Venice Vidi Vici Redux

April 1, 2006
Saturday

I woke up with backache today, which is unfortunate since the first thing on the agenda is a Venetian rowing lesson. So, we headed back over to the Lagoon side of Giudecca and presented ourselves for the hilarity. The two fundamental differences between Venetian rowing, and English rowing are that the Venetian needs to stand up to see sand bars. Thus, the Venetian can’t row with a pulling motion – imagine the hilarity, pulling back on the oar as the boat slides away in front of you, then sploosh. Back to the drawing board. Therefore, the Venetian rows backwards. Well not quite – you push with the oar paddle down and retrieve with the oar paddle above the water. It’s really cool and I enjoyed it quite a lot. This is the same kind of rowing that the gondoliers use.

While we’re on the subject, here’s my take on the whole ‘gondola’ thing. They’re really cool and an important part of Venetian history. The gondoliers are charming, and the locals say that any woman who falls for one of these has ham over her eyes. Many of them sing, but if you ask one if he sings he will say "maam, there are the lovers and the singers. I do not sing." To be a gondolier you must have at least one Venetian parent. About three quarters of them are married to American women, and most of the rest are married to Northern Europeans (they reportedly like blondes). When a gondolier dies, his license passes to his widow to be redistributed to the next lucky gondolier. I believe that there are no women gondoliers.
When you come to Venice, and you all should – it is very charming, you must bear this in mind. The first few times you see a gondola, or a gondolier (is he gondoleering?) you will be overcome with the emotion of "Cool! A gondola!!". Once the novelty has worn off, start watching the passengers – it’s a hoot. Take for instance the late middle aged couple who apparently thought a gondola ride down the Grand Canal would be fun. Haha! Not so! They forgot about water taxis and carabinieri and vaporettos. We saw them later on a back canal and the clenched up wife looked a little happier, until another water taxi went hurtling by. If you have romantic visions of snogging your way around Venice, think twice. The gondolier is *right* *there* and keeps pointing out landmarks. Another unfortunate couple we saw had paid the extra bajillion euros (ok, more like 100) for the accordion and singer to come along in the boat. Really cool for passers by, but you just invited two more people on your romantic boat ride. The wife in this case loses points for being all clenched and furious. The husband loses points for videotaping the whole thing. Dude, say something sweet to your wife. Lady, declench a bit – this is costing about 200 Euros.

The people we do see having fun are the ones chatting with the gondoliers about the scenery and life in Venice. The other ones having fun are the groups – six people in a gondola chattering their way around Venice.

I do ask one thing though – near Calle de la Fava there is a charming and empty Palazzo – please stop taking flash photography of it. You’re waking me up.
So Lynn and I spent the rest of the day running errands. We found the swimming pool, but nobody was there and they didn’t have times posted. Ticked off, we went for an excellent lunch near the Academmia bridge, and then went over to Piazza San Marco to visit the Correr Museum.

It was outstanding – I highly recommend it! I saw all sorts of Titian, Carpaccio (the painter who liked red, not the raw beef), Bellini, etc.

We were footsore at the end of it, so we decided not to go visit the Doge’s palace or San Marco itself yet. Instead we wandered back over to an area near Barnaba square where I had been sent to find the best mask shop in the city. Ding! Found it. Very cool – this is the place that did the masks for Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut.

After that we were well and truly exhausted, so we headed back home to giggle at gondolas off the balcony.

April 2, 2006
Sunday

Today I walked around all by myself. I set off in no particular direction and basically walked the city with the frustrated tourists (because not *all* the shops were open). I ended up at the site that I’m studying for a precedent study in school – along the southern edge of Venice, from Zattere over to Spirito Sancto. So I took some notes and some photographs and may have accidentally eaten some gelato.

Afterwards I wandered home to find the door stuck shut, so I wandered off again and might have accidentally had a couple of cups of coffee.

Next time I came home, I camped on the step until Lynn found me and let me in. Our locks have been acting weird and my key stopped functioning briefly. It’s fine now. Lynn isn’t though – the poor thing has been very very ill all day. Looks like the dreaded Disease has returned.

April 3, 2006
Monday

Today we woke with the usual creaks and groans of those in uncomfortable beds. My bed is actually very comfortable, but I now have a permanent ache in my lower back. I liken it to sleeping in a hammock in a box (as the bruises on my left elbow attest). It takes usually two hours to get four women through the shower (taking turns, Shahv), breakfasted, espressoed, then to the meeting site. Today, thanks to a miracle of luck and excellent forsight on behalf of our professors, we only needed an hour and fifteen minutes.

We’d been told to meet at Bartolomeo, a campo (it’s like a piazza, but it’s not a piazza, it’s a campo – see if *that* makes sense) that we had never heard of, and likely never been to. Much map searching resulted in an excellent revelation. Bartolomeo is the campo on the right side of the Rialto bridge. About 200 feet from our apartment. Yay!

For once, all the people with apartments near the studio had to schlep their butts across Venice. One of them was overheard complaining that it took nearly 45 minutes. Well yeah… it’s a long walk, plus a wait for a boat, plus a boat ride, plus another long walk. If you are very lucky and the rubberneckers are still in bed, and the boat arrives perfectly on time, you can make it in just under 30 minutes.

Not that I’m complaining, mind you. On the average day when I’m not commuting to the Rialto, I’m commuting past San Marco – one of the prettiest plazas mankind has ever made.
Lynn stayed home to babysit the disease, and hopefully make it so that we don’t have another breakout of the Disease, and the rest of us walked very slowly around the key sites in central Venice (Rialto, Fish Market, San Lorenzo, Sta. Maria Formosa, St. Marks). I had been to all of these sites multiple times, but some of the people who live on the Giudecca had never been to any of them, so it was fun to see their reactions. Venice is extraordinarily cool and picturesque – a liquid city rotting gently into the sea.

Our professor bears a brief mention here. When I started taking classes at the University many many moons ago, my first ever class was History of Architecture to 1750. I’ve no idea why I took it, but all I can say is that it seemed like a good idea at the time. Sort of like why I took Latin at the same time too. In this class I was introduced to many of the wonders of the ancient and semi-ancient world by one of the premier art and architecture historians who have ever lived. This is the class where I first heard about St. Mark’s square and the infamous bell tower that fell down one propitious day in 1906 – squashing some precious architecture, and harming no people. Don’t worry, they rebuilt it. Well, the professor in that class is the self same guy leading us on these tours. All hail. He’s funny, charming, encyclopedic, and slightly above scale. How do I mean "above scale"? Well, for the first few days taking his class, where he was standing wayyy at the front of that musty auditorium over in Nicholson hall, I thought he was of normal size. Then, one day, I wondered why a midget was standing next to him – and then I realized. I finally saw that the Professor was a giant, albeit a gentle one. He’s about 7 feet tall and perfectly proportioned. When his arm is stretched out pointing at the horizon, I can walk under it without ducking. Therefore, there was much hilarity when he announced that he would not be carrying a yellow umbrella for us all to follow in the swirling crowds, as he would be quite easy enough to see without one. His delightful daughter also came along, as she had been to Venice quite a few times already and could show us the tricks of the trade, as it were.

When we were done with the tour we had some *gasp* *horror* *amazement* free time. We’re not used to this, so you must bear with my excitement. I spent the afternoon running errands – I needed some more paper and pens, wanted to go see if the pool was finally open for business, I had to take some more notes for the project due on Thursday, and I had to run by the grocery store for a few essentials. Giddy with freedom, I thoroughly enjoyed my afternoon and evening, then collapsed into my boingy hammock for a good night’s sleep.

Note: We have insects in our apartment. Little invisible flying ones that have managed to drive Lynn and Sandra absolutely bananas, and have left us all with an array of attractive bitemarks all over ourselves. I had eight at last count. Charming.

Bzzz..

April 4, 2006
Tuesday

Similar to yesterday, except we went to some important churches in the area rather than important public spaces. They were predictably gorgeous, peppered with Carpaccios, Veroneses, etc. Usually they’ve got these pictures in very dim bits of the churches, and you have to pay a euro or so to light them up. Great. It’s either too dark to see, or totally glared out. Sorry Mum, they don’t let us take pictures L.

Tuesday afternoon was much like Monday afternoon, except the errands were different and involved more homework. We’re doing studies of "quotidian" Venice. That’s just a posh way of saying daily Venice or normal Venice. We’ve been each assigned one of the famous public spaces in Venice, with the object of drawing and describing it so that we can make a catalogue of space types for Venice. There’s the piazza (only one actually, St Mark’s, the rest are campos), campos, fondamentas (walkways next to water), and bridges. I ended up with a long bit of the fondamenta along the southern side of the Dorsoduro district. I didn’t actually end up being too happy with my analysis – I was very distracted while I was there because I thought I was coming down with a cold and it was south-facing and very sunny and hot. This used to be the bit of Venice where the used to hoist lumber out of the lagoon that had been floated down from the surrounding area, and dry it out in the nice sunshine. Now, it’s where tourists get sunburns, gelato, bad food, or visit the Swiss Embassy.

April 5, 2006
Wednesday

Up dim and early and on the train to Vicenza. We spent the day looking at the great works of Palladio.

Back in ancient times, when I was taking my first architectural history class, I had the good fortune to fall in love with a building. The Villa Rotunda. It’s a spectacular building, and I think I loved it because the picture in my history book was on a lovely sunny day and it looked like a little bit of heaven on Earth. Especially since it was November and cold when I first saw the picture. Since then I have been desperate to see this place, and despite the fact that I woke up with a crashing headache and sniffles (behold… Disease), I was *not* going to miss it. After a breakfast of espresso and ibuprofen, and a lulling train ride, I started to feel halfway human again.

We arrived in Vicenza, where I discovered that the person who currently owns (and lives in) the villa only opens it to the public on Wednesday mornings. They get a tax break from the government to do so, and the charge an arm and a leg to let you in to look at it.
Behold one of the negotiations to get us in

Us- Group of 34 please.
Them- Ok, but you can’t have the group rate.
Us- Why? We’re a group.
Them- By "group" we only mean school group.
Us- Well, we *are* a school group.
Them- But you’re not all under the age of 26.
Us- Grrr..

Fascists.

So, less an arm and a leg, we finally got let in.

Despite the cold weather, the grouchy owner, the headache, the sniffles, and the blasé classmates (some were entranced, others were rather ho-hum about the whole deal), it was perfect. It was enchanting. It’s got to be good, to look nice on a cloudy glum day. It’s the simplest of designs – a cube with a dome on top and temple fronts on each of the four faces. It is simply decorated, clean, and perfectly proportioned.

Unfortunately the interior has been entirely frescoed over with enthusiastic and wonderful, but inappropriate to the spare surroundings, paintings of various scantily clad pagan gods, goddesses, and lovely young men in not very much armor. Rowr. Hardly what the architect intended, but that’s how it goes.

Pity the owner is such a grouch.

Well, we spent the rest of the rainy icky day visiting variuos palazzos in Vicenza that were designed by famous guys, then caught the train home.

Oh, I forgot to mention the train strike. The Italians are so very civilized – fill-your-old-evian-bottles-with-wine stores, espresso all over the place, tasty fishes, and polite train strikes.
I’m not kidding. The train strike was scheduled between 10 am and 6 pm, at which point service was to resume as normal. It was announced on the news so that people could plan ahead. Personally, I think they all had dentist appointments and haircuts scheduled and wanted to ride around on their scooters saying "Ciao!" with their helmets off looking cool.
Other strikes are similarly polite. Take for instance the vaporettos (basically Venetian buses). When they strike, they are fully aware that they strand a whole bunch of people on the Giudecca which is only accessible by boat. So, to make it so that no one is too inconvenienced, they send a boat out to boing back and forth between the old town and Giudecca, so people can still get back and forth.

Yes, I like Venice a lot.

However, once we got back, dashed to the grocery store, ran the rest of the way home, and made dinner, we were all exhausted and had to sit down to work on the rather large homework assignment due the next day. Groan.

I’m not too thrilled with the work I did, but then again, I never am.

April 6, 2006
Thursday

Woke up early and met the Professor over at San Giorgio – an island just east of Giudecca that has a good church and a couple of gorgeous (if badly lit) paintings. It was raining buckets as we headed over there, so we were very cold and wet when we arrived.
Then it got worse.

We stopped over next at another famous church, and by that time the wind had picked up. It was about 45 degrees outside, raining sideways, and windy – gusting up to about 48 mph.
Class was then cancelled. The lagoon was churning and fuming, and we kept seeing umbrellas skidding by like collapsed insects. As the day wore on, all the dumpsters in town filled with these leggy catastrophes and if it had not been so windy that our breath was blown away, we would have laughed.

We were on the big east west canal that is between Giudecca and the old town, so the wind was worse there, and we staggered inelegantly down to the internet place to check email, then next door for soup. My jeans didn’t dry out for over 10 hours. Not from the soup, from the rain.
We couldn’t just bail and go home and have baths and cups of coffee because we had presentations to give that afternoon on our homework.

Shivering, and with blue fingers, we finally made it home at about 8:00 and I made onion soup, then off to bed to try and warm up.

It turns out that the locals say this wind comes from Trieste and it can sometimes come every other day for a very long time.