Through the Canals

Once again, apologies for the delay - this time it isn't travel that is holding me up - its work! We have less than three weeks left to crank out our project before displaying it for artsy folks, our clients, the city officials, Peter Greenaway (a famous film director), and many local architects. If time permits, I'll blog more about that under the project section.

But back to the story - Venice!

So we get to Venezia in the morning by train. Luckly, our hostel was already booked and close by San Marco. Grabbing tickets for the water bus, we headed around the island to our stop, passing by multi-colored boats, rows of houses, warehouses, and two huge cruise ships. Arriving back on land, we wound our way through a series of alleyways and small roads to the address for the hostel, only to find ourselves in front of a worn, old, and kinda sketchy building. A small sign next to the door first caught our eyes, saying that the key was in a hotel back down the road. Trekking back through the maze, we found the hotel up a very narrow and steep staircase, and found that some of us would be staying there, while the other half of the group would head back to the other building. I was one of the group staying there, so I dropped my stuff off, collected my camera, my pencil, and my sketchbook and head across the nearest canal in the direction of of Piazza San Marco where we would meet Tom, our professor. Meeting up with him after a short detour for panini and gelato, we proceeded to wander, sketching San Marco, then headed off to find the holiest of the holys - a Scarpa project. Scarpa taught a school in Venice and redesign the schools' entrance. After gawking and sketching for a hour around the school's entrance, we crossed a Calatrava bridge, another architectural beauty. We had a hour or so break on our own, so I took advantage of that time to get completely lost in a series of small alleyways and arched bridges over canals. My friend who'd accompanied me and I were so successful in this endeavor that we had some trouble finding our way back to the Piazza - only to bump into the group on our back. We then all traveled to another Scarpa project down another series of alleyways, however, this one wasn't as impressive, since it was closed. But we did have some fun taking pictures of the bridge to the project. I'll be excited to go back with the Rome program when, hopefully, the actual space will be open.
After our exciting time with the bridge, the group split up, with some of us going on another water taxi around the island, others going back to San Marco. I decided to go with a handful of others on an adventure to find cheap wine and our way back to the hostel. It had cooled off that afternoon and by that time dark clouds spoke ominously of rain. We ended up meeting half of the group back at the canal in front of the hostel, only to find that they had similar success with finding vino. Did I mention it was fourth of July and thus a proper excuse to drink excessively? Oh, well we certainly proceeded to fulfill our American duties. With three bottles passed around about 10 of us, we stood on the bride, looking down the canal to the horizon, where a great thundering storm cloud slow grew and approached us. Before we knew it the lighting was upon us and wine in hand, thunder clashing, we patriotically began singing the national anthem. Fireworks for the fourth? Try a thunderstorm in Venice. Just after completing our beautiful tribute to our home country and looking like stupid tourists for the local on-lookers, the rain hit, and hit hard, with a group of us running back to the hostel, while others when for a walk in the rain. Now, typically I would be more than ready for a good run in the rain, but being the end of our trip, I was out of clean close and on top of that, my shoes just broke that day, so rain + big hole in shoes = soggy shoes for the next two days. But at least I wasn't the only one to stay in. About five of us cracked open another bottle of wine and played a few drinking games, turning the one bottle into about four by the time the rest of the group arrived. Needless to say, I wasn't in the most coherent mindset at that point, but I was getting tired and was walked home by a two of my roommates. No doubt I slept well that night and was lucky enough to wake up the next day without a hangover and ready for our epic pilgrimage to Scarpa's ultimate project - the Brion Family Tombs.