Venice: Day 2

March 20th 2012

The alarm went off at 7:30… too early in my opinion! I got up, got dressed and headed to breakfast to get nutritions for the long day ahead. I ate SO much food. Cake, eggs, bacon, rolls, kiwi, yogurt… I was stuffed by the end! I grabbed an apple for later and Isabel and I headed out to San Giovanni Paolo to meet Peter’s group.

When we arrived we were the first ones there so wandered around the square, took pictures, and looked in the shops windows. 9:00 rolled around and no one from our group was in sight… o dear. Isabel looked at the schedule and we were supposed to be there at 9:30. Oops! So we sat on a park bench and watched the Italian world go by! Peter walked by and saw us so we chatted on the way over the rest of the group across the square. Everyone introduced themselves (Peter lectures at Christies but he didn’t names). A lot of the undergrads were late so he started without them, and unfortunately they showed up (the few masters in my group all were hoping that they wouldn’t come).

We stood in the square and talked about the church, the scuola (that was now a hospital), and the equestrian statue. After that we walked back the way we came and stopped in front of a posh hotel. Peter had asked them if we could come in and see the hotel’s interior and they had agreed. It used to be a palace and the inside had 18th century frescos. The staircase was painted by Longhi, which was surprising his paintings are all tiny! The lady at the hotel showed us the main reception room, and then the ballroom. The ballroom was perfect… we walked into this amazing room and they had Italian music playing. It was awesome! She let us look around there for a bit, and then we headed out.

We had a 5 minute coffee break before heading to the Ca’ d’Oro. It was a palace also, but it was gutted by a rich ballerina and was now a museum with none of its original interior. The only original part was the downstairs. The palace had been covered in gold leaf and lapis laserie (an expensive blue stone) but the canal tends to ruin things, and the gold leaf and blue coloring fell off. Way to go! The museum was kinda boring inside once we got past the original stuff.

After the Ca’d’Oro (House of Gold) it was LUNCH! Isabel and I found a sandwich shop with seats! Woo! I had a ham and mushroom calzone… yum! Something I should mention…. On this Venice adventure there were some things that were always up in the air. We never knew when our next food would be, the next chair, or the next toilet so if you spotted any of the above you grabbed it!

We ate pretty fast and still had some free time. I spotted a cute little store selling for dogs and cats. I was curious so I went over to investigate. Inside was the cutest man who looked so SO very excited to have someone in his store. He starts rattling off Italian. I didnt get most of it (another thing I forgot! Venice slurs everything together unlike the Romans! So the region difference was throwing my little Italian skills off!) I said something about me only speaking only a little Italian and he attempted to switch to English. Fail. So I ended up talking in broken Italian and he was talking in broken English. Basically he asked what type of dog I had. I said big. Then:
“In Venice??”
“No”
“there are no big dogs in Venice”
Then we started looking at dog treats and he was explaining each one to me. He was so funny! I decided to make a purchase so Coop got little shoes made of cow hide or something like that! I got by with my Italian (struggling) and he struggled with his English! It was so fun!

After lunch we meant Peter and walked over to the ghetto of Venice. Peter told us the history and then we moved on. It was a quick little visit! Then we saw Tineretto’s house (he was a painter) and then headed to a church. The day before Andrew had gotten us all church passes that we would need throughout the trip. Guess who had taken it out of her bag the night before… yup Im that stupid. So I had to pay 1.50 euro to get in. I guess it wasn’t that big of a deal!

Our last stop of the day was an AMAZING baroque church. We couldn’t take pictures in it which stunk because it was AWESOME! The walls looked like it had damask wallpaper on them, and the entire church screamed baroque. I LOVED it! After that we were FREE! We headed back to the hotel and… yup you guessed it! Free presecco and cake! We all chatted together and then at 6:30 I went out to dinner with a group of girls. It was just ok… the portion was small and it wasn’t all that amazing. After I decided to head to San Marco’s square to see it at night. It was awesome!! I made it there and back without getting lost (I was really proud of myself!) I got back around 9:30, chatted with Freya and headed to bed at about 11 or so. It had been another long day!

I forgot to mention that it was so SO sunny both Monday and Tuesday! We didn’t need our coats really, and the skies were bright blue! Perfect for walking around all day!

P.S the picture is of the original part of the Ca' d'Oro