Venice, and That's a Wrap

On the 14^th we took an arduous train journey from Cinque Terre back through Florence and over to Venice. We only spent one full day in Venice, but it was a nice end to our tour through Italy. The only unfortunate part of the deal was that central Europe has been hit by an episode of “early winter” with which follow symptoms including record low temperatures, unexpected snow fall, and incessant complaining.

Since Venice is in the northeast corner of Italy, bordering Switzerland and Austria, it was definitely affected by this unhappy bout of cold. No more capri pants and t-shirts for me; I had to whip out all the defenses I had with me, which weren't plentiful. It did not deter us (much) though, we still took our day and walked all around Venice. Over bridges, through alleys, into pizzerias.

See Venice pics here.

Venice is a nice town. I think its entire purpose at this point in its long history is to exist completely for the amusement of tourists. I'm pretty sure any semblance of the original culture is gone, replaced by a hundred thousand souvenir shops and exorbitant prices. That said, the place still retains its uniqueness. Obviously it's a city built on water; it's ancient, it's got a maze of canals, it's littered by bridges. Besides it being seemingly entirely occupied by tourists, it's still a comfortable place. It's clean, vibrant, and has an air of richness about it that I think even the most travel-weary can enjoy. I think it would actually be one of the easiest places to visit if you were making a trip across the pond; it's like Europe 101.

One thing I found endearing (that could also possibly be interpreted as infuriating) is that it is simultaneously extremely simple and completely impossible to get around this island. What I mean by that is that the whole place is a tightly woven web of very old alleyways and canals. There are no cars. No streets are at ninety degrees from each other. There is no grid, no order, no rhyme, no reason. If you want to walk around, you just start walking and pretty soon you'll have gotten around – easy as that. If you want to visit somewhere in particular, however, good luck.

Kane and I have excellent senses of direction and we had maps and there was no way to get anywhere (except the train station, thank goodness, that's a straight shot) in a timely or direct fashion. The streets are at all kinds of angles so even the keenest sense of direction is easily thrown. You constantly find yourself in dead ends, either facing a building or a canal. The street signs are perhaps even more minimal than in the rest of Italy because they apparently don't think it's worth the bother to label tiny alleys, even though that's the only kind of roads there are.

I found that if you're willing to just go with the flow, it's totally fun and extremely entertaining to just meander around for hours at a time. If you're trying to get somewhere on a schedule, you might be better off jumping in a big canal and swimming there because at least the waterways are marked on the maps.

Another interesting thing about Venice are the exports. I don't mean sugar cane and coffee beans or whatever, I mean all the junk at the souvenir/nick knack shops. We've been all around this continent and you typically see the same old crap wherever you go: post cards, magnets, scarfs, t-shirts, candy, etc. Some places will have a particular type of local craft (read: junk) that's on offer, very rarely is it impressive or tempting for me to buy.

But Venice has approximately a billion shops selling almost exclusively masks or glass goods. Apparently it is a local tradition to make glass (I guess it's called Murano glass) and they have really gone wild with the concept. Entire stores are filled with colorful glass figurines, ash trays (or change trays, as I like to use them), beads, necklaces, clocks, vases, and on and on. And then another ton of stores are devoted entirely to theatrical-looking masks. Glittery masks, porcelain masks, masks with hats, masks with huge noses. I'm not sure why this is the case, nor am I sure what one does with one of these masks (I did see one Asian woman trying them on over her face, which I found funny). They were pretty though. I think some of them had a mounting such that it can hang as a wall decoration, but most of them looked life-sized, like a person could wear them. Where? For Halloween or something? I may never know. But it's ok, they were pretty to look at.


So, we had fun for our short stint in Venice, and then we boarded our longest train ride of the trip (7 hrs total) from Venice to Munich. It was better than flying though, I can say that. We spent three days sitting around in Jon's apartment, vegging out appropriately, and then spent our final day in Munich hanging out with two of our friends from Australia, Damien and Grace, who are now picking up where we're leaving off and traveling all around Europe. It was so awesome to see them and we hope they can come visit California next year! Now we're off to NY to three final days before returning to the West Coast!!