Venice and More!

I'm sorry I haven't updated in a while but it's been a pretty hectic 3 weeks. I've still yet to recover! =)

06Mar2005 – Sunday

We got up and got ready and had to be at the bus really early, when we got on we got settled in and as usual I started up the mp3 player. We all started to drift off when Peter came over the speaker system in the bus and explained that our original plan wasn’t going to work because of bad weather and that they were going to talk things over and figure out something else instead and they’d get back to us when they had more information. Originally we were supposed to go to Ravenna which is this really important city in the Byzantine Architecture movement and has a lot to see. Apparently there had been a pretty bad snow storm the night before and up north it wasn’t very safe to drive so instead a few minutes later Peter came back over the speaker and told us that we were going to stop at a church that was right on the side of the highway and right next to a gas station. Well I got excited immediately because I just knew it was the church that I referred to in my post about Genova that I had seen that was so incredible. Sure enough, it was and it was pretty amazing. We looked around in there for a while and then I grabbed a snack and drink from the gas station and we headed back out. Soon Peter came over the speaker yet again and said that they had decided that instead of Ravenna we were going to stop in Ferraro at which point he borrows a guide book from the girl next to him and reads to us that it is the Italian capital for Bicycles… okay… anyway, we were going to be stopping there for an hour and a half for lunch and to see whatever we liked before continuing our trip to Venice. Some time later I was awoken by the bus stopping and we all got off in Ferraro. Where they let us off was at a park on the outside of the city, and we would have to walk into the city and find our own way around etc., because no one had a map or knew anything about it, joy… Well, in the park there was this zip line, and immediately Jim and Daniel ran to it and I quickly followed. Heh, we were like “kids” again, lol! We had a blast on it and took pictures before going into town to find some food. Eventually I ended up eating with Brett, Jon, and Jason at this little Café and had a pretty good pizza. Then we all walked back to the bus, got on board, and settled in for the rest of our journey. I next awoke some other time later when we arrived just outside Venice and the bus driver had to get out and pay a toll for us to cross the bridge. So we drove across the bridge to the first island where we all then retrieved our luggage and followed the professors to a boat that was going to take us to Lido, which is where our hotels were. About 45 minutes later I think we got there because the boats are only allowed to go like 10 miles an hour or something like that… it takes a while to get around. Anyway we got off, got our hotel assignments and made our way to our hotels. We got our room keys and went to get settled in before a short orientation meeting at 6pm. So at 6 we go in and find out about how the boats work, and where certain things are, and how to find this and that, etc. it took about half an hour. After that we tried to decide on a course of action for dinner and if my memory serves me correctly I ended up eating with a group of about 9 people at a pizzeria down the street and splitting a pizza with Jon. I don’t remember exactly when I went to sleep but I think it was pretty early that night because I was going to wait for JereBeth to call me, but for some reason she wasn’t able to. Until she was supposed to however, Jon and I talked for about 2 hours and then he went to his room to wait for his girl to call him as well. Anyway I went to sleep and prepared myself for the next day.

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07Mar2005 – Monday

We woke up and got dressed and ate breakfast, which was pretty good, and had to meet down at the dock at 8 to get on the boats. We hadn’t done it the night before so some of us had to buy our boat passes for the week and as a result we missed the first boat out by literally 2 seconds… the guy closed the door in our face. Not cool. So a bunch of us ended up taking the next boat to San Marcos Square, which is oddly enough right in front of the St. Marks Cathedral – who’d have guessed? Anyway so we got in line with the rest of the group and made our way into St. Marks. We did the upstairs first and then the downstairs and it was a pretty intense sight. This was one of the great Byzantine churches and it also had a small museum in the upstairs part that I guess used to be a balcony. But because it was Byzantine and one of the greats, everywhere you turned in the nave, apse, aisles, etc. all you could see were the most elaborate and mostly gold mosaics. It was an amazing thing to see. Also one of my favorite things about it was seeing this immense jeweled mosaic that had a story related to Paolo. His father was a museum curator during WWII and when the Nazis started to come further south and join Mussolini, his father had crated up a lot of the artwork in the museum and hidden it at his mansion, because apparently curators were loaded back in the day. Anyway, this particular piece that we were looking at in St. Marks had been hidden under Paolo’s bed for years and he slept on it every night. Here’s the best part though. It was pure gold and encrusted with over 2000 precious jewels a lot of which being diamonds! Isn’t that insane!? Well anyway I thought it was pretty cool, after the war his father had returned it to the museums and it eventually ended up at St. Marks. After we did St. Marks we went out into the square and waited for everyone else to finish as well and then a bunch of us ended up playing with the million pigeons for about an hour. Then some woman that Paolo knew gave us a short walking tour that I quite honestly just followed and paid no attention to. We went to an apartment building, some random old street, and ended at some sort of embassy building from back in the day. A lot of us were amusing ourselves this entire time and enjoying being in Venice and took a lot of pictures. At one point we had a really good time and were doing all of these model like poses against this random graffitied wall that had just the right sunlight hitting it to make some nice shadows… and being that we are architecture students and keep our eyes open for things such as shadows and light we took full advantage of it and had a little photo shoot, lol! It was a lot of fun, and I’m going to try to get the pictures from the people taking them (I was in them) and post them on my picture site. There are two there that I took in the beginning of the shoot I believe that are already up. Anyway, after all of that we ended up at the Rialto bridge which is really famous because its one three bridges that cross the Grande Canal and is lined on both sides all the way across with little shops. This is where we ate lunch and then afterwards we had the option of meeting at 4 to go visit the Guggenheim Museum there in Venice. Well I went with a group of people and we decided to take advantage of that, because honestly, how many chances are you going to get to go to one of the Guggenheims? Well this one was interesting… it was very small and had an outdoor sculpture garden where I was able to take some pictures, and then inside was a lot of artwork from different modern time periods. I actually found a Picasso that I liked inside, which is a big step for me, and I also saw a bunch of other interesting things. Obviously you can’t take pictures in the gallery, but I got a brochure that has every piece of artwork pictured and explained in it, so I can always check that out if I want to. Well anyway we ended up leaving there around 6ish and me, Wes, and Daniel searched for a dock and got on a boat to go back to Lido. When we got back we decided to go to the grocery store there and get some little snack type odds and ends, and of course my boozer roommates had to stock up on the alcohol. Anyway, I honestly can't remember where I ate dinner that night, but I don’t think its really all that important, I didn't do anything spectacular and went to bed pretty early again because JereBeth wasn’t going to be able to call me that night either.

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08Mar2005 – Tuesday

The day started the same, we got up got dressed and ate breakfast at a pretty early hour and then had to be on the boat at 9 this time around and then we again met in the St. Marks square, only this time the architecture students were doing our own thing. Honestly, I was looking forward to it because that was the day I was expecting to get to see the most of Venice. The week before we had gone Peter had drawn this map and shown us all these different places he wanted to take us on this contemporary tour of Venice and he literally wanted to show us like a whole island and a half. Well I was soon to be disappointed. After we all arrived the Profs got us together and lead us to this little tunnel beside one of the stores surrounding the square and started our “Scarpa” tour. Well this didn’t bother me at first because Scarpa was a very great and interesting architect and I was fine with that, but we soon learned that wed only be going 3 places that day. One was the store behind us that he had designed and was originally an Olivetti Typewriter shop but had now been taken over by a Dali souvenir type place. So we all got a chance to see that. Next on our list was a 10 -15 minute walk away and we arrived at the one and only Stampalia. This was actually really exciting for me at first because I had seen and learned about it in my History of Modern Architecture class sophomore year and had absolutely adored the pictures. Well we went in and the first thing they told us was no pictures, and I was heartbroken. Well the professors decided we were going to spend an hour and a half here, which ended up being 2 hours, because on the second and third floors there were galleries that we had to pay to see to get into the first floor which was more or less the lobby area and the part that Scarpa had designed. Well anyway, the rest of the place was a waste of my time. All I cared about was the Scarpa and I was pretty miffed I couldn’t take any pictures. This was worsened though as I had nothing to do so went to the galleries to kill time and the first was a joke, and the second was even worse. Honestly, the second gallery was awful. It was some Russian artist on crack who had scribbled these disgusting cartoons on about a thousand canvases with black and red ink only and they were the most sacrilegious interpretations of different scenes from the bible I had ever seen. A lot of them had people that were half man half women and all of the people were naked and all of the women had men’s heads… it was just seriously not my taste at all and it made me sick. Anyway I left pretty quickly and just sat outside soaking up the sun and killing time listening to music while I waited for everyone else to finish. I did manage to sneak a few pictures of the new main entrance that wasn’t designed by Scarpa, but had these amazing panels in the Atrium that had diffusion patterns in them, which I adore, and a stair case that I liked quite a bit. Next on our list and the final thing of the day was for us to go and see what Scarpa had done with the College of Architecture in Venice. So now we were down to 3 things and so far both Scarpas had taken about an hour combined to see even though wed been at it for 4… so we ended up walking completely to the other side of Venice which took a good half hour to 45 minutes to do to get to the place and when we got there Peter pointed and said, “Okay, right inside that gate is the fountain he designed and I really want to show you guys the best book store in Venice if you want to see it, they have the best selection. Also this is a pretty good place to eat if you want and that’s about it so have a good afternoon.” I was fuming. I really, really was. We had walked all the way across Venice and wasted the entire afternoon really for him to point to a fountain that, while it was interesting, was not worth any of that. So I left pretty bitter after taking a few pictures and found a restaurant we passed. After a while I ended up running into a few people who were going to Murano, and I wanted to go too, so I asked if I could tag along and then we embarked on that journey. So we finally find a boat that’s going there and wait forever for it and eventually we get off on Murano. There was a guy on the dock pointing to the left and telling us if we wanted to go to “glass factory” to follow him. So we did, and we ended up seeing a guy make a goblet and most amazingly a glass horse in like a minute and a half, dead serious. Then we went to their show room where everything was ridiculously over priced. But one of the girls with us still bought a glass elephant for her sister and that's also where one of the guys working there was extremely rude to me, but that’s neither here nor there. After that factory we went down the road to another and entered into their show room and we were the only ones there. After we looked around for about 5 minutes the owner came up to us and asked us what we were looking for and one of the girls said she was looking for glasses, like wine glasses, and he asked us if we wanted to go upstairs, he said the show room was for tourists and we should come upstairs. So we agreed and followed him through the factory to the private show rooms and went through about 6 rooms till he stopped in one full of glasses from floor to ceiling and covering the walls of 3 different little rooms. Well he started selling to the girl and I wandered off and started looking around. There were sculptures and things there that were upwards of 150,000 euro! But some of theme were absolutely gorgeous, I took a few pictures real quick of some aquatic sculptures that I thought were beautiful and then the rest of the group caught up to me and we headed back downstairs to pay for her glasses. This girl ended up spending 600 euro on 2 sets of 6 glasses - 600 euro for 12 glasses. Apparently the original set was 600, but the guy offered them for 400 so she said okay then after she was buying the first he offered the second for half that at 200euro, so she thought it was a steal and took it. Personally… I don’t. But to each their own. On the plus side though, they are going to ship everything home for her free of charge, and she has a 10 year warranty on them that if anything ever brakes all she has to do is send it back and they will make her a new one and all she has to pay for is material. (Which is silly because we all know they are just gunna melt down the broken one, but whatever.) Well I ended up buying a gift for JereBeth and my mom at this place and made out pretty light on the deal and then we headed for home because it was 5 pm and everything was closing down. We ended up getting back okay, but still taking a while, and I believe that night I ate with just Jon and Jason at this little Café that was a little pricey but easily the best pizza we had since we’ve been in Italy. That night JereBeth did call me which was fantastic and we ended up talking for about an hour and it was really great to hear her voice and hear from her in general. Then I went to sleep.

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09Mar2005 – Wednesday

We slept in because we had nothing to do that day and once we did get up me and the roommates decided to go find the market on Lido that we had heard about. (When I say slept in I mean 10am, so don’t think the day was gone) Well we ended up walking for about 30 minutes and not finding it anywhere but we did find the beach so we went out on the beach and walked around and Daniel and I went out on this old pier and we all just generally enjoyed the beach. After a while I was looking for sea shells and looked up to find my compadres no where to be found so I started heading the way I thought they might have gone and for the next half hour I circled the island by myself and finally made it back to the hotel where no one was to be found. So I went ahead and ate lunch on some of the stuff I'd bought at the store and waited around till Wes came back and asked where Daniel was. I told him I didn’t know and I was pissed at both of them for leaving me and he apologized and said that they hadn’t realized until they couldn’t find me anywhere and then somehow they got split up too. Whatever, I was over it by then anyway. So afterwards we finally caught up with Daniel and decided to go to the market in the main islands of Venice instead. So we got on the boat and made our way there and it was pretty amazing. There was so much to see and at one point we saw this guy playing a 12 string old renaissance type guitar that was both a guitar and a bass, it was crazy. And the guy was really fantastic and was playing some renaissancey type classical music. After a while of listening and relaxing I went back to the main part of the market to do some hunting for Masks which are a big deal in Venice. I made plans to meet up with the guys in like 45 minutes when they were going to go back through the main market and then we were going to go back to Lido. Well they never showed, they had decided to go to an internet café and lost track of time, and I ran into Diego instead. So we walked and talked and had a nice chat as we made our way back to Lido. Well that night we were supposed to go to the only Mexican restaurant in Italy that happened to be in Venice and I had wanted to go there for the whole week. Well there was a lot of confusion and I ended up making a reservation for 4 people and we worked it all out eventually and our reservation was at 10pm because they were booked the whole night. Well we got there right at 10 and didn’t get to sit down till 10:30. We finally ordered and once they brought the food out the four of us ate our burritos in 3 minutes flat. Daniel actually ate 2 in that time period. So it was now 11 and we were done and it wasn’t that good and definitely not worth all the hype so we went back to Lido and I packed for checkout the next day and crashed.

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10Mar2005 – Thursday

Same story as before - got up, dressed, ate, and this time checked out. We had to meet at the dock pretty stinking early and then we took the boat back to the bus where we loaded up for our final day. We made our way out and to some little city where the famous Brion Cemetery is that was done by Scarpa. Again I was more than excited because this too I had learned about in my History of Modern Architecture class and absolutely loved. Well it was totally worth it. It was amazing. I really can’t even describe the experience; the pictures will have to speak for themselves. Anyway after a few hours there I went to a grocery store and got lunch before getting back on the bus and then we made our way to Vicenza which is famous for a lot of Palladio’s work. Well I ended up eating there again with the guys and had some good food at a café and then we all went to the one and only Villa Rotunda. Again amazing and I really have no way to describe the experience except to let you see the pictures and see for yourself. It was a good day for experiences. Well after that the bus dropped some of us off at the train station and it ended up being me and 5 girls… and we all made our way back to Castiglion. Hours and hours later we arrived and I had not only my breakable souvenirs with me, but also Jon’s, Wes’, and Daniel’s. So needless to say it had been a tad stressful trip protecting all of those things, but I made it back with everything perfectly fine. I ended up talking online a little bit and going to sleep and I may have watched a movie on my laptop, I can’t remember now.

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10Mar2005 – Friday

I got up naturally and got showered and dressed and then grabbed some food and made my way to the train station. I went to Florence and did some last minute shopping for some gifts that I hadn’t gotten the first time I was there but had seen and made myself take a note to go back for. That actually took up most of the day with the train rides to and from and the actual shopping in the market and by the time I got back I grabbed another bite and settled in to talk to JereBeth watch another movie and get rested for the long day ahead.

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11Mar2005 – Saturday

I got up and showered and dressed and wandered downstairs to check the train times for Rome and found one was leaving in 20 minutes, so I decided to go for it and ran upstairs grabbed my bags that I had packed the night before and made my way down the hill as fast as I could. I missed it by 4 minutes… ah, well, it was good exercise. I went to the bar up the street and got a liter and a half of water and cooled off in the a.c. for a while. The next train was an hour after that one so I took my time and went back down about 20 minutes before it was going to get there. Well at one point two of the professors from KSU came in and they were going on the same train so I talked to them a little and we all sat there and watched as the train was first delayed 5 minutes, then 10, then an hour, then not coming at all.. We ended up waiting 2 hours for the next one and in that time they watched my bags while I got some lunch and visa versa. Finally we got on our way to Rome and once there parted ways. I found the train to the airport pretty easily and about an hour later I was there. Now the original train I was trying to catch was at 11am. It was now, after all the traveling and getting lost in the airport, after 6 and dark out. Well I had to call home and we eventually figured out how to get me to the hotel I was staying in, and I settled in for the night, watched another movie and charged all of my electronics before going to bed at like 10.

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12Mar2005 – Sunday

I got up at 6:30 and showered and dressed and the night before had reserved a taxi for 8:30 (my flight wasn’t till 10 and it was 5 minutes to the airport. Well I went downstairs and ate at 7 and it was pretty terrible and then by the time I was finished it was 7:15 and I was ready to go, so I got my bags came down and asked the guy to call the taxi earlier and paid and checked out. So the taxi picked me up and took me to the airport and he dropped me off right were I needed to be and things were pretty smooth sailing from there. I got on my first flight and got to Newark, then I called JereBeth to let her know I was there and safe and then my parents, then I got on the next plane and went to Houston. The only snag in the whole thing was that I realized on the second flight that my treasured mp3 player was no longer in my bag and I realized it must have fallen out on the first plane so I was extremely bummed about that and had to file a lost baggage claim in Houston, etc. But it didn’t matter, nothing did when I got into baggage and saw her. I had to turn away so they didn’t see me grinning from ear to ear like a goofy idiot, but I couldn’t help it. She was the most beautiful thing I’d seen in all my months in Italy and I went straight to hug my parents and then into her arms. It was fantastic. That was what I had been thinking about for weeks, just holding her in my arms again… anyway, enough of the love story that I’m sure you guys aren’t interested in, and back to documenting. Well we left the airport and went straight to the real Mexican food and we ate at Marcello’s which I used to love, but after Italy, I found it hard to eat because it was so much food and it was so heavy. My enchiladas were swimming in grease and I barely finished them. But it was good, the only problem was my stomach feeling really heavy, but I did okay. After dinner we went to my house where I unloaded my belongings and passed out gifts and then by this time it was around 9pm Sunday. (Granted I had gotten up at 6am and it was now a day and a half later.) So the parents were settling in for the night and JereBeth and I headed to her place to spend a little time together before I drove home and crashed till the next morning. We ended up having a spectacular spring break, which I’m not going to really get into but we spent every hour we could together and had a blast. We went to the rodeo in Houston on Wednesday and saw Maroon 5 and Thursday we went to College Station to apartment hunt for the day where I ate not only Rudy’s, but also Freebirds. And needless to say, leaving again on Sunday was one of the hardest things I’ve had to do, but everything went totally smooth on the way back. No real hang ups at all. Oh and I ended up buying a new mp3 player to bring back along with a ton of movies, but that’s just small details.

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21-27Mar2005 – This Week

Since I got back Monday afternoon not much has happened. Things are normal here like they were before spring break; except that I think I am really jet lagged and have had insomnia pretty bad all week. So after two weeks straight of jet lag I’m now paying for it and feel pretty crappy as my body is rebelling and I’m sick. Wednesday we went to Orvieto which was cool, but there was a train mix up with the Profs and we were an hour and a half late getting there and we ended up just seeing one church before we were let go. I ate lunch with some people and then we came back early as it was siesta time and we didn’t want to be stranded there with nothing to do. Other than that this week has been pretty regular for Italy as I know it. I’ve gone to classes, not written my paper, (lol!) watched a few movies, and had a few meals. I have ended up sleeping through lunch everyday except Wednesday because of my insomnia, so I haven’t really endured the wrath of lunch at the center this week, but I have heard the horror stories. Anyway that’s really all I have for now, but next week we are having two field trips in a row to make up for Sienna and there is talk of trying again to go to Ravenna some weekend soon. Oh! I did see the Easter procession that they do here and it was a very interesting experience to see. Personally it resembled a KKK rally to me, but that’s just me being silly, lol! It was a very intense spiritual experience and I’m glad I got to witness it.

Okay, well I should have a lot to write about this week coming up I hope and I will try to keep you all in the loop. I have updated my pictures and I tend to do that more often then I do the writing, so check on Wednesday and Thursday to see field trip pictures as they will most likely be up.

I love you all and miss you terribly! Comment! E-mail! Call! Snail mail! Anything! =)
Ciao!