Roman Holiday

Hi everyone, I am back from Venice! We left early Monday morning and I just got back last night. It was wonderful! I enjoyed the city much more this time than when I went with my family...I think it helped that it's not tourist season. The train ride was about 4 and a half hours long. It wasn't too bad, I got a lot of reading done. We got into Venice around 1:30 and walked to our hostel (my first one), the Collegio Armeno, near the Campo Santa Margherita. We had private rooms, and I lucked out and got to share a double with Sammie. The sheets and towels were clean, but the rest of the place was very minimal (and certainly not worth the 25 euro we paid to spend an extra night!), but it was only a place to sleep! After we dropped off our luggage and settled into our rooms, we went to a small restaurant in the Campo for a group lunch. I had pizza!


Sauce, mozzarella, eggplant, onions, and pepperoni. Not bad.


Christine and me.

After lunch, we walked about 15 minutes to the Piazza San Marco and explored there. We checked out the basilica and saw the view of the piazza from the balcony, but we didn't spend too much time there because we had plans later in the week for a private night visit to the basilica to check out the ceiling mosaics.


Basilica San Marco


The Doge's palace and the ancient "front door" of Venice.


The piazza




The Four Horses, made of gilded bronze, inside the basilica. They were stolen from the Hippodrome in Constantinople as part of the loot from 4th crusade.


There are replicas of the horses that adorn the outside of the basilica.

After we spent some time in the piazza, we walked back towards the hostel and Profe got us all gelato!


Tangent.....in all truth, I'm not a big ice cream eater back home, but there is something magical about gelato. It's creamier, it tastes more like the actual flavor. It is SO GOOD. The girls and I generally go to our favorite place in Rome by the Pantheon multiple times a week. The guys that scoop it have started to recognize us, and they smile knowingly at us every time! I'm so greatful that we have a professor who shares our love for gelato and gets it for us during site visits every once in awhile! But I digress...

After gelato we were free to roam around. A few of the girls and I were still very full from lunch, but decided instead to sit at a restaurant in the Campo and have a glass of wine. While we were sitting and chatting, we met a group of girls from Montana studying abroad in Venice sitting at the pub next door. We joined them for a spritz (wine, sparkling water, aperol, garnished with an orange), the "drink of Venice." We all really enjoyed the drink and made plans to meet up at the pub with the girls the next night.

On Tuesday morning the weather was really cold and rainy, but luckily our site visits kept us mostly indoors. We went to a church, the Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari where we saw Titian's Assumption over the altar...



Then we visited the Scuola San Rocco, decorated by the artist Tintoretto. Afterwards, we walked back to the Campo for lunch. Part of the group decided to go back to the restaurant we went to on Monday, but the rest of us decided we wanted to try something new. We went to a place on the other side of the Campo called Pier Dickens Inn (weird name....). I had pizza!


Sauce, mozzarella, rocket, and parmesean. DELICIOUS. This was easily the best pizza I have had in Italy so far (granted, I haven't tried as hard as maybe my dad would like, but it was still pretty freakin' good). The dough was slightly salty, excellent sauce:cheese:crust ratio, the crust was still crispy and not too soggy in the middle. YUM.

After lunch, it started raining pretty hard so Profe decided to take us to the Doge's palace in the Piazza San Marco. There was a lot of cool art on the walls which was nice to see, but the best part was the prison, connected to the palace by the Bridge of Sighs. From the bridge, convicts would get their last view of Venice before being locked away in the prison. After the palace, Profe gave us a few hours to walk around and explore. Erin, Christine, Sammie, Karleen and I walked around and shopped a little near the piazza, and then walked to the Rialto bridge and shared a bottle of cabernet franc on the Grand Canal. Life sucks!


Rialto bridge


The Grand Canal


Sam and me



At 7:10, we met back up with Profe in the piazza for the private night tour of the basilica. The interior of the church is absolutely spectacular. The entire ceiling is covered with gold glass mosaic. We were led into the church in the dark, and we layed down on the floor while the guards that showed us around turned on all the lights slowly. It was absolutely beautiful!
















This is the gilded altar screen, called the Pala d'Oro. It is covered with enamels depicting the life of St. Mark, and is encrusted with 1,927 precious gems. Talk about Venetian wealth!


Close-up.

That night, we had planned on going to the pub in the Campo near the hostel but Venice was experiencing acqua alta, or high water. I learned from a few locals that acqua alta usually happens around November, so it was unusual that it happened so early in the year. The water flooded the first floor of our hostel and covered all the sidewalks. You couldn't go anywhere without wellies! It was nuts!


MacKenzie enjoying the novelty.


Crazy!!!!

Needless to say, we stayed in that night :)

On Wednesday, we went on a day trip to Padua. The train ride was about 50 minutes long and a little shorter on the way back. The weather in Padua was gorgeous, warm and sunny. From the train station, we walked to the Palazzo della Ragione, which is a town hall built in 1219. It generally functioned as a court of law.








They used to make debtors sit on this in their underwear to shame them!

After the Palazzo, we walked over to the Scrovegni Chapel. It was built in 1305 by Enrico Scrovegni, the son of a wealthy moneylender. The interior decorations for the chapel were commissioned by Giotto, Italy's most famous painter at the time. The frescoes chart the life of the Virgin Mary and also the life of Christ.



We weren't allowed to take pictures inside, but this is what it looked like inside:



After the visit to the chapel, we walked to the Palazzo del Bo, which is the historical seat of the University of Padua (founded in 1222).



The school has about 60,000 students and they have all areas of study except for architecture because there is a really famous architecture school in Venice. Medicine and law have been the most prominent areas of study at the school since it's founding. Galileo taught math at the university for 18 years and discovered the Milky Way while he was part of the faculty. In 1595, the school built the first anatomical theatre for classroom dissections of the human body (no pictures....damn these people!)



The school also boasts the first woman college graduate in the world, Elena Lucrezia Cornaro Piscopia, who graduated in 1678 with a degree in Philosophy.


This is the house that Galileo lived in while he was a professor.



We went to the Basilica de Sant'Antonio, built in 1235 shortly after the death of Saint Anthony, and the church houses his remains.



After checking out the interior, we walked to a restaurant nearby for a group dinner.


I had tagliatelle al limone and spinach with butter. Yummy!

Profe let us sleep in on Thursday morning, so we met him at 11 a.m. to go to the Peggy Guggenheim modern art museum on the Grand Canal. We saw works by Picasso, Dali, Jackson Pollack, and Max Ernst. I liked a few of the works but mainly it wasn't my bag. After the museum around 3, Profe got us all water bus passes so we could explore the islands. I had one thing on my personal itinerary...the restaurant Da Romano on the island of Burano. It was recently featured on Anthony Bourdain's "No Reservations," and recommended by my dad and a friend. We had to meet Profe back in front of the hostel at 6:50 for a group dinner, so a few of the girls and I figured we would take advantage of the pass and that we had plenty of time to travel to Burano for a light, late lunch. We...were wrong. It took us about an hour and a half to get to Burano, so by the time we got there it was about time to turn around and go back to make sure we weren't late for the group dinner. We asked a nice lady in a shop and she directed us to a large square where the restaurant is....it was closed! Va bene, we decided to go back the next day and try again. I asked a woman in a nearby shop if it would be open tomorrow and she vigorously shook her head yes, so we were excited to come back and try it out. We walked back to the water bus stop and caught the next bus back to Venice. We were on the island for about 15 minutes!! The trip was not made in vain, though, because I got some amazing pictures of the sunset on the ride back.









Epic!!! The group dinner was really great, minus a minor misunderstanding with the owner. Profe had arranged for us all to have a seafood antipasto for an appetizer, which was incredible.



The owner had asked Profe beforehand if anyone would be interested in having sea bass, and even though he told the guy that some people might like it, the owner went ahead and prepared it for everyone. Profe explained the confusion to him and he made a seafood risotto for those of us who don't like sea bass. It had mussels and small shrimp in it. Delicious!




MacKenzie was feeling adventurous and decided to opt for the sea bass. She named him Herman.


....and we did have a little fun with it. :)

We all went out that night and hung out with the Montana girls. We were happy to find a low-key place to sit and have a few drinks! Thursday marked the end of our class field trip, but we all opted to stay an extra night to explore because Carnivale started over the weekend. Erin, Christine, Karleen, Sammie, and I slept in on Friday morning and grabbed gyros for lunch on the way to the water bus. We took the boat to Murano and explored there a bit. I had been before and labelled it as overrated, but the girls were excited to see a glass blowing demo, and after about 30 minutes of aimless wandering and window shopping everyone got really bored and was ready to leave. We figured out the water bus route and decided to head back to Burano for dinner at Da Romano. We figured out a better route and in about 30 minutes or so we were back on the island. We felt like pros trekking back to the small square without having to ask for directions this time...but Da Romano was CLOSED!!!!!! I was really bummed out! We tried to have dinner at a couple other restaurants in the area but they were all closing! We turned around, walked back to the boat and headed back to Venice, had dinner near the hostel and went out to start celebrating the start of Carnivale. Not a whole lot was going on since it didn't officially start until Saturday, but it was fun nonetheless. We took a 12:43 train back to Venice the next day and while we waited in the sun on the steps of the train station along the Grand Canal we watched all the people streaming into the city in elaborate costumes and masks. We all wished we could have stayed an extra night, but I was also glad to get back and have some time to chill out before the start of a new week. Back in Rome, a small group of us went out for a Valentine's Day dinner last night in the Campo de'Fiori, and we drank wine together in the Campo apartment. I slept in today and headed to the UWRC in the afternoon to upload the 300-something pictures I took in Venice. I went for a walk with Christine and Erin around 2:30, and we lunched at a place near Piazza Navona and then walked to the Trevi Fountain. I am well rested, relaxed, and ready to start week 7! I cannot believe I have only a month left! The girls and I decided over lunch today to really start packing in the events to make sure we don't miss out on a single minute. As much as I don't want to leave Italy, I am excited to come home and (eventually) see all of you! As for now, the slow internet in the UWRC has kept me up way too late so it's time for me to head back to the apartment and turn into a pumpkin!

Buona sera!