Trip to Venice! (Pictures Added)

Venice was a great first trip to make. It was the whole group plus Maria Pia, one of the coordinators of the program, and Ester and Elisa the two language teachers. We took the bus to the train station to meet at 9:15, and the train left at around 9:25 I believe. Padova public transportation is a little confusing at first but mostly it is convenient, and we were able to get to the train station with plenty of time to spare. When we did get on the train we had a little trouble finding seats so we just stood for the first 10 or 15 minutes. Eventually we realized were just in the wrong car so we walked through the cars and found seats. It is about the same distance from Padova to Venice as it is from Evanston to Chicago, which definitely makes me look forward to possibly going back again. The train station in Venice opens right out to the canal so you really know that you’re there as soon as you get there. It was a beautiful humid day when we arrived, and we met our tour guide right in front of the station. I don’t remember his name, but he was pretty funny and spoke to us both in Italian and English. The first place we headed was to the Famous Jewish ghetto in Venice, where I guess we arrived a little late for our scheduled official tour, so our general tour guide gave us a little background information. Then to kill time/ because there are no boring attractions in Venice, we went to the Chiesa Di Santa Lucia, where the Body of Saint Lucia is kept. It was a beautiful church, modest by Venetian standards (Think San Marco) but still beautiful and breath taking. It is interesting that despite the fact that I am not religious, I always feel some sort of special something when I enter all the churches in Italy. So after checking out the body of Santa Lucia (Who is the patron saint of eyes, so there were lots of pictures and notes of people who wanted to improve their vision) we headed back to the ghetto area.

We took too long at the church and so we were kind of late again, but the tour guide at the Ghetto museum sort of reluctantly took us to begin our tour. On the tour we went through 3 different synagogues two of which were no longer in use and one that is used in the winter after Passover (You’d think maybe there was some specific religious reason for this, but it is because that building has heating. Hah). The other Synagogue in Venice was currently in use so laypeople are not allowed in. It was interesting hearing about the history of the Jews, and it turns out that the word Ghetto doesn’t even mean neighborhood but actually means Metal refinery, which is what happened in the area in Venice previous to them housing the Jews there in the 16^th Century. All of the information was interesting but our tour guide was kind of impatient because we were late, and it was boiling hot and everyone was hungry so it could have gone a little smoother.

After the tour, we stopped into a very authentic Venetian restaurant for lunch. All 27 of the people in our group sat in the same room at 4 different tables, and it was definitely one of the points at which I felt most typically American. Generally speaking though, because there were so many tourists in Venice I felt less American than normal speaking some Italian. It’s tough to speak Italian with the other Americans though because it is so exhausting speaking Italian all the time with the family. Anyway, lunch was a lot of fun. Our table was very boisterous and some people maybe had a little too much wine, but it was enjoyable nonetheless. The first course, the antipasto, was three typical dishes from the Veneto. There was polenta, which is basically really salty grits but more yellow, and there was baccala, which is basically fish paste made with cod and oil and milk (like on Molto Mario). The last dish many people were not super fond of, but I actually thought it was pretty good. It was onions, nuts, and raisins with whole sardines all marinated in Balsamic Vinegar. The sardines were very fishy looking and were meant to be eaten whole, skin bones and all. I had no problems with this and other people found this a little strange I guess, so I caught some flak for it. Then the next course, a primo piatto, was a shrimp pasta with fresh made pasta and a light sauce. It was quite good, especially the fresh pasta. Finally, we had dessert which was, of course, tiramisu. By this point I was ridiculously stuffed, and I only managed to eat around half of the dessert (I guess sharing is not widely practiced in Italy).

Post lunch, we headed over toward San Marco Square. As we were walking, everyone noticed the fact that the sky had darkened considerably. At first we thought it was just cloudy, but it got increasingly ominous as we approached San Marco. By the time we got there it was clear that it was going to rain any minute. There were some black colored clouds and the wind picked up, and just as our tour guide was letting us roam free for the rest of the day, it started pouring down rain. We waited out under some arches near the chiesa. It wasn’t a very long storm but it was pretty dramatic. Lightning lit up the sky and the thunder was booming like cannons. There were spigots that funneled the rain water into powerful streams, and if you accidentally got caught under one of those it would be drench city. When the rain stopped, a few of us who had been separated from the group met up with some other people and we started what I would call wandering. We wandered quite a bit, saw a lot of pretty views, and ended up at the Arsenal, a historical military base in part of the town. We sat there for a while and admired the area, and then we wandered a little more. We sat right on the water’s edge for a while and took in the beautiful views, the huge cruise ships and the waves lapping up on the stairs. The ultimate goal of the day in Venice was to find this Jazz club where two of the students from Tulane in New Orleans knew a guy who was going to be playing. On the way, we stopped and took a few beautiful pictures from the Rialto bridge and saw some different parts of the city.

When we finally did find the jazz club, there wasn’t really anywhere to sit and there were probably 15 of us trying to find spots, so some of us decided to try finding another Jazz club that someone had seen on the way called novecento jazz club (900 jazz club). It turns out, this “Jazz Club” was just a restaurant which played jazz music on its speaker system. So in other words, it was not at all a jazz club. In any case, it was still a nice dinner, there were 8 of us sitting at 2 different tables and it was the relaxing part of the Venice trip. It was a little frustrating to hear that the other groups of people had gone inside San Marco and seen museums and done other things while the group that I was a part of mostly just wandered around, but the great thing about Venice is that it is really close, so I feel like I will definitely be back. It is comparable to a Metra ride from Evanston to Chicago except way more Italian.

For the perfect end to the Venetian day, there was a live band playing right outside the train station when we were headed back there to catch a train back to Padova. They were really cool and upbeat, and everyone was dancing and having a good time. The band was from Scotland I think, and we talked with one of the guitarists briefly after they had finished their set. The name of the band was Isosceles, or at least I think that is what he said, so if you are interested you could look them up.

After we got back to Padova we had to wait for a bus for quite a while. We thought there was a certain number coming at a certain time but we had read the schedule wrong. We met a nice older women who helped us figure out what would be the best bus to take, and then debated over taking a cab before finally deciding to just stick it out. We met an Austrian guy who had studied at the University of Padova but graduated. He talked in Italian with Peter, the person who is most fluent of all of us, and then he asked all the girls in the group if anyone wanted to Marry him. Then when he got on his bus, we said goodbye to him and he said “Who’s coming with me?” Katie, one of the girls in our group yelled out “Nessuno!” which means no one, which was hilarious because he was right there. That was the comical end of our day in Venice.