February 15: San Marco

Well, then! I'm so sorry for the lack of updates. There are still plenty of photos, rest assured, and I will post them. I just came down with a really nasty cold on Monday and between that and starting work again next week, I've been pretty busy.

On my last full day in Venice, it was foggy yet again; I had put off the belltower and San Marco because I wanted a good view, but I wasn't going to leave Venice without climbing it, the weather be damned. So, I took a vaporetto to the piazza and ducked into the basilica while I waited for the campanile to open.



To backtrack—you're probably familiar with St. Mark's Square, as it is one of the largest and most famous piazze in Italy. Wide open (if usually tourist-choked) spaces, absurdly expensive cafés, flocks of pigeons and gulls, vendors selling roses, photographs, t-shirts and souvenirs; it is bordered by the wings of the ducal palace and the ancient administrative buildings, now converted into museums and offices, but the centerpiece is the gilded Basilica di San Marco. Construction of this cathedral began a cool millennium ago and it was completed in the early 17th century. It is a prime example of the Byzantine architectural style, corresponding to the period of Greek rule over what was once the Western Roman Empire; the building exhibits characteristically Byzantine traits such as use of the Greek cross as the floor plan (rather than the Latin cross of later structures), mosaic decoration, and lots and lots of domes.





Having climbed a Duomo or two in my day, I felt a little resentful of the fact that they didn't let me take the stairs to the top of the bell tower of San Marco, but I guess I will give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that there was a really good reason that we all had to take the elevator.

Looking down on the cathedral:



Piazza San Marco between the wings of the palaces (now the Museo Correr):



Looking south towards Giudecca and San Giorgio Maggiore:



I still love how everything just disappears into the fog.

Up next: Bologna!

February 14: Le Isole di Vetro e Merletto

Well, I have made it home safe and sound, and am busy getting readjusted to the American way of life (and making lots of appointments for my neck). I can't say how strange it is to walk into places and speak English! and while I'm sad about the lack of really amazing food, it is nice to be home with my cat.

Since last entry, I went to Bologna for a few days, then returned to Florence for the weekend before going home. Lack of reliable internet means a big backlog of photos to post and things to talk about, so I'll try to share them all over the next few days!

The fog that I mentioned last entry persisted, and if anything, it was even thicker on Monday. It's not the kind of thick-as-pea-soup fog that rolls along the landscape in discrete banks; it's more of a haze, I suppose. It doesn't significantly impede visibility when navigating on foot or along the canals of the island itself. But when you follow the canals to where they empty out into the sea, or when your vaporetto turns out of Canal Grande and you look out to the horizon—nothing. Just the emerald-green sea stretching out and into the mist.



Between Venice proper and Murano, there's a small island called San Michele. The whole island is enclosed in a brick wall, with towers and domes reaching up from between the cypresses. San Michele is a cemetery, and there must be hundreds of thousands of graves there. I got quite lost on it, actually, but it was completely beautiful, with flowers of every kind and color adorning the thousands upon thousands of headstones, and a mystical sort of silence broken only by bird calls.



No photos were allowed on the island itself, but I got a few from the boat.



The next stop was Murano, home of hundreds of glass workshops and a Glass Museum that includes Roman-era glass artifacts as well as artwork and functional pieces from the 16th through 20th centuries, and explanations of various glass-making techniques and materials. Naturally, no photos were allowed in the museum (and most of the shops had big signs saying “NO PHOTOS”).

The character of Murano is similar to Venice proper when it comes to the layout of the island and the style of buildings, though it appears less well-kept.



The central part, where the largest canals intersect by the main piazza and the bell tower, showcases this glass sculpture that is actually pretty ugly. I much prefer the chandeliers.



But there is plenty to appreciate about Murano, and it is definitely not limited to the glittery show room displays.





From there, I caught another vaporetto to Burano. It's a long ride, with nothing between the two islands but miles of fog-veiled ocean and rows of pylons to mark the way, and it is slightly disconcerting (but also really cool) to look back and see that the island you've just come from has completely vanished behind you.

Burano's claim to fame is lace, and the island's main tourist attraction (other than lace-shopping) is a Lace Museum. The museum is currently closed until spring, which would have been nice to know ahead of time, but I am not bitter, because Burano also surprised me in a good way.



Look at the buildings! I've never seen anything like this in Italy, but the buildings are all such bright, varied colors. The entire island is like this, with just about every color you can imagine.



Literally every street is like this.



While I am admittedly not very knowledgeable about or interested in fashion or textiles, and perhaps made some tongue-in-cheek remarks about lace in my trip journal, I will admit that Burano lace is pretty stuff.





It is cool, for lace.



Next on our agenda is Basilica San Marco and the view from the bell tower, so hold tight--when I am a little less jet-lagged, I will post that for you.

Ciaociao!

February 12 & 13: La Regina dell'Adriatico

I left my home in Florence on Saturday morning, having packed about half of my things and left the rest (mostly souvenirs and wine bottles) at my host's place to pick up next weekend. It didn't take me all that long to get to Venezia, changing trains once and watching the subtle changes in the terrain—green Tuscany with its hills swimming in mist, Emilia golden under patches of snow and brambles—until suddenly, we weren't on land at all, and to our left and right there was nothing but water and wooden pylons, stretching out and disappearing into the fog.

After pulling into the station, you walk out the doors and down the steps, and then... water.



I mean, obviously Venice is full of water; canals are the first thing that people think of when you mention the city. I'm not sure why it was such a shock—but it is certainly beautiful. It's beyond beautiful.



There are no cars. None at all, unless you go to Piazzale Roma, the bus station, connected to the mainland via a long causeway. You might not stop and think, really, about the logistics and the mind-boggling reality of it, until you see a police boat, or a vaporetto (the boat equivalent of a city bus), or a taxi-boat. Or an ambulance boat. Seriously; the ambulances are boats! I don't know why this made such an impression on me, I just hadn't thought about it at all until I heard a siren (the ambulances have the same sirens throughout the country) and suddenly realized that it was coming from a boat. Hah!

Canal Grande is the main road, so to speak, dividing the island more or less in half. The vaporetti run mostly through this and around the circumference of the island, with a few making trips to the outlying islands as well. Branching off from Canale Grande are many smaller canals, some with sidewalks and some running right along the edges of buildings and residences.





The water is this amazing, luminous teal, much closer to green than blue. I've never seen anything like it. I don't know what determines the color of an ocean—but it can't be the canals themselves, because the water is this color all the way out to Burano, at least. Is all of the Mediterranean like this? It's crazy!



If you keep walking in a given direction, you eventually hit the edge. Venice isn't all that big, so it's not difficult.



And I do mean the edge. The weather's been a little foggy for the past couple of days, so sometimes it feels more like the edge of the world than the edge of the city.



Anyway, not every street is a canal—there are lots of canals, but there are just as many pedestrian walkways, some as broad as big streets. Or maybe I'm looking at this from the wrong angle; maybe the canals are the streets, and the dry “streets” are just really big, really busy sidewalks with names. Without any cars, it's hard to say. But then, boats kind of are cars here. Gah! Worldview... so different! Cannot apply existing logic!



Anyway.





I took a walk around to Piazza San Marco on Sunday, in addition to several museums. The city museums are fairly expensive, but you can actually buy a pass that costs 18 euro and is good for something like twelve different exhibitions, all part of the Venice Civic Museum Foundation. This includes the good ones, as far as I can tell—several palaces and famous houses, the glass and lace museums on Murano and Burano respectively, Museo Correr by San Marco, and a natural history museum. The pass admits you into each one once and is good for six months, and considering that standard admission probably averages 8-10 euro for each museum, it's a seriously good deal. I saw Ca' Rezzonico (basically a showcase of 18th century Venetian noble lifestyle, plus a painting gallery) and the Museo Correr (a series of themed exhibits on the history, culture, and politics of pre-unification Venice, with lots of cool knicknacks, old maps, model ships, weapons, and an engraved narwhal horn). Afterwards, I hung around Piazza San Marco for a little while, but it was full of tourists and the weather wasn't good enough to justify the long line for the belltower.





Up next: the islands of Murano and Burano!