I woke up this morning, and had no voice! (I will now pause and allow all you who know me well to have your moment of laughter.) I mean, I could still talk, but only quietly, and it kinda hurts. Not the best for traveling around foreign cities, especially ones that are likely to be crowded with tourists. Oh well!
After that discovery, we made our way to the train station. As we were staying in Mestre, on the mainland, and not Venice proper, we hopped on a train for the ten minute train ride across the (canal? Channel? Sea? What’s between the island Venice is on and mainland Italy? I’m not really up on my Venetian/Italian geography) way to Venice.
Venice is like…a Disn
ey movie. Or a little toy village. It looks like someone made a life-size model of the perfect cartoon city. It’s beautiful! And also very touristy (at least the part we were in). It was also quite small. The streets are narrow and wind in and out between buildings and over canals (no straight lines to be found anywhere) and it still only took an hour to cross from one end to the other. There were no cars in this part of Venice (although there is a road onto the island; the train runs parallel to it for a bit, but they seem to stay out of the main part of the city. Or at least, out of the tourist part), and the water is so so blue! It’s beautiful! One thing Venice is not is cool. There was some hope that Venice might provide a break from the heat we experienced in Rome, and indeed it was a bit cooler, but alas! it was still quite hot! I even managed to get a little sunburned, and there was at least one instance of dunking my head under a fountain to cool off in the middle of the afternoon.
Anyway, back
to the tourists: they were everywhere! Crowds of them. We were supposed to meet the missionary girls (whom we met on the train the previous evening) at San Marco’s Square at noon. (Which we failed to do—we were running late, and then it took ages to get across the city. Although we never would have found them even had we been on time. San Marco’s was packed!) At first I was wondering how we were going to manage that, since the only straight path from the train station to the Square is water taxi, which costs something like €16 (too expensive!). But it turned out that all we had to do was follow the crowd. There were signs occasionally too, but we never really had to look at them. For the most part, the stream of people ahead of us lead us right where we wanted to go.
And all along the way there were little shops and kiosks everywhere selling everything from fresh fruits and vegetables (which we were so grateful for! This whole trip, it seems, has been bread, bread, bread. We looked for fruit everywhere and we keep failing to find any. And here is Venice, the answer to my prayers. I bought three or four huge apples!), to murano glass, to porcelain masks. So many masks! I never knew that those pretty porcelain masks people sometimes hang on their wall originally came from Venice. Most of them were pretty simple and inexpensive, but a few shops we passed had these huge, elaborate masks on display that were just beautiful!
There were also a lot of large, elaborately decorated religious buildings. The weird thing is that the city is so closely packed together, and the buildings are so tall (the city has expanded upward, not outward. The disadvantage of building on an island, I suppose), that these beautiful religious buildings would seem to suddenly appear out of nowhere. We’d be walking along, and turn a corner, and all of a sudden there would be this gorgeous church with all these carvings and columns and spires.
We also saw a lot of gondolas. Which was way cool. The artsmanship that goes into one of these boats is just incredible. Each one is perfectly polished and decorated with gold metalwork, with fancy rugs or pillows over the seats. I had hoped to ride one, but they’re way expensive, so I just looked at them (and took pictures of them) and then kept right on walking.
I finally got to try Italian pasta! I have been told time and again not to expect mu
ch from Italian food in Italy, because it is so different from Americanized Italian food. But actually, I didn’t think there was too much of a difference. I debated for awhile about whether to order fettuccini (one of my favorite Italian dishes back home), or an alfredo noodle dish. I went with the alfredo (because I like it better than tomato sauce, which is what came on the fettuccini dishes) , while Yvette ordered the fettuccini. Weirdly, the fettuccini noodles were super wide and had crinkly edges, while my plain noodles looked just like those American restaurants call fettuccini. It tasted a bit different (the cheeses are way better over there, but it was a bit strong in that sauce), but I really liked it.
I will say that I have never seen ham used the way Italians use it. They put slices of super thinly cut ham on top of my noodles, which was odd. I had also had ham on my pizza in Rome, and had expected small pieces like we have on Hawaiian pizza, but instead got big squares in that same thinly cut, almost transparent manner. Still, it tasted good.
We ended our time in Venice by sitting on the steps of the train station and listening to a very charming man from Chile sing and play the guitar while his female companion played the bongo drums. It was a nice way to relax and cool down before heading back to the hotel to pack and prepare for our flight back to London.
I have to say that while I am sad to be leaving Italy, which has completely captured my heart (well, Rome has, anyway. If it didn’t already own it before), but it will be nice to find a place to settle for the next week before moving into the residence hall for the semester. All this traveling is tiring!
Goodbye, Italia!
Anyway, back
to the tourists: they were everywhere! Crowds of them. We were supposed to meet the missionary girls (whom we met on the train the previous evening) at San Marco’s Square at noon. (Which we failed to do—we were running late, and then it took ages to get across the city. Although we never would have found them even had we been on time. San Marco’s was packed!) At first I was wondering how we were going to manage that, since the only straight path from the train station to the Square is water taxi, which costs something like €16 (too expensive!). But it turned out that all we had to do was follow the crowd. There were signs occasionally too, but we never really had to look at them. For the most part, the stream of people ahead of us lead us right where we wanted to go.And all along the way there were little shops and kiosks everywhere selling everything from fresh fruits and vegetables (which we were so grateful for! This whole trip, it seems, has been bread, bread, bread. We looked for fruit everywhere and we keep failing to find any. And here is Venice, the answer to my prayers. I bought three or four huge apples!), to murano glass, to porcelain masks. So many masks! I never knew that those pretty porcelain masks people sometimes hang on their wall originally came from Venice. Most of them were pretty simple and inexpensive, but a few shops we passed had these huge, elaborate masks on display that were just beautiful!
There were also a lot of large, elaborately decorated religious buildings. The weird thing is that the city is so closely packed together, and the buildings are so tall (the city has expanded upward, not outward. The disadvantage of building on an island, I suppose), that these beautiful religious buildings would seem to suddenly appear out of nowhere. We’d be walking along, and turn a corner, and all of a sudden there would be this gorgeous church with all these carvings and columns and spires.
We also saw a lot of gondolas. Which was way cool. The artsmanship that goes into one of these boats is just incredible. Each one is perfectly polished and decorated with gold metalwork, with fancy rugs or pillows over the seats. I had hoped to ride one, but they’re way expensive, so I just looked at them (and took pictures of them) and then kept right on walking.
I finally got to try Italian pasta! I have been told time and again not to expect mu
ch from Italian food in Italy, because it is so different from Americanized Italian food. But actually, I didn’t think there was too much of a difference. I debated for awhile about whether to order fettuccini (one of my favorite Italian dishes back home), or an alfredo noodle dish. I went with the alfredo (because I like it better than tomato sauce, which is what came on the fettuccini dishes) , while Yvette ordered the fettuccini. Weirdly, the fettuccini noodles were super wide and had crinkly edges, while my plain noodles looked just like those American restaurants call fettuccini. It tasted a bit different (the cheeses are way better over there, but it was a bit strong in that sauce), but I really liked it.I will say that I have never seen ham used the way Italians use it. They put slices of super thinly cut ham on top of my noodles, which was odd. I had also had ham on my pizza in Rome, and had expected small pieces like we have on Hawaiian pizza, but instead got big squares in that same thinly cut, almost transparent manner. Still, it tasted good.
We ended our time in Venice by sitting on the steps of the train station and listening to a very charming man from Chile sing and play the guitar while his female companion played the bongo drums. It was a nice way to relax and cool down before heading back to the hotel to pack and prepare for our flight back to London.
I have to say that while I am sad to be leaving Italy, which has completely captured my heart (well, Rome has, anyway. If it didn’t already own it before), but it will be nice to find a place to settle for the next week before moving into the residence hall for the semester. All this traveling is tiring!
Goodbye, Italia!
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