I went into Venice not expecting to be blown away. I have heard from many people that the city is overrated and dirty. After making my own impression, I would say that Venice is a beautiful city, full of character and history- but at the same time I wouldn’t say that it is a clean city.. how could it be when it is packed full of tourists and pigeons?
We took the overnight train from Vienna to Venice which was not as good of an experience as the first overnight train we took. This train packed six couchettes (beds on the train) into a cabin, as opposed to the four in the previous train. Basically it was hard to sleep and our first day in Venice I was pretty tired and felt very dirty. We started by visiting a museum created by architect Scarpa which was nice, however I was too tired to really appreciate it. After that, Guiditta gave us a few hours to freshen up at the hotel and get lunch which was a much needed break. At about 3, we continued our tour of Venice visiting Piazza San Marco, which is the main plaza in Venice. Guiditta gave us the history on all the buildings in the square - she is very knowledgeable as she lived in Venice for 7 years, and she has an architecture history background. We then went into the Basilica di San Marco, and into the Doge’s palace which are both located on the square. After that we were free to explore. Our hotel for the three nights in Venice was once again very nice. It was located on a small canal and it had a nice balcony looking over the canal which we all hung out on every night.
The next whole day, we visited the Biennale exhibit, the arsenale (an old arsenale which housed many exhibits) in the morning and the gardens in the afternoon. I had no idea what I was getting into with this exhibit, but it was not your average museum. The arsenale was full of crazy installment- anything from wax figures that were burning, to architectural models made from anything you could think of, mirror art, movies.. pretty much anything you would not find in your average museum. One exhibit was a projected video in a big area with a bunch of big white couches. Naturally, I took advantage of the chance to take a break and sit. The video projected was hard to understand at first- it was a bunch of movie clips (old and new-each for about 10 sec.) all complied together. I was trying to find a connection between them for the longest time, but the only thing I could make of it is that in all of the clips there was something to do with time. Finally I looked at my watch to see what time it was only to realize that the time shown in the clip was like a clock for the present time. All of the clips were put together to have a part reflecting the present time of the viewer. After walking through this exhibit for a while, I realized that most of these installments just made you think about what they were or what they represented. After lunch, we went on to the next part of the Biennale exhibit which was the Giardini della Biennale. This part was a bunch of architectural buildings that housed different exhibits. Each country had a building, and the exhibits inside of them sometimes related to the country, but sometimes they were just weird. This second part of the Biennale was similar to the first, with odd exhibits... the best way I can describe this part was that it is a bunch of little fun houses. I liked the second part(the gardens) more than the arsenale. That night we took the waterbus (they have boat buses here since they have no car roads) to some nearby islands which have 3 Palladian churches. We visited 2 of them, and went up in the tower of one to get a really nice view of Venice. These were buildings that I studied in art history as well. That night I was pretty tired, so I grabbed a slice of pizza from a vendor and got some gelato and went straight to bed!
Our last day in Venice, we visited two museums and a church. We went to the Punta Della Dogana, which is a museum by architect Tado Ando, which once again housed a lot of strange art. The design of the building made up for the odd art. We also went to the Peggy Guggenheim Museum which was Peggy Guggenheims old house on the main canal. This was the only museum we went to in Venice that had “normal art” that you would find in a museum. It had a lot of modern and impressionist works. The church we visited was the Chiesa Della Salute which was yet again another Palladian church. We finished our tour with Guiditta at about 3, so we had the rest of the day to ourselves to sketch and shop and explore!
After Venice we were off to Vicenza and Verona!
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