Venice!!!

This week in Florence was beautiful and sunny and I did my best to make the most of it!! Laura and I went to the Academia on Wednesday to have some quality time with the David and after we were done perusing the various statues and paintings, we decided to go and visit an art store (very dangerous idea...) and ended up coming out with some watercolors, paper, and brushes...and then we went to sit on Ponte Trinita and paint the Ponte Vecchio in the sunshine. :) It was something we had wanted to do for a while, but never quite got around to. It was perfect timing too, since the next day I walked by the bridge and there were shiny new gold plaques stating that anyone caught sitting on the buttresses was subject to a 16 Euro fine. :) oops?

In the afternoon our studio met on the steps of the Duomo, and took the bus to La Cascine. From there Stephano took us to visit the Aviation Academy in Florence. After touring the buildings there and confusing every single uniformed person inside, we started to walk back along the river towards studio.....but got side tracked by the park, and the grass, and managed to convince Stephano to play duck-duck-goose with us. Right in front of the Military school. Needless to say, it was a very amusing game. The picture above is of Stephano chasing someone around the circle. He didn't quite understand the fact that you had to run *one* direction around the circle...This game has evolved quite a lot from when we used to play it in elementary school...It now involves full body-tackles...participants beware!!! Thursday night was also family dinner night, which this week was Aperativo's! We ended up with TONS of food, but had a lot fun.


Friday morning I was up bright and early to catch the train to Venice with my Architecture in Italy class!!! While the most of the people in the class weren't exactly the group of people I would have *chosen* to travel with, the group of seven architects in the class stuck together and we ended up having a fantastic time. This is us on the Ponte Rialto! Once we arrived we had a quick lunch at the Venice Santa Lucia Train Station, while Carlo bought us all passes for the Ferry, and then we were off on the Ferry down the Grand Canal to San Marco, where we changed boats to get to our hostel. After dropping off our stuff and making our beds we were back on the ferry towards San Marco again. This time we were able to explore the Piazza and the duomo, and I got to see the Doge's Palace up close and personal!!! Carlo took us inside the Duomo, which was amazing...the whole church is covered in gold mosiac tiles. Probably my favorite church so far. Unfortunatley we weren't able to take pictures inside, but Nikul and I climbed to the terrace on top for 4 euro where we were able to see the entire piazza, and get an interesting view of the church from above! After we climbed back down the STEEPEST staircase I have ever been down, Carlo took off across the piazza in the general direction of the next church we were heading to visit...One thing I learned very quickly about Carlo is that he genuinely does not care if you get left behind -- some others did not learn this as quickly and so we ended up leaving about half the class (22ish in total) behind in Piazza San Marco waiting for Carlo...After wandering through a few backstreets -- and backtracking at various dead ends, we arrived at a ferry station and took the boat across the canal to Santa Maria della Salute where we met up with the rest of the class. From there we walked to the Peggy Guggenheim Museum and across the Academia bridge to the old Rialto bridge (the oldest bridge in Venice), and then across to the old fish market. Carlo then set us free and the group of 7 architects split off from the group and went in search of Campo San Lucca and cheap food. We sat inside for a few hours to warm up and then wandered across Venice for a few hours in the general direction of Campo San Margherita, where we met Carlo at 10ish for drinks. We quickly decided that wandering was way more fun, however, and decided to go and find the new Calatrava bridge. :) After walking across my first Calatrava (!) we intentionally got lost heading back towards Piazza San Marco, and then caught the ferry across the water to our Hostel.


On Saturday we had breakfast at the hostel and then walked to Rendentore Church by Palladio, and then around La Guidecca which is the southern island that makes up Venice. La Guidecca was interesting because it was made up of old low-income housing and warehouses, which have been turned into new, trendy modern housing. After that, we took another ferry to Fondazione Stampalia Querini Museum which was restored by Carlo Scarpa. It was another interesting project to walk around and see how he'd handled adding contemporary changes to an old Venician Palazzo. We also walked into a rehersal for a concert later in the night of a recorder quartet. :) Soprano all the way down to a giant Bass recorder! It was echoing throughout the museum as we walked through the rooms. Again, once we were finished at the Museum Carlo turned us loose to explore until we had to meet at the train station to go home. He suggested we walk to the park at the end of the island for lunch -- and we decided that it was sunny and that was a great idea! Let's just say it was a really good thing we had 3 hours, because we used every second!!! We found the park without problems and even found the site of the yearly art and architecture convention which was interesting to walk around. Each country had it's own building which we assumed they used to showcase whatever they subject matter of the convention was that year -- but it was all completely deserted...quite creepy really. Ashley and I went and sat by the water and sunbathed to eat lunch that we had brought with us, and the others went to a small cafe to eat. We took the ferry back to the train station and ended up pulling up exactly at 4:20 and running to get on the train, and find our seats before it left. 3 hours later, we were back in Florence!!!

...I slept until 1:15 Sunday afternoon. Venice was gorgeous but as per usual with Carlo's trips I was absolutely exhausted when I got back home!!! Pictures will be up as soon as I can find where the heck my camera cord walked off to............