So I suppose I’ve made you wait for Italy long enough.
My first stop in the country was Pisa, because despite having visited most of the major tourist destinations in Italy on a trip in high school, we never made it out to the Leaning Tower. I was ready for another of those tourist free-for-alls, where more people speak English in the streets than Italian, and yet I was pleasantly surprised. Despite the Leaning Tower of Pisa being one of the 7 Wonders of the World, it seems like most people come out on day trips or guided tours, leaving the city itself relatively calm and undisturbed.
I’d arrived at the hostel too late for the buffet dinner they offer every night, but that gave me a chance to answer some emails and get a good nights sleep. The following morning I awoke bright and early to head off to see the sights. It only occurred to me later that I should have taken the opportunity to sleep in. The area around the tower was going to be swamped regardless, but I guess I’ve gotten used to waking up early, even when exhausted. I like to be out and doing things before it gets too crowded and hot. Sure, it doesn’t make for a very active nightlife, but as I’ve mentioned before, I’m not exactly looking for one of those anyway.
It was a Sunday, so the walk through town was quiet, only the occasional shop opened by an enterprising businessman. I passed a few tents in a main square that drew my attention, but it was still too early to tell why they were there, so I continued on to the Piazza dei Miracoli, Plaza of Miracles, a grand green lawn comprising the Cathedral of Pisa, its baptistery, a museum, a monumental cemetery, and of course the leaning tower itself. It was crowded, as expected, but still lovely. I opted for tickets into everything except the tower, because it was more than twice as expensive to climb the tower as it was to see everything else together, and as far as I could tell climbing the tower was a bragging right more than anything. The beauty of the tower is the architecture from the outside, and the fact that it leans. I learned as much in a long video at the museum about the construction and restoration of the tower, as well as the myriad problems they’ve run into in trying to keep it from toppling over.
I finished with the complex earlier than I expected I would, leaving me with a nice long afternoon until my relatively late train to Florence. I wandered the streets a bit, taking in the city. It’s older and more run down than I lot of the cities I’ve been too thus far, but I liked it, tourist centers excepted. And when I liked it the most was when I got back to that square with the little white tents. What was going on, you ask? The only way I can think to describe it is a miniature Renaissance Festival.
Yes, you read right. A Renaissance Festival, in Italy, home of the Renaissance.
It was tiny. Maybe a dozen tents selling medieval food and weapons and clothing. But it was epic. I wished I could speak Italian well enough to engage them, but I contented myself with observing for a while before grabbing a falafel sandwich and heading back to the hostel to travel plan.
Side note on the falafel sandwich bit. Do you remember when I said an inordinate number of Turks spoke Italian? Maybe I didn’t blog about it, but I have brought it up with a great many people. Anyway, that large number is directly proportional to the number of Turks in Italy. It feels like everywhere I turn someone is speaking Turkish, and sure enough, the kebab places on every corner are authentic to the core. And thus delicious.
I spent the whole evening working, but my train was so late that I was there this time for the hostel’s dinner buffet. Having grown hungry again I joined in only to find, to my great delight, that it was not just any buffet. It was a vegan buffet. There were so many vegetables!!! It was fantastic! So I had like… three plates of carrots and tomatoes and mushrooms and cucumbers and chickpeas and olives with watermelon for dessert. It was the best meal I’d had in ages. There was pizza and pasta and rice too, but I tried to limit my take of the all too ubiquitous carbs.
As if that wasn’t wonderful enough, my fantastic, unparalleled, super healthy and yet delicious dinner even came with a show. Holland was playing Mexico in the world cup, and not only was the hostel hosting a large and rather loud group of Dutch youths, but there were a few Mexicans present as well. So there was much shouting and cheering and general revelry. And when Holland came in with a goal to win towards the very end the building went wild. Sports with fans are always better than sports without.
Anyway, I did eventually board that train to Florence, and the timing was perfect. No sooner had I gotten off the train and completed the ten minute walk to the hostel than it began to downpour. The hostel was a bit dirty and rather run down, but the draw was the architecture; its located in an old converted monastery. So imagine and epic thunderstorm complete with torrential rains in the cavernous halls of an old monks’ dwelling. It gave me chills, which was difficult considering how hot and humid the weather was.
Florence was one of the few cities in Italy I’d been too before. As such, I decided I could skip the Uffizi Gallery where they display the David. It’s expensive, and I had seen it before. I’ve started trying to avoid all but those museums I’m most interested in, or the ones that are free. I feel like it’s a good strategy on the budget side of things. What I did instead though, and what we’d missed the last time I was there, was drop by Florence Cathedral, Santa Maria del Fiore in the Piazza del Duomo. I didn’t really have any desire to pay to climb the dome or see the crypt, but I did wait in a sizable line to see the inside of the church. It was pretty? At this point I’m running out of things to say about churches. This is Europe. There are a lot of them.
My plan after the church was to go cross the river and relax in Boboli Gardens, the grand gardens behind Pitti Palace. They were inspired by Luxembourg Gardens in Paris, and if you’ll remember I loved those, so I was quite excited. As I approached the palace it was quickly apparent that the structure was closed. This wasn’t a surprise, because it was Monday, and things always seem to be closed on Mondays. Only as I got closer did I realize that things meant the gardens as well, and then I wanted to cry. You can’t close green spaces! But they had, so I pulled out my phone and quickly found another one.
The next nearest garden was about a twenty minute walk away, which wouldn’t have been so bad if the Italian sun didn’t have it out for me. Even the sun wouldn’t have been so bad if I hadn’t arrived to realize it was a private garden, showing up on my map and yet cordoned off and locked from the public. And even that I could have lived with if the same things hadn’t happened with garden number three.
I retired to a park bench next to a municipal basketball court to eat the lunch of sandwiches I nicked from the hostel breakfast and stew about the fact that Florence has no green spaces to speak of at all. Then I made it up to myself by eating far too much gelato, buying a cheap pair of shoes to replace the black suede ones that hurt my feet, and heading back to the hostel for a buffet dinner that was equally as veggie filled and delicious as the one I had in Pisa. And it came with creme caramel for dessert.
Before I move on from Florence though, I should mention a funny coincidence that took place that last night in the hostel. Upon my return, while washing up for dinner, two new girls arrived in my room, one from Florida and the other from Canada. For those of you who don’t know, two of my best friends live in each place respectively - the two friends I’ve been most keeping in touch with throughout this trip in fact. That would have been a coincidence, but the icing on the cake was where these two new girls had met: at a miniature university down the street from my parents that has about a dozen majors and probably fewer students. Small world, ain’t it?
Anyway, the next morning I was up bright and early for the first train to Verona. I was very excited about Verona as the fictional setting of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. It’s kind of like Harry Potter nerds visiting London, you know? Besides, they have this theory that the Capulets were actually based on the Capellas, and they’ve turned the family’s old house into a Romeo and Juliet museum, complete with art work, manuscripts, and costumes and furniture from the films. There’s also a museum built around Juliet’s Tomb. It’s more or less a stone block now because the church turned it into a watering trough ages ago when it started to draw pilgrims of a secular nature, but I liked seeing it anyway.
I didn’t go into to any of the other major sites in Verona, but I did walk by many of them. This included Castelvecchio, an old castle turned art museum which you could still get a lovely taste of from the adjoining bridge, Piazza del Erbe with its famous Lamberti Tower, and the Arena di Verona. The arena in particular was of particular interest to me. A miniature version of the Colosseum, it puts on regular concerts, usually featuring opera or classical music. In fact, my all time favorite version of Carmen was performed at the Arena di Verona in 2004, and they were reprising the show for its hundredth anniversary in the city during the Verona Opera Festival. I tried valiantly to fit it into my schedule, but there was no way I was going to be able to make it back without cancelling the Balkans completely, so I resigned myself to staring longingly at the outside and once again promising myself that I will see Carmen live someday. (Note for those counting: this is the fourth time this trip I have just missed seeing Carmen live.)
While the sights were a lot of fun, invoking my nerdy glee despite the crowds, I think the nicest thing about Verona was that it was finally a bit green. I was only in Florence two days, and it was beautiful and all, but even with all the lovely architecture I found it a bit oppressive. Verona, on the other hand, is a series of tree lined streets and grassy little piazzas with a much cleaner river and all around look. It was refreshing, if not enough to make me want to settle down and stay. In fact, not going in to some of the places saved me enough time that I was able to take an earlier train than I had planned to Venice, putting me in the city in the early evening.
Venice is another of those cities I had been to before, but this time I had the very best reason for deciding to go back. For those of you who remember my Turkey blog, Anna, my friend from the Italian Embassy in Ankara, lives in a smaller city just outside of Venice. I had emailed her to try to meet up and she had not only responded positively, but contacted her friends studying in the city who then offered me a place to stay. I couldn’t accept. My train times were inconvenient at best, and the offer came a day too late for me to cancel my hostel. It was a nice thought though, and we still met up with them, but more on that later.
My first night in Venice was more or less relaxing. The hostel, as I found with most hostels in Italy, left a bit to be desired. The biggest issue I’ve had is that hostels in Italy don’t seem to believe in hand soap. I’m quite capable of carrying my own to the restroom, and I’m well aware that not everyone washes even when there is soap, but I do like being able to pretend on occasion. Apart from the filthy bathrooms and creaky mattresses though, at least the people in the hostel were nice. We had a cheap pasta dinner with wine together around a big central table that first night. It was a lovely chance to chat and get to know each other that bled into us watching the US lose to Germany in the quarterfinals of the World Cup. Alas, now I suppose I will just have to cheer for Brazil.
The next day I slept in, getting up at a leisurely hour to dress and meet Anna at the train station. It was great to see her again, and we proceeded to wander the alleyways for hours just catching up and enjoying the ambiance. The thing about Venice is it’s not about seeing the sights. Venice itself is the sight, as myriad artists and poets have attested. We even made it out to an almost solely residential area with a park on the ocean, which was gorgeous. All the sun had already left Anna a bit pink by the time we called her friends in the late afternoon.
Living in Venice, they had a far better handle than us on the pulse of the city. Natalie, whom Anna had known from high school, led us to see the Bovoli Steps, a grand spiral staircase just plopped in an old piazza never to be mentioned again. Then we all stopped in to see the university and went for spritzes (a tasty Italian cocktail) on the sea. Following drinks, the girls took us back to their place for dinner, which I must say was more fun than I’ve had in a very long time. Yoko, who is half Japanese, made us Japanese rice with a vegetable stir fry and tofu while Natalie baked a vegan chocolate cake. The best part of this is that this was the menu even before they knew I was vegetarian, and they even let us help.
Conversation was, in what should have been an impossible turn, even better than the meal. I realize the point of staying in hostels is to make new friends and not get lonely, but even in hostels it is rare that I meet someone with whom I can have an honestly good conversation. These girls, on the other hand, were all right up my alley, discussing language and architecture and sociology and art. Clara even subscribes to the New Yorker.
In case that bit about the New Yorker wasn’t an indicator, their English was spectacular. They would frequently devolve into Italian, with Anna only occasionally prodding them back into English, but I found myself enjoying the Italian often as well. In addition to being a beautiful language, it’s close enough to Spanish that I could usually follow along. Also, it made the entire evening all the more authentic. Traveling the world is all well and good, but sometimes you just need a night of laughing over stoves and cutting boards and breaking out into motown hits when they start playing on the radio.
We went for a walk after dinner that, whether by coincidence or design, led right past my hostel. I thanked them all for what is sure to be one of the highlights of my trip and headed inside for a shower and bed.
I met Anna and Yoko the next morning to hang out for a bit before Anna had to catch the train home. Yoko took us to the most spectacular used bookstore I have ever seen in my life, a little sign out front announcing it “The Most Beautiful Bookstore in the World.” It wasn’t lying.
The little shop, organized around an old gondola, is wall to wall books, piled several stacks deep and filling the entire space between the shop front and the canal. There were books in every language on every subject packed in every nook and cranny one could find. It is lucky I made that no buying books promise to myself or I might have bought them all. Instead I settled for more pictures than was entirely necessary, but at least there’s one of me on the staircase of books out back to make my mother happy.
After the bookstore, in which we spent far more time than we’d planned, we stopped in at a nearby library for bathroom breaks and to get Anna a membership card. That was another invaluable part of having the girls around - they could always point us in the direction of the illusive free toilets. Then, with Anna’s departure time approaching, the girls finally deposited me in St. Mark’s Square, the major tourism hub of the city, where I planned to spend the rest of my day. Main draw of Venice or not, there were a few things I wanted to see after all, not least of all the giant Astrological Clock there.
The afternoon started with a tour of the Palazzo Ducale, the grand palace of Venetian Republic where all state business was carried out. I was so excited to see it I even sprang for the audio guide, which I’m proud to report I enjoyed very much. The ticket to the palace included the three museums in St. Mark’s Square though, so following the palace I went and saw those too. One was a series of state rooms from the time of Napoleon, one a museum of Venetian archaeology, and the last an exhibit of the history of eyeglasses housed in the stunning salon of an ancient library. They were all nice, but nothing particular to write home about.
That only left the last major tourist destination, St. Mark’s Cathedral, which I am happy to inform you was free. Or it was supposed to be free. Turns out that after carrying my scarf around Italy for days just in case, I had finally found myself at the one church that wanted me to wear it the same day I’d decided to leave it at home. It was only one euro for the disposable shawl to cover my shoulders, but still… it was the principle of the thing.
When I left the cathedral, I was all ready to head back to the hostel, get some dinner, and hunker down to travel plan and write this post, but then I got distracted. In a stray text conversation with Laura the day before, she had mentioned that the Architecture Biennial was in Venice and she’d heard good things. Well, I hadn’t planned on seeking it out, but when I passed a sign at the entrance on accident announcing that it was free, it seemed a bit silly to continue and pass it up. It was a nice exhibition, if a bit preachy in parts.
My favorite part by far was the top floor of the building which had been given over to a project called “Who’s Afraid of Architecture?” They were in the process of constructing… well, something. Artistic renovations perhaps? But what I liked was the fact that it was more or less the chance to wander undisturbed through the empty rooms of an authentic Venetian home. The views from the windows were spectacular. I might have stayed all evening if closing time hadn’t snuck up on me.
Once the exhibition closed though, I continued on with the original plan of a quiet night at the hostel until I had to catch my train at 1:30 in the morning. Problem there was it didn’t actually show up until an hour after that. I’m not sure why there was a delay. I don’t speak loud speaker Italian. But I’m still recovering from the lack of sleep brought on by frequent stops and a five am transfer. Well, that and the fact that I’ve stayed up far too late the past two nights trying to finish this post. And plan for Vienna. Because really, until last night I had no idea what I was doing.
Point is I’m sitting in Slovenia and should be starting my next post, but it seems I’ve fallen behind. I’ll try to get that one done on the train tomorrow, but it’s another Alps day, and I’m a bit terrified I might fall asleep and miss it as it is. Anyway, I’m not off to bed, with only… six hours to catch up on what would take at least twelve. Mer sleep deprivation.
My first stop in the country was Pisa, because despite having visited most of the major tourist destinations in Italy on a trip in high school, we never made it out to the Leaning Tower. I was ready for another of those tourist free-for-alls, where more people speak English in the streets than Italian, and yet I was pleasantly surprised. Despite the Leaning Tower of Pisa being one of the 7 Wonders of the World, it seems like most people come out on day trips or guided tours, leaving the city itself relatively calm and undisturbed.
I’d arrived at the hostel too late for the buffet dinner they offer every night, but that gave me a chance to answer some emails and get a good nights sleep. The following morning I awoke bright and early to head off to see the sights. It only occurred to me later that I should have taken the opportunity to sleep in. The area around the tower was going to be swamped regardless, but I guess I’ve gotten used to waking up early, even when exhausted. I like to be out and doing things before it gets too crowded and hot. Sure, it doesn’t make for a very active nightlife, but as I’ve mentioned before, I’m not exactly looking for one of those anyway.
It was a Sunday, so the walk through town was quiet, only the occasional shop opened by an enterprising businessman. I passed a few tents in a main square that drew my attention, but it was still too early to tell why they were there, so I continued on to the Piazza dei Miracoli, Plaza of Miracles, a grand green lawn comprising the Cathedral of Pisa, its baptistery, a museum, a monumental cemetery, and of course the leaning tower itself. It was crowded, as expected, but still lovely. I opted for tickets into everything except the tower, because it was more than twice as expensive to climb the tower as it was to see everything else together, and as far as I could tell climbing the tower was a bragging right more than anything. The beauty of the tower is the architecture from the outside, and the fact that it leans. I learned as much in a long video at the museum about the construction and restoration of the tower, as well as the myriad problems they’ve run into in trying to keep it from toppling over.
I finished with the complex earlier than I expected I would, leaving me with a nice long afternoon until my relatively late train to Florence. I wandered the streets a bit, taking in the city. It’s older and more run down than I lot of the cities I’ve been too thus far, but I liked it, tourist centers excepted. And when I liked it the most was when I got back to that square with the little white tents. What was going on, you ask? The only way I can think to describe it is a miniature Renaissance Festival.
Yes, you read right. A Renaissance Festival, in Italy, home of the Renaissance.
It was tiny. Maybe a dozen tents selling medieval food and weapons and clothing. But it was epic. I wished I could speak Italian well enough to engage them, but I contented myself with observing for a while before grabbing a falafel sandwich and heading back to the hostel to travel plan.
Side note on the falafel sandwich bit. Do you remember when I said an inordinate number of Turks spoke Italian? Maybe I didn’t blog about it, but I have brought it up with a great many people. Anyway, that large number is directly proportional to the number of Turks in Italy. It feels like everywhere I turn someone is speaking Turkish, and sure enough, the kebab places on every corner are authentic to the core. And thus delicious.
I spent the whole evening working, but my train was so late that I was there this time for the hostel’s dinner buffet. Having grown hungry again I joined in only to find, to my great delight, that it was not just any buffet. It was a vegan buffet. There were so many vegetables!!! It was fantastic! So I had like… three plates of carrots and tomatoes and mushrooms and cucumbers and chickpeas and olives with watermelon for dessert. It was the best meal I’d had in ages. There was pizza and pasta and rice too, but I tried to limit my take of the all too ubiquitous carbs.
As if that wasn’t wonderful enough, my fantastic, unparalleled, super healthy and yet delicious dinner even came with a show. Holland was playing Mexico in the world cup, and not only was the hostel hosting a large and rather loud group of Dutch youths, but there were a few Mexicans present as well. So there was much shouting and cheering and general revelry. And when Holland came in with a goal to win towards the very end the building went wild. Sports with fans are always better than sports without.
Anyway, I did eventually board that train to Florence, and the timing was perfect. No sooner had I gotten off the train and completed the ten minute walk to the hostel than it began to downpour. The hostel was a bit dirty and rather run down, but the draw was the architecture; its located in an old converted monastery. So imagine and epic thunderstorm complete with torrential rains in the cavernous halls of an old monks’ dwelling. It gave me chills, which was difficult considering how hot and humid the weather was.
Florence was one of the few cities in Italy I’d been too before. As such, I decided I could skip the Uffizi Gallery where they display the David. It’s expensive, and I had seen it before. I’ve started trying to avoid all but those museums I’m most interested in, or the ones that are free. I feel like it’s a good strategy on the budget side of things. What I did instead though, and what we’d missed the last time I was there, was drop by Florence Cathedral, Santa Maria del Fiore in the Piazza del Duomo. I didn’t really have any desire to pay to climb the dome or see the crypt, but I did wait in a sizable line to see the inside of the church. It was pretty? At this point I’m running out of things to say about churches. This is Europe. There are a lot of them.
My plan after the church was to go cross the river and relax in Boboli Gardens, the grand gardens behind Pitti Palace. They were inspired by Luxembourg Gardens in Paris, and if you’ll remember I loved those, so I was quite excited. As I approached the palace it was quickly apparent that the structure was closed. This wasn’t a surprise, because it was Monday, and things always seem to be closed on Mondays. Only as I got closer did I realize that things meant the gardens as well, and then I wanted to cry. You can’t close green spaces! But they had, so I pulled out my phone and quickly found another one.
The next nearest garden was about a twenty minute walk away, which wouldn’t have been so bad if the Italian sun didn’t have it out for me. Even the sun wouldn’t have been so bad if I hadn’t arrived to realize it was a private garden, showing up on my map and yet cordoned off and locked from the public. And even that I could have lived with if the same things hadn’t happened with garden number three.
I retired to a park bench next to a municipal basketball court to eat the lunch of sandwiches I nicked from the hostel breakfast and stew about the fact that Florence has no green spaces to speak of at all. Then I made it up to myself by eating far too much gelato, buying a cheap pair of shoes to replace the black suede ones that hurt my feet, and heading back to the hostel for a buffet dinner that was equally as veggie filled and delicious as the one I had in Pisa. And it came with creme caramel for dessert.
Before I move on from Florence though, I should mention a funny coincidence that took place that last night in the hostel. Upon my return, while washing up for dinner, two new girls arrived in my room, one from Florida and the other from Canada. For those of you who don’t know, two of my best friends live in each place respectively - the two friends I’ve been most keeping in touch with throughout this trip in fact. That would have been a coincidence, but the icing on the cake was where these two new girls had met: at a miniature university down the street from my parents that has about a dozen majors and probably fewer students. Small world, ain’t it?
Anyway, the next morning I was up bright and early for the first train to Verona. I was very excited about Verona as the fictional setting of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. It’s kind of like Harry Potter nerds visiting London, you know? Besides, they have this theory that the Capulets were actually based on the Capellas, and they’ve turned the family’s old house into a Romeo and Juliet museum, complete with art work, manuscripts, and costumes and furniture from the films. There’s also a museum built around Juliet’s Tomb. It’s more or less a stone block now because the church turned it into a watering trough ages ago when it started to draw pilgrims of a secular nature, but I liked seeing it anyway.
I didn’t go into to any of the other major sites in Verona, but I did walk by many of them. This included Castelvecchio, an old castle turned art museum which you could still get a lovely taste of from the adjoining bridge, Piazza del Erbe with its famous Lamberti Tower, and the Arena di Verona. The arena in particular was of particular interest to me. A miniature version of the Colosseum, it puts on regular concerts, usually featuring opera or classical music. In fact, my all time favorite version of Carmen was performed at the Arena di Verona in 2004, and they were reprising the show for its hundredth anniversary in the city during the Verona Opera Festival. I tried valiantly to fit it into my schedule, but there was no way I was going to be able to make it back without cancelling the Balkans completely, so I resigned myself to staring longingly at the outside and once again promising myself that I will see Carmen live someday. (Note for those counting: this is the fourth time this trip I have just missed seeing Carmen live.)
While the sights were a lot of fun, invoking my nerdy glee despite the crowds, I think the nicest thing about Verona was that it was finally a bit green. I was only in Florence two days, and it was beautiful and all, but even with all the lovely architecture I found it a bit oppressive. Verona, on the other hand, is a series of tree lined streets and grassy little piazzas with a much cleaner river and all around look. It was refreshing, if not enough to make me want to settle down and stay. In fact, not going in to some of the places saved me enough time that I was able to take an earlier train than I had planned to Venice, putting me in the city in the early evening.
Venice is another of those cities I had been to before, but this time I had the very best reason for deciding to go back. For those of you who remember my Turkey blog, Anna, my friend from the Italian Embassy in Ankara, lives in a smaller city just outside of Venice. I had emailed her to try to meet up and she had not only responded positively, but contacted her friends studying in the city who then offered me a place to stay. I couldn’t accept. My train times were inconvenient at best, and the offer came a day too late for me to cancel my hostel. It was a nice thought though, and we still met up with them, but more on that later.
My first night in Venice was more or less relaxing. The hostel, as I found with most hostels in Italy, left a bit to be desired. The biggest issue I’ve had is that hostels in Italy don’t seem to believe in hand soap. I’m quite capable of carrying my own to the restroom, and I’m well aware that not everyone washes even when there is soap, but I do like being able to pretend on occasion. Apart from the filthy bathrooms and creaky mattresses though, at least the people in the hostel were nice. We had a cheap pasta dinner with wine together around a big central table that first night. It was a lovely chance to chat and get to know each other that bled into us watching the US lose to Germany in the quarterfinals of the World Cup. Alas, now I suppose I will just have to cheer for Brazil.
The next day I slept in, getting up at a leisurely hour to dress and meet Anna at the train station. It was great to see her again, and we proceeded to wander the alleyways for hours just catching up and enjoying the ambiance. The thing about Venice is it’s not about seeing the sights. Venice itself is the sight, as myriad artists and poets have attested. We even made it out to an almost solely residential area with a park on the ocean, which was gorgeous. All the sun had already left Anna a bit pink by the time we called her friends in the late afternoon.
Living in Venice, they had a far better handle than us on the pulse of the city. Natalie, whom Anna had known from high school, led us to see the Bovoli Steps, a grand spiral staircase just plopped in an old piazza never to be mentioned again. Then we all stopped in to see the university and went for spritzes (a tasty Italian cocktail) on the sea. Following drinks, the girls took us back to their place for dinner, which I must say was more fun than I’ve had in a very long time. Yoko, who is half Japanese, made us Japanese rice with a vegetable stir fry and tofu while Natalie baked a vegan chocolate cake. The best part of this is that this was the menu even before they knew I was vegetarian, and they even let us help.
Conversation was, in what should have been an impossible turn, even better than the meal. I realize the point of staying in hostels is to make new friends and not get lonely, but even in hostels it is rare that I meet someone with whom I can have an honestly good conversation. These girls, on the other hand, were all right up my alley, discussing language and architecture and sociology and art. Clara even subscribes to the New Yorker.
In case that bit about the New Yorker wasn’t an indicator, their English was spectacular. They would frequently devolve into Italian, with Anna only occasionally prodding them back into English, but I found myself enjoying the Italian often as well. In addition to being a beautiful language, it’s close enough to Spanish that I could usually follow along. Also, it made the entire evening all the more authentic. Traveling the world is all well and good, but sometimes you just need a night of laughing over stoves and cutting boards and breaking out into motown hits when they start playing on the radio.
We went for a walk after dinner that, whether by coincidence or design, led right past my hostel. I thanked them all for what is sure to be one of the highlights of my trip and headed inside for a shower and bed.
I met Anna and Yoko the next morning to hang out for a bit before Anna had to catch the train home. Yoko took us to the most spectacular used bookstore I have ever seen in my life, a little sign out front announcing it “The Most Beautiful Bookstore in the World.” It wasn’t lying.
The little shop, organized around an old gondola, is wall to wall books, piled several stacks deep and filling the entire space between the shop front and the canal. There were books in every language on every subject packed in every nook and cranny one could find. It is lucky I made that no buying books promise to myself or I might have bought them all. Instead I settled for more pictures than was entirely necessary, but at least there’s one of me on the staircase of books out back to make my mother happy.
After the bookstore, in which we spent far more time than we’d planned, we stopped in at a nearby library for bathroom breaks and to get Anna a membership card. That was another invaluable part of having the girls around - they could always point us in the direction of the illusive free toilets. Then, with Anna’s departure time approaching, the girls finally deposited me in St. Mark’s Square, the major tourism hub of the city, where I planned to spend the rest of my day. Main draw of Venice or not, there were a few things I wanted to see after all, not least of all the giant Astrological Clock there.
The afternoon started with a tour of the Palazzo Ducale, the grand palace of Venetian Republic where all state business was carried out. I was so excited to see it I even sprang for the audio guide, which I’m proud to report I enjoyed very much. The ticket to the palace included the three museums in St. Mark’s Square though, so following the palace I went and saw those too. One was a series of state rooms from the time of Napoleon, one a museum of Venetian archaeology, and the last an exhibit of the history of eyeglasses housed in the stunning salon of an ancient library. They were all nice, but nothing particular to write home about.
That only left the last major tourist destination, St. Mark’s Cathedral, which I am happy to inform you was free. Or it was supposed to be free. Turns out that after carrying my scarf around Italy for days just in case, I had finally found myself at the one church that wanted me to wear it the same day I’d decided to leave it at home. It was only one euro for the disposable shawl to cover my shoulders, but still… it was the principle of the thing.
When I left the cathedral, I was all ready to head back to the hostel, get some dinner, and hunker down to travel plan and write this post, but then I got distracted. In a stray text conversation with Laura the day before, she had mentioned that the Architecture Biennial was in Venice and she’d heard good things. Well, I hadn’t planned on seeking it out, but when I passed a sign at the entrance on accident announcing that it was free, it seemed a bit silly to continue and pass it up. It was a nice exhibition, if a bit preachy in parts.
My favorite part by far was the top floor of the building which had been given over to a project called “Who’s Afraid of Architecture?” They were in the process of constructing… well, something. Artistic renovations perhaps? But what I liked was the fact that it was more or less the chance to wander undisturbed through the empty rooms of an authentic Venetian home. The views from the windows were spectacular. I might have stayed all evening if closing time hadn’t snuck up on me.
Once the exhibition closed though, I continued on with the original plan of a quiet night at the hostel until I had to catch my train at 1:30 in the morning. Problem there was it didn’t actually show up until an hour after that. I’m not sure why there was a delay. I don’t speak loud speaker Italian. But I’m still recovering from the lack of sleep brought on by frequent stops and a five am transfer. Well, that and the fact that I’ve stayed up far too late the past two nights trying to finish this post. And plan for Vienna. Because really, until last night I had no idea what I was doing.
Point is I’m sitting in Slovenia and should be starting my next post, but it seems I’ve fallen behind. I’ll try to get that one done on the train tomorrow, but it’s another Alps day, and I’m a bit terrified I might fall asleep and miss it as it is. Anyway, I’m not off to bed, with only… six hours to catch up on what would take at least twelve. Mer sleep deprivation.
No comments:
Post a Comment