I spent two and a half days in Venice, which is more than any other city in mainland Italy, so get ready for a long post. Prior to coming there, I didn’t know anything about Venice besides that it has a lot of canals and hosts a big Carnaval. Upon arriving, I found out that Venice is an island (I thought it was just a coastal city) and that it’s completely man-made. It’s propped up by logs, which is super cool but also sounds like a terrible idea. I’m amazed that people in the 400s were able to pull this off. I was also surprised to learn that Venice has no cars or bikes. Everything is done by boat: public transport, police, ambulances, etc. 

After dropping off our things at the hotel, we went for a walk around. Micah wasn’t feeling well so only me and Holly went. It was a cloudy day and a storm was expected, but this was actually nice because it was a break from the heat and it was less crowded. There were some places we walked through that Serena said were usually so full you could barely move, but we had no trouble at all. Also the clouds looked cool (see above pic). We walked through the Jewish ghetto where apparently there are a lot of synagogues but from the outside it looks like regular buildings. We kept walking and saw lots of people taking gondola rides. Private gondola rides usually cost 80-100 euros so I did not for one second consider taking one. Then Serena said she had a surprise for us which is that we were going to go on a short gondola ride. Emphasis on short. It was from one side of the Grand Canal to the other and took maybe one minute. We all found this to be pretty funny and I’m completely satisfied with my gondola ride. 

We saw the Rialto bridge, which is the largest bridge in Venice and one of only a few that crosses the Grand Canal.

We saw the Basilica of Saint Mark, which is another big, grand Italian cathedral. Italians think you can never do too much for God. While in this square we looked in the window of a restaurant that is the oldest bar in Venice. It had a live band and waiters in tuxes and the inside looked really cool but it was insanely expensive. We looked at the menu and a gelato was 20 euros. 

We walked to a place that apparently has the best tiramisu in Venice. They had some interesting flavors but I got regular. Holly and Serena got pistachio flavored tiramisu and they thought it was amazing but I thought mine was just ok. Not bad but not the best tiramisu I’ve had in Italy. 

Next we went to a bookstore called “the high water bookstore” which keeps its books in a boat and in containers so that they’re safe from rising waters. Serena said that this bookstore had cats and postcards so it was perfect for me. It was great. I saw three cats, and it had A LOT of postcards. Boxes and boxes of them that I had to rifle through. I ended up getting two. 

The bookstore had a gondola docked outside that you could sit in for free. We took pictures in it to make it look like we’d gone on an actual gondola ride. 

We went to the narrowest street in Venice which is only 50 centimeters wide. Serena told us this before going there but it was hard to imagine how small it really was (because I’m American). I took the opportunity to do some stretching.

We then headed to dinner which was near the hotel. Serena left us at a grocery store while she went to get Micah. She said it was a really cool grocery store, and it was, but we all found it pretty funny that she left us there–like a mom trying to entertain her kids while she does errands. We got dinner at a restaurant that is owned by a refugee from Afghanistan, and it has dishes from different places he’d been through (mostly middle eastern stuff). The food was really good and was a nice break from Italian food. On the way back to the hotel we saw a cat.

We bought passes that gave us access to 10 civic museums in Venice (only 19 euros for students), and the next morning I went to a natural history museum by myself. There was almost no one else there, which was amazing. Most of the time I was alone in a room with the cleaning lady. This museum didn’t have any plaques in English so it seems they don’t expect it to be much of a tourist destination. I guess most people wouldn’t go to a natural history museum because it’s not Venice-specific.

Me in a completely empty exhibit hall.

They had two rooms full of taxidermied animal heads and skins which were mounted on red walls. It was kind of creepy but I loved it. It felt like a villain’s lair from a movie–something to demonstrate that a person is terrible. 

I really liked this museum because it displayed its collections in interesting and unique ways. It also had specimens that I haven’t seen in other natural history museums, like dried sharks. 

This display was on the ceiling and was really cool.

I thought this bird room was beautiful and well-done.

Big crab. There’s a horseshoe crab on the right for scale.

So yeah, the natural history museum was excellent. Around lunchtime I met up with Serena and the crew to go to a terrace on top of a mall. It had a spectacular view of the Grand Canal.

We got lunch and then Holly, Micah, and I went to a museum called the Courrier museum. I didn’t look into what this museum had before going there, and as I was walking around I couldn’t really figure out what the theme was supposed to be. Seems like just Venetian stuff. It had books, globes, old maps, model boats, weapons, sculptures, art…

Cool boat. 

I liked the sea monsters on this map. Why did we ever stop putting sea monsters on maps?

I thought this hat with the horse on top was really funny. 

They had an exhibit that was very weird where there were rooms full of normal museum stuff, like marble sculptures, and also modern art. The art was large canvas screenshots of stuff relating to American issues, and the canvasses had been covered in paint or broken glass and glitter. The first time the art appeared we were very confused. The subjects of the paintings included families showing off their guns, images from the January 6th riots, and Kim Kardashian’s met gala look. I didn’t think the art was very good because it seemed like it was supposed to be deep but it didn’t have anything to say. What is an Instagram post covered in glass and glitter say about that topic?

The juxtaposition between the weird modern art and the sculptures was pretty funny. The museum had another exhibit where they put modern art in a room full of old paintings.

Micah left to go to a modern art museum and me and Holly went to the Ducal Palace.

It had very grand rooms that were council chambers, an armory, and a prison.

We were very tired after all this museum walking so Holly and I took public transportation back to the hotel, which of course was a boat.

We got dinner at the same place as the night before because it was so good and pretty inexpensive. Then we went to the edge of Venice and watched a beautiful sunset.

The next day was the last day of the trip so we all got breakfast together–me, Micah, Holly, Serena, and Holly and Jamie, the couple was traveling with us–and we said our goodbyes to Holly and Jamie. Then me and Holly got on a ferry to the island of Murano, which is known for its glassmaking. We went to a glass museum and it was definitely my favorite museum of all the ones we went to in Italy. I have a million pictures from this museum because it was so cool.

Cool squid.

Funky horses.

Super cool model of a garden made with glass pieces.

They had a room about imitation glass–where people were making glass to look like other materials. This glass looks like geodes.

This glass looks like porcelain.

There was a room about beads.

I thought this diagram did a great job depicting how this type of bead is made.

There was a room about canes, which are long, thin rods of glass that have an image in the cross section. Normally they’re just flowers but Venetian artists got really good at making canes and made more complicated images.

People made canes that were portraits, which is amazing. 

More cool glass.

They had some more modern stuff. These were made around the 1930s.

Fishies.

After the glass museum, Holly and I walked around Murano looking at glass shops and got gelato. We then embarked on an hour-long series of ferry rides to get to the island of Lido so we could go to the beach and have one last swim in the Mediterranean. We found that most of the beach in Lido is private, and the public beach was extremely crowded. It was insanely hot and the water was too warm to provide significant relief from the heat. The beach was a bust. Also my flip-flop broke and I had to walk home with a broken flip-flop. During this time, Micah went to the Biennale, which is an international art festival where 50+ countries put together exhibits of installation art. It happens every two years and the theme this year was “the milk of dreams” whatever that means. Apparently it was very cool and Micah spent six hours there but still did not see all of it. I was sad to have missed it for the lame beach. I guess this gives me a reason to come back to Venice. 

In the evening, we met up with Serena to have one last dinner together. We wandered around until we found a suitable restaurant, which was a bar by a canal. I got cannelloni with ricotta and it was very good. Serena said this was the first time I said I liked Italian food.

Afterward we got cannoli for dessert. Serena says the good cannoli are in Sicily, but I just wanted an actual Italian cannolo.

We headed back to the hotel and said a sad goodbye to Serena. She was an amazing trip leader and had become our friend. We said we’d show her around Boston if she comes to the US. 

Venice was definitely one of my favorite destinations. I think Lake Como was my favorite place because the landscape was so beautiful but Venice was my favorite city. I’ll have to come back before it sinks.

The next morning we woke up bright and early at 5:30am to head to the airport. We had a two-hour flight to Istanbul and then a ten-hour flight to Boston. At the Istanbul airport we had to go through security again for our transfer. Then at the gate, we had to show our passports to FOUR different people, all in a row, and get our bags searched again. Weird. The flight to Istanbul served us a meal, which I really wasn’t expecting since it was only two hours. Then the flight to Boston served us TWO meals. Each of these meals came with a warm roll that you could put butter on. I ate all three rolls I was served that day and it was sooo good to have butter on bread, which I hadn’t had in my entire time in Italy. Italians put olive oil on bread, which in my opinion is not as good as butter, and some restaurants didn’t even do that–they just expected us to eat plain bread. The flight to Boston wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I watched some movies and was able to sleep a bit. 

Duncan picked us up from the airport and I was reunited with Rumble. We landed on the fourth of July so after dropping off my luggage at the apartment and freshening up, I went to tEp (my fraternity) to watch the fireworks. The fireworks are launched from the river and tEp’s roof has the perfect view. It felt like a warm welcome back to the US after being in Italy for almost two months. 

This is my last post. Hope you enjoyed the ride, I sure did. Arrivederci!