18

Venice (day one)

We left early on Friday morning and took a bus to outside the city and then a boat to the place in the above photo. Our hotel was just around the corner. As a note of interest, Venice has 217 churches.

The rooming situation was interesting. The four girls I'm good friends with were in one room and I was in an adjoining room with three people I am not so fond of. One of which was the annoying girl from Rome last weekend. Another was a different girl who talks too much. And the third was the girl who drank far too much when we were in Elba, though she went off with other friends most of the time, so that was okay.

As for the other two, the weekend turned into a giant game of hide and seek -- except they didn't know that we were playing. More like run away and hide from them I guess. We termed it "Stealth Mode." Venice is the perfect city for playing that because it's all tiny alleyways and canals. All we had to do was walk quickly and keep making turns.

In the process of getting ourselves lost we discovered a submarine in the Grand Canal. Interesting. And a giant chair thing. I'm not really sure what it is. I'd guess an art project though. Venice was full of different small art exhibits (and big ones of course) all over the place. I was surprised by it actually.

This is view from the bridge from the Accademia over the Grand Canal. Venice is beautiful with views like this, but the city wasn't quite what I had expected after hearing person after person fall in love with it. I found the city somewhat sad instead. The entire place is mobbed with tourists, from all over the world. There are just people everywhere. It felt more like a zoo exhibit than an actually place. I know some people live there, but I guess they're more like caged animals in a city like that.

We visited the Peggy Guggenheim museum that afternoon as a group. It's a museum of modern art that Peggy collected over her lifetime, set in the house she renovated for it and to live in. I'm not a huge fan of modern art, but it was interesting to hear the stories of how she had collected these things, who she was friends with, and why she had designed rooms in certain ways.

My favorite part of the museum was the sculpture garden, though not for the sculpture. Apparently Yoko Ono donated a tree for the purpose of people making wishes. You can see it in the picture above. Basically people write their wishes on pieces of paper and attach them to the tree. At the end of the day the museum collects them and sends them back to Yoko Ono. It's a really cool idea. The wish above was definitely one of the more interesting. Quite a lot of them were for things like health and happiness. I did of course leave my wish, but we all know that if I tell it won't come true.

Another interesting part of the garden was her throne. Apparently she used to sit on it in the garden wearing giant sunglasses and watching the people who came to visit. One day I hope to be able to be that eccentric. For now I'll settle for mimicking it.

After the museum we walked to the Rialto, which is the famous bridge over the Grand Canal. Once again pretty but mobbed with people. Three of us managed to get ourselves lost again and separate from the annyoing ones for dinner, which we had on a bridge by one of the small canals. And yes, it did smell. Ew. Expensive food too. So expensive.

We wandered again for a while after dinner and found an amazing wine shop by the hotel. Sort of wine shop/bar really. There was an old man behind the counter who was so helpful. He got us a bottle of chilled Prosecco and recommend a red wine that he let us taste before buying. The best part was his friend who was there though. I kind of wish he was my grandfather - he was that cool. He started talking to us about where we were from and what we were doing and such. Except he would repeat what we said and add "Wooow" to the end. For everything we said. Absolutely hilarious. He was somewhat hard to understand at times though because of his accent. I'm assuming it was a Venetian accent since that's where he's from. He actually used to be an architect. Venice is a pretty cool city to be an architect in.

After that we sat for a while in the hotel garden, drinking our wine and such, before going to bed early. Not that it mattered since I had one of the worst nights of sleep I've ever had. Definitely in the top 5 worst anyway. It poured with rain and thunderstormed all night. I was in a cot under the eaves in an attic style room. I was rained on. Inside. The roof leaked on my face in the middle of the night. I woke up to a strange ticking sort of noise and rolled over to discover it was dripping on my face. Horrible, horrible way to sleep. I had to move my bed at 3am and then sleep on a wet pillow. Ugh. Stupid hotel.

I'll do day two in the next post.