Padua and Venice

We had to get up early once again to make the trek to Padua. Padua is a hideous city that does not have very much going for it besides a very beautiful chapel. The chapel had some of the coolest frescoes I had every seen though. They had a great big fresco of the last judgment with a lot of cool art of both sides of the judgment. This was all painted my Giotto, a person I had never heard of but have heard plenty about since I have been here. He essentially started renaissance art, no small task. After this we had free time. I went and shopped for groceries because everything in Venice would be so expensive. We took an hour bus ride to Venice, which just looked industrial and ugly at that point. Then we got on a boat and started to get out to the island of Venice. It kept getting more and more gorgeous as we moved up the canal. We finally got to our hotel which was very close to the main square, St. Mark’s. We had dinner when we got there and it was pretty disappointing because we usually have a meat course, and there wasn’t one. We had really good tortellini and tomatoes with mozzarella, but no meat. I couldn’t believe it. After dinner, we decided that Kristen would close her eyes and point to a spot on our map and we would walk there. This is a lot harder than it sounds. Venice is actually criss crossed and cut up by canals and very few of them are crossed at regular intervals by bridges. There are many dead ends and paths that go nowhere. There are no cars there, only handcarts to move products around. We saw the Rialto Bridge at night and it was gorgeous. We hogged the best view point for a long time and the people behind us were getting impatient.

On the first morning that we were there, John and I, who had our own room, woke up early for breakfast. This hotel was amazing because it actually had a good breakfast. Italians normally only have a croissant and some coffee for breakfast, so I have been hurting for a good breakfast for a long time. This place had everything besides bacon and sausages, which I am not going to get greedy for. We explored for a while and then the whole group went to St Mark’s Square and we toured the Duke’s Palace. Our guide was very interesting because he lied a lot about how awesome Venice was. He was telling us it was one of the oldest cities in the world, even though there are probably 100 cities in Italy that are older than it. He was also telling us about this naval battle that was the most important in world history that none of us had ever heard about. After we did our group stuff, some of us split off and went to the islands that are around Venice. We decided that we wanted to go to Burano, which is the place where they make cool doily stuff. We purchased our boat tickets and hopped on the boat. We got off at the stop and walked around the island. I would have never realized it, but we got off on the wrong island. This island was ok, but there was really nothing on it besides some tourists shops and the like. We hopped back on the next boat and went to Burano, which was a very pretty colorful town where we all bought some good gifts for our families. We realized that our boat would be getting back with very little time to spare so we had to hustle back. We raced back and had group dinner, with meat this time, then had free time again. I really didn’t feel like going out due to my lack of sleep recently, so Liz and Dani and I hung out in my room and had some quality time.

The next morning we went to the Museum of Venice where we had the quietest, most boring guide ever. No one really paid any attention to her and we all just kind of wandered off. Nicole’s boyfriend, now fiancée, had flew in and surprised her by proposing in the middle of St. Mark’s Square the day before, so the girls all had something to talk about and were pretty preoccupied. I have heard plenty about everyone’s wedding plans and ideal rings and all that for a while now, but I doubt these chats will abate. After the tour, some of us went for a gondola ride. Our gondolier was cool and I asked him a lot of questions about gondoliering. There are 427 gondoliers in Venice and they all pretty much have their own boats. It is passed down from father to son and you start to learn at about 13. We passed the houses of Mozart and Goethe on the ride out and then crossed the Rialto Bridge, and headed back. It was a lot of money, but it was relaxing and beautiful. It was kind of a rainy day and after our ride we just walked around and window shopped. An island very near Venice, Murano, is world famous for their glass-making abilities, and every shop has unbelievable glass works in them. We took the boat to the bus and then drove four hours home. I finally was able to sleep on the bus so the time passed very quickly. I fell asleep pretty quickly when we got home.