Weekend trip to Venizia

Venice was unlike anything I have ever seen in my life. It will be hard to summarize because there is so much. So, if you have any questions…

First, all the myths are somewhat true. Yes…parts of it stunk, the water was dirty, and there were not any toilets or plumbing. I did not see any rats. It was crammed with tourists and people trying to sell stuff, which at times made it a little claustrophobic. All this included, it didn’t even matter.

The reason Venice is amazing is because of the cities relationship to the water. The streets are water, they use boats as their transportation and they walk everywhere else. The city is built to accept the rising and falling of tides through the materials it uses. Nothing like the tidal waves of Indonesia would ever happen to Venice because it is enclosed by another land mass that is built to accept the beatings from the sea. It is constructed on wood piles and since the wood piles are under water and receive no oxygen, they will never decay because they fortify. This is why it has never sunk and the foundations are as old as the city is.

I did ride a gondola with my professor and friend. The normal gondola’s are around 100 euro’s to ride in. This one was just to take us across the ‘street’ for 50 cents because it was for gondoliers in training. I can say I rode in a Gondola.

Friday, we took a train from Florence to Venice at 8:00 am and arrived in Venice at about 12:00. The first thing we did was check out the Calatrava Bridge. It was interesting, like all his other work, it was foreign to its surroundings. From there we took a water bus to the architectural biennale. The biennale was pretty awesome. Architect’s have a weird train of thought, you’ll have to look at some of the photo’s on flickr to get what I am talking about. I saw works by Zaha, Gerry, Scarpa, MVRDV, UN Studio… and so on. That night when we left the biennale a few of us took the water bus back to San Marco Piazza and checked that space out the rest of the night.

Saturday, we woke up at 5:30 to get to the fish market. This was probably one of my favorite moments during the whole weekend. The sight, smells, sounds, and disgustingness of the whole thing was remarkable. Again, check the photos. We spent a couple hours just watching the locals interact and cut the fish, octopus, sharks, squid, swordfish, and much more disgusting sea life. Then all day we toured San Marco, learned about the history of Venice, and toured some museums. After the fish market, it was a pretty standard ‘touristy’ day.

BUT, that night something awesome happened! My favorite moment of the whole weekend. One of our history prof’s is our tour guide and she has been doing this awhile. Somehow she was able to reserve San Marco’s Church alone to our group of 50. Mind you, during the day there are hoards of people trying to get in. Anyways, we were brought in the side door because the front was packed with people peeking in. We were walked through and seated in the church and they shut off ALL the lights. Over about ten minutes they turned the lights back on one by one. The suspense, reflectivity, magnitude, gold, and richness of this amazing space was revealed. We also we’re lucky enough to be able to go downstairs to see where the relics of St. Mark are stored. That’s a myth in itself.

Sunday, we woke up after a long night and finished up the tour of the biennale. After that, we went on a couple more tours with our art history professor. Then we finally came back at around 8 Sunday night.

Overall, it was a great weekend.