Hey Mr. Gondolier Man, Pull a Boat For Me...

In which I go to Venice and have an awesome time! 

This was my last free weekend on the program (sadface) so I decided to go to Venice... and also Padova which is 30 minutes from Venice by train and has the really gorgeous Scrovegni Chapel. I went with Trevin from the program and we met up with a friend of a friend from the States, who is studying in Seville for a year, Chris. Chris and I have been chatting back and forth a bunch since we're in the same time zone. 

Trevin and I left Thursday after class, around 3, and took a forever bus to Padova. Some other kids from the program were on our bus going to Bologna for a concert and then on to Venice, which took 3 hours. And then our bus stopped in Bologna for ages while the driver had numerous cigarettes. He told us we'd be late to Padova, which was partly fair because there was huge traffic on the way to Bologna, but then we waited for ages and we weren't even that late, compared to what our itinerary told us we would be. So confusing. We met Chris at the train station, just around the corner from where the bus let us off. 

Friday, we went to the Scrovegni Chapel to make an appointment for the next day. Because the Chapel was seriously damaged during WWII and when the tore down the palace next to it and when the arch/porch thing on the front collapsed, you have to sit in a room with an air purifier for 15 minutes before you can go in and they only let 25 people in at a time. So we had to make an appointment. For 9 am Saturday, but oh well. 

Then...

We then proceeded on to Venice! Which was hot, but not as hot as the last time I was there, where I had to shower twice a day because of the overwhelming humidity. I'm convinced we were there at the best time. Of course, it was still crawling with tourists (and the guy at the bag check at San Marco tried to talk to us in German), but not nearly as badly as it was last time. It took us ages to find San Marco, because Venice is a maze but we had a nice lunch on the way. San Marco is as awesome as I remember, except even more so because I'm older and know more about art and what not now. The mosaics on the roof are just as impressive as before, and the floor even more so. It's a complete hodge-podge of awesome patterns. Plus, we just happened to be there when someone was playing around on the organ. I have the best luck. 

... and now!

Afterwards, we went to the Accademia to see some art! We'd heard that the Vetruvian Man was there, and sometimes on display, but the ticket dude told us that we would never get to see it, because it's never on display. So either he was a jerky liar, or the internet was. But it was still interesting! Less interesting for me than going to Florence, because we'd talked about a lot of the art that we saw in Florence, but Trevin and I had fun picking out things we'd each talked about in our separate art classes from the paintings. This one has ancient Roman style clothing, the Madonna in that one looks iconic rather than realistic. 

Since all that took us the better part of the day, we headed back to Padova to relax and zen out a bit before dinner, because we were all pretty tired from walking all day - I'm still working on breaking in my nice sandals, so my feet were seriously contemplating popping out some big blisters, but I managed talked them out of it. Mostly by wearing my shoes that are like foot hugs for the next two days... The boys were much more whiny about their poor feetsies than I was, let me tell you. 

Saturday we had to get up pretty early to get to the Chapel in time for our appointment, but it was totally worth it! The Chapel was built by Enrico Scrovegni to save his father from Hell for being a usurer (and also probably himself) and Giotto painted the whole thing in some ridiculously short period of time like a two or three years, and the Chapel is considered one of the masterpieces of Western art, according to Wikipedia. And it is really amazing. Giotto is one of the first to put serious emotion in his paintings - for example, he's got tears rolling down the cheeks of the mothers in Massacre of the Innocents. On the wall of the entrance, he painted a huge Last Judgement, where he puts Enrico and his dad among the saved. Apparently one of the dudes on the saved half is also Giotto, which seems a little arrogant to me, but I will forgive him because it is beautiful. And I've decided that when I grow up and have a house that I can paint, I'm totally painting my bedroom ceiling that deep deep blue with gold stars I see in a lot of churches here, and twice in ones Giotto has done. 

The whole trip was very well timed - in and out in 30 minutes, because you only get 15 to look at the chapel! We met a nice couple from California, UCBerkley where he does something with traffic flows and what not and had a good chat about travel and Europe and Italy specifically.

Murano! Island of Glass! (Okay I made that name up, but it is...)

We hopped a train to Venice and Trevin and I met a kind of irritating lady who was a professor of Cinema Studies in Istanbul. She was friendly enough, just not particularly charitable to all the kids on the train going to see Bologna play Venice. We got off in Venice about the time we got out of the hotel the day before, and then had to wait in line for ages (see my previous post about Italian inefficiency) to get a ticket for the vaporetto and then wait more ages for the actual boat to take us to Murano. 

A bit about Murano. A long time ago, there were glass artisans in Venice, but the Ventian Republic decided that burning down buildings accidentally was no good (because remember you have to get glass hot to make things out of it) so they banished everyone to this island called Murano. But then they realized they had something pretty freaking awesome, as the artisans got better, and forbid them to ever leave the Ventian Republic. Which they ignored, as people often do when you forbid them to do things that they want to do. But they were pretty rich, and Murano is still famous for it's glass. We did see this one guy make a horse out of glass (a kinda crappy horse, but still), where he pulled it like toffee, spinning it constantly so it didn't sag in one direction or the other, and just sort of creating legs and a tail out of thin air.

Trevin may or may not have been cheated out of some money though. He was buying a very specific souvenir for someone (a glass lion) and the guy spoke in English, so when Trevin clarified that the price was fifteen the guy said yes, but turned out he meant fifty. Which don't actually sound similar in Italian: quindici and cinquanta respectively. Despite the fact that I screw them up all the time in Italian, most people don't and I have no logical reason for why I do. But Trevin, the trooper, just sort of took it in stride. The dude cut down the price a bit since it turned out Trevin was confused, and Trevin pointed out that what he was looking for was pretty darn specific, and in truth, we didn't see very many glass lions anywhere else, and when we did they were much uglier. I may or may not have bought some souvenirs, you'll just have to wait and see.

We met up with a couple other girls from the program for a bit on Murano who were staying on a nearby island for the weekend, and that was a nice change. Don't get me wrong, I adore Trevin and Chris, but just 30 minutes with a bit more estrogen was really nice. Plus it meant an easing up on the Canadian jokes and the taking-advantage-of-Rachel's-trusting-nature jokes. They call me 'gullible', but I prefer 'trusting'. 
Chris had to leave fairly early that night, because his flight out of Milan on Sunday was at 10 am, and it would have taken too long to get from Padova to Milan in for him to leave Sunday morning, so we returned kinda early. We had a nice but not too pricey dinner at a restaurant where I'm sure they suspected us of trying to dine and dash. Chris had his duffel with him so he could go to the train station, and Trevin was dressed in his usual shorts and a Family Guy tshirt so that didn't help. But the waiter just hovered around the whole meal! That didn't stop me from having a delicious desert with strawberries and raspberries and custard cream and something like shortcake. And taking our sweet time in polishing off our bottle of wine.

There are too many pictures up there, so the Chapel goes here.

Sunday we had to check out fairly early, especially considering our train wasn't until almost 4 pm. So we sort of spent the day bumming around Padova. We saw the Duomo - really ugly on the outside, kinda nice on the inside but completely white, which is kinda strange - and got flipped off by an angry street vendor when we refused to buy his merchandise, and just kept saying "no" when he came up to us. We also spent a few hours lying in the sun near the Scrovegni Chapel. Italians don't really do parks that much, in my experience, so being able to lie in the grass of one of the only parks I've seen was super lovely. Excluding the strange eastern European couple grooming each other and making out behind us. I mention their origin only because they were not Italian - Italians would totally make out and clamor on top of each other in a public park, but not groom.

The trip back was fairly uneventful, except for us being in the wrong compartment of the nicest train we've seen. An Australian man was very rude to Trevin, who has a cold, regarding his sniffling, but a friendly Italian man told us we were in the wrong seats so I was saved from having to punch his face in. Mostly I just wanted to punch him because I was tired and travel is stressful, but also I've had such good experiences overall, it just really rubbed me the wrong way.

Can you guess what I'll say next? It was really awesome to come home to Siena! Surprise! But my Nonna told me she missed me, because when I'm gone she wanders around the house and la ragazza isn't there! It was so sweet! And she washed all my stuff. Like all of it. My mittens which I haven't worn in months, and my toque, and even my rain jacket which I've been terrified of even trying to wash so I won't tell you how long I've had it lest you be grossed out. I'm going to miss her terribly, she's so sweet.

At which point, I suppose I should say a few words about my impending departure, which is in twelve days technically, but more like eleven since I go to Rome on the 22nd before flying out at the crack of dawn (no seriously, 4 am at the airport for a 6.15 flight) on the 23rd. Today was our last meeting with our program leader, Karen, which was extraordinarily sad for me, and really sort of brought home the fact that I will not be here in two weeks. It's weird because I feel like it has been absolutely no time at all and an eternity. I remember standing in the airport saying, "It's only 3 months, it's approximately 100 days... It will fly by..." and not believing a word of it. I remember the drive from Rome to Siena, feeling completely empty because I had no idea what I was getting into and was too tired to feel anything at all. I remember Valle d'Aosta and Assisi and Florence and it feels like someone else did it and also like I just got back. Weird, I know. 

So here I am, waiting to come back. People have been asking me why I'm not staying, taking advantage of being in Europe. The answer is I'm burned out. I'm tired, and I want to go home and relax and be with people who I know really well. It's not that I don't love travel or that I haven't come to love the people on this trip/in this program, because I do and I have. It's just that I am a person who is very slow to trust, and the next time I travel (and I will do it again), I'm going well prepared and with close friends. Hopefully. And I've actually had people tell me that they are slightly envious I'm going home now... I mean, I'm equally envious they're staying longer! But I think we're all a little homesick. 

Blah blah growing as a person blah blah. I know it, you might know it too. Let's just hope it sticks around. 

Love and misses. 

<3