We departed Sansepolcro for our first independent travel break on Friday morning. We took a train to Bologna first and then had several hours to explore the city before our train left for Venice. Emily and I found a restaurant. Bologna is known for its food, especially its Bolognese sauce. Bolognese sauce is a tomato and meat sauce for pasta. We had a wonderful lunch and were happy with the fact that everyone in the restaurant was a local except for us. If the locals ate there, it had to be authentic. We also walked through the Piazza del Nettuno and saw the Basilica di San Petronio. The Basilica was closed, but we could see from the outside that it was huge. We read in our guidebook that it was originally going to be bigger than St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome but that the Vatican wouldn’t allow Bologna’s cathedral to top theirs.
After our brief exploration of Bologna, we continued on to Venice. I really enjoyed Venice. Even though I had seen countless pictures, I wasn’t prepared for how much I would really enjoy the picturesque canals and the beautiful blue-green water coming right to the front doors of ancient Palazzos. I bought a student vaporetto pass allowing me unlimited access to the waterbus transportation and set out into the city.
Venice has a magical atmosphere. I as if I was on the Titanic because Venice is both extremely romantic and elaborate. Venice was first settled when Rome fell because the people were hiding from invaders. They moved out onto the island where Venice currently is in order to escape. Originally Venice’s main income was fishing. However, because of its location, it became an important trade center. It was ruled by a series of Doges, who were local dukes. Today, the city’s main income is tourism. The local population is small compared to the number of tourists who visit.
Emily and I had only three things on our list for our time in Venice. They were:
1. Get lost
2. See glass making and go shopping on Murano
3. Go to the top of the campanile, which is the bell tower in Piazza San Marco
First, however, we had to figure out where to stay. We started planning our trip well in advance, but for some reason just weren’t having any luck finding a room. We had found a place to stay for Friday night and decided that we would hope that place would have a cancellation for Saturday night. They didn’t have a cancellation, so we went to the tourist office and got a booklet full of hotels. We called 40 hotels before we found a place to stay! Thankfully, other Meredith students in Venice already had a place and were willing to let us sleep on their floor just in case, but we didn’t need to after all.
I enjoyed spending several hours on Murano. Venice is on islands away from the mainland and there are several islands surrounding it. The glass artists used to live on the main island of Venice, but were sent to Murano because they started too many fires on Venice. We went to the Glass Museum and saw the process of making glass. As a chemistry major, I was interested in learning how the glass was made. The main component of glass is silica, which is found in sand. The better raw material a glass maker can get, the better the finished product will be. It is made in a wood burning stove. A fluxing agent is added to the glass in order to lower the melting point so that the artisan can work with the glass over just wood heat. Different compounds are added to achieve different colored glass. We saw some glass cups from the first century! We also got to see a demonstration and do some shopping on the island before we went back to Venice.
It was nearly time to get lost, but first we rode the elevator up the campanile. It was a good view, but it didn’t compare to the view from the Duomo in Florence. We learned that prisoners were hung in cages from this tower in medieval times for people’s entertainment. Then, we got lost on purpose because we had heard that getting lost is the best way to see Venice! We hadn’t got lost yet, so we put away the maps and just started walking in random directions and making turns whenever a street looked nice or whenever we wanted to go a different direction. Pretty soon, we were strolling through the back streets away from the crowds walking over tiny foot bridges and crossing small canals. Getting lost was my favorite part of the trip.
When we were tired of being lost, we got out our maps, figured out where we were, and then got on a vaporetti to the island of Lido, where our hotel was for the night. I really enjoyed staying on Lido. It is only a twenty minute boat ride from St. Mark’s square, but since it is away from the main island of Venice, the hotels aren’t as expensive and it doesn’t have a tourist feel. While on Lido, we meet some locals, which is rare for Venice. We had a really good pizza and watched Shrek on television in Italian.
On Sunday, Emily and I met up with Meredith and Patsy, who had been traveling with Meredith’s parents. The four of us took a train to Verona. We saw Juliet’s house and the Verona Arena. Verona was full of tourists, but it was a lovely city. The recent movie, Letters to Juliet, has made Verona a very popular stop for Americans to visit. We wrote letters to Juliet, but it is now against the rules to put them on the wall. We left them in the entry way. It was really cheesy to write letters to a fictional thirteen year old character to take to a house that is part of a legend, but we had fun going and I would have been disappointed not to go and see what Verona was like. We also got some McDonald’s food in Verona. It was my first American meal since I have been here.
We had a great time and now we are all looking forward to a weekend here in Sansepolcro. The Palazzo Alberti is having a party for the first anniversary of the program on Saturday. I am hoping for a little time to relax.
Ciao,
Meredith
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