pesto and Katherine's four cheese pizzas. My pizza was literally amazing- I want to go back if I'm ever in Venice again.

Some people were planning on going out but since we knew we had to get up early the next morning again, we decided to go with some of the boys to explore for a place to get dessert and some casual drinks. We walked back in the direction of San Marco, and to our surprise, the huge piazza was beginning to flood. Water was literally bubbling up and out of the sewers. We avoided the places that water had pooled and kept walking through the square and up towards Rialto, where we finally found a  place to sit down. Of course, I had to get tiramisu (I should literally just make a blog for the many tiramisus I've tried), and split a bottle of red wine with Anna. Katherine, Danielle and Alex got amaretto and the boys got more wine- all of them tried out new desserts as well. Our waiter seemed to be very entertained that we were Americans, and he brought us over more little desserts to try. We ended up leaving the restaurant around 11:15, and trekked back to our hotel.

Bridges

Old people braving the water

While we had been enjoying our desserts, Piazza San Marco had literally completely flooded. We started to realize this as we wound our way through the narrow roads and got closer to the square. There was standing water in some places a few inches high. Old couples coming back from dinner didn't know what to do, and followed our lead as we just trekked through it. When we go to the edge of the piazza, there were dozens of other people that really had no idea what to do either, and it dawned on us that the platforms we had been using as benches all day were in fact makeshift bridges. We all took running leaps up onto the bridges, and followed the mass of people trying to get to the other end. The whole thing was very comical- people's feet were soaked and everyone was just laughing at everyone else's attempts to reach dry land.

Grabbed some yummy macaroons with Anna

Finally, we got across, and after an exhausting day, passed out in our beds only to have to wake up early the next day. The girls who didn't have to go on the art history tour decided not to, but it was mandatory for me and Anna. We were actually glad we went, and saw some really amazing paintings and artwork from famous Venetian artists such as Bellini, Bernini, Titian, and Tintoretto. We also saw where Titian was buried, and saw a Donatello sculpture in the Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari. We also got to see the controversial Assumption of the Virgin Mary by Titian up close in the Frari- it's easy to see why it was chosen for its place above the altar with the abundance of color and emotion. Tintoretto was also one of my favorites. Instead of painting religious art in the traditional way, I got the sense that he painted stories. In many of the pieces he did, it was hard to even find Jesus, and the amount of detail made the paintings almost anecdotal.

After the tour, the rest of the girls were all taking naps at the hotel, but Anna and I had no interest in returning to the hotel for a nap, so we kept exploring. We spent a few hours walking around the shops in Rialto, and stopped for delicious pizza and rice balls at this tiny little shop. Then we headed back over to the hotel to grab the girls so that we could go on our very first gondola ride!

Professor Massini had given us the heads up that we shouldn't be charged more than 60 euros for 6 people, so since there were five of us, I decided to not go above 50. The girls kinda left it up to me to bargain with the guys, and the first gondoliers we came across claimed that they were the only verifiable company that did gondola rides. Too bad they were charging way too much, so I thanked them and told them we might be back. We came across this other gondolier, and when I asked how much, he said 60. The guys was really nice, but when I said 50 euros he kind of questioned it, so I thanked him and said that we might be back. As we started to walk away, he called us back and told us that he could do it at 50. He led us to his little port on the canal and we all piled in and snapped about a hundred pictures. He pointed out some interesting stuff along the way, like the palace from Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie's movie the tourist, Napoleon's old palace, and the house where Mozart lived. We even passed by another gondola full of Asians blasting Gangnum Style (way too stereotypical). The water in the canals was so calm and surprisingly didn't smell too fishy. It was cool to ride past the hotels that literally came right out onto the water, and out gondolier Philippo told us that people can't live on their first floors because of the way the water levels fluctuate.

Mozart's home

When we got off the gondola (check that off my bucket list!) we wandered around some more and came across a liquor shop. Katherine almost died and went to heaven to discover that yes, they sold vodka. She'd been getting sick of the wine and was cravin' some Absolut apparently. So we picked up some limincello along with that and headed back to the hotel. We grabbed dinner at a place next door, which ended up not being that great, and after I spilled my glass of water all over the table (what a waste of 2 euros!) we decided we'd made our mark and left to get our masks in our rooms.

Carnevale celebrations on the canal

We headed back out again, adorned with our new Venetian masks, and wandered over to Piazza San Marco. As we approached from the far end of the square, we saw a huge group of people dancing and chanting what sounded like some Spanish song. As we got closer, we realized that our guy friends were actually the ones on the platform, in the center of these festivities. There were bottles of wine everywhere, and everyone had on a crazy mask. We quickly jumped on the bandwagon and ran into one of the stores on the piazza to buy a few bottles of wine. Our nice cashier provided us with plenty of plastic cups to share. The song actually was Brazilian and in Portugese, and the Brazilians, who seemed to be at the center of the party, taught us the moves. There we were, standing in the center of historical Piazza San Marco, dancing on platforms with a bunch of Brazilians in which there was no shared language. It was a blast, and it was only the beginning of the night. We attempted to head over to Jazz Bar, but after a detour (those Venetian streets are confusing!), we ended up down at Rialto with a mix of packed bars to choose from. The night ended up being one of the most entertaining and best nights that I've had in Italy so far.

In the morning on Sunday, we woke up early to make our train from Venice to Verona, where we had decided to make a small day trip. I can't say we were all feeling our best after our wild night out in Venice, but we managed to catch the train in time. We got into Verona around 1 pm, and the detour turned out to be a great decision. The town (or city?) was absolutely beautiful. After we spent about a half an hour trying to figure out how to get out of the actually train station, thanks to our handy Rick Steve's guide, we were on the right path and got to see the famous Verona amphitheater. Kind of like the Colosseum, it actually still houses shows and concerts. Actually, a production of Romeo and Juliet is coming, ironic since our next stop was Casa di Giulietta.

I'm not gonna lie, I was a little inspired by the movie "Letters to Juliet", and that's one of the first reasons why I got interested in making sure that I got to Verona at some point during my Italian travels. Before we made it to Juliet's home, however, we grabbed a delicious lunch at a place that was surprisingly inexpensive, considering its close vicinity to designer stores of the likes found in Venice and near the Roman Spanish Steps.

Holocaust memorial

Before we made it to Casa di Giulietta, we stumbled across a Holocaust memorial for victims originating from Verona in the middle of the main square. There was an actual part of the cattle cars where people were shuttled off to concentration camps in, and there was a line for people to go inside. Outside, there were pictures of all the Veronian people that had passed away. I was glad that we had caught this exhibit. We managed to witness the actual spirit of the community of Verona.

The only way that you can really distinguish the little place you need to duck into to see Juliet's balcony is just the hoards of tourists (especially Asian) that you find outside on the street. (Note: according to Rick Steve's Guidebook, Verona draw thousands of Asian tourists annually, more so than some other major Italian cities). Otherwise, it all seems pretty unassuming. We walked through this little tunnel leading up to to the casa, and I signed all five of our names in a giant heart and dated it. Hopefully it will be there if I ever make it back to Verona! The square which Juliet's balcony looks out over is actually pretty small, but packed with tourists snapping "love locks" onto a gate. The one thing that I really hated about it was that there was literally a souvenir shop in the tiny yard. Every time I looked in that direction it kind of ruined the experience just a little bit. The five of us got a picture with the statue of Juliet, and for good luck, had to touch her right boob. Yup. I laughed out loud when a group of small Asians took a picture with her and all fit their hands on the lucky boob. It was just too hard not to.

We explored the beautiful town a little more, and then headed to find some place to eat before we had to catch our 6:50 pm train back to Rome. There were literally hundreds of people outside walking around the main square, and whether or not it was a special event or just a regular Sunday evening, I loved it. I decided that if I were to ever consider living in an Italian city for a few years, I'm pretty sure my top pick would be Verona.


I got delicious pumpkin ravioli at a restaurant near the theater, and then we headed back for the train ride home. Me, Danielle, and Anna were seated in a table seat with this poor Italian man, who, I'm pretty certain, wanted to jump out the train window when he discovered he was sitting with three American girls. Plus, we were overtired and loopy, and combined with the eight phone calls Katherine was forced to ignore from an overzealous Venetian, we might have been a little too giggly for him. When we finally stumbled into our apartment around 11:30 pm, all I could picture was sleeping for days. Except I had class at 9 am the next morning. I think I temporarily forgot that, yes, I do study in Rome.

More pictures:

Basilico di San Marco

our masks