Venice!: Catherdrals, Palaces and the bridge of ads?

March 30th
Its just Venice its awesome. and wet. awesome and wet. We took the train in the afternoon from Milan and arrived in Venice around 6. We walked out of the train station and fond ourselves right on the canals of Venice. We decided to take a water bus to the hostel and just stared out the window the whole way to our stop. Our hostel in Venice was great. It was right on its own little canal and in an old house that the owner claimed had been inhabited by both Casanova and a Dodge at one time. The place had the feel of an old Venetian palace that had somehow turned into a sorority house (too clean for a frat :) ) with a giant Brazilian flag in the dining room for some reason. We stayed in one large girls room which was definitely the largest dorm room we had on the whole trip. Every evening wed come back and they would have added beds for new people who had showed up. One day we came back from breakfast to find two beds gone and by the time we got back again in the evening they had added three beds. It was a rather strange situating. But anyway, we got checked into the hostel and found out we were just in time to sign up for dinner that night. The hostel owner made a three course dinner every evening for only 5 euro. The dinner was great, some kind of pasta, quiche and then a dessert every night and not at all bad for only 5 euro. Since it was cooked by an Italian man, we figured we were doing pretty well and could consider it authentic Italian food.

outside the hostel

March 31st
Kelly and I went to find the nearby grocery store in the morning, which we had been given directions to, and got only mildly lost. We found it eventually which I call a win given that we had no map (there are no free maps in Venice) and the streets of Venice are the most confusing things ever. After breakfast, we headed off to the Rialto and then to St. Mark's Basilica and the Dodges Palace. On the way there, we ran into one of the women from the hostel and walked there with her. The Rialto was packed and filled with souvenir shops but we didn't get distracted for long.
First, we went to St. Mark's Basilica, which is beautiful. St. Mark became the patron saint of Venice around 700 to 840, because the city's former patron saint, St Theodor was considered too Byzantine and Venice sought to distance itself from Byzantium. So there are winged lions, St. Mark's evangelist symbol, all over Venice. Anyway, the Basilica is amazing. Its getting difficult to come up with new things to say about really awesome churches, so I'll try to keep this one fairly brief. St. Mark's was originally the chapel of the Doge back around the 800s when the Venetians stole the relics of St. Mark from Alexandria. It was consecrated in 1094 but today its completed form dates from the early 1600's. It is very very Byzantine and impressive. certainly a change from some of the northern Gothic stuff we had been seeing. The horses of St. Mark date from classical antiquity. the actual horses are in the museum while replicas of them are on the top of the facade. Some accounts claim the horses were once part of the arch of Trajan. after this, the horses were once displayed at the Hippodrome f Constantinople where in 1204 the Venetians looted them from. in 1797 Napoleon took them to Paris, but they were returned to Venice in 1815. The statue of the Roman tetrarchs was also taken from Constantinople in the early 1200's. St. Mark's it seems is especially Byzantine and wonderful because half of it was taken from Constantinople. That just makes it more awesome though. We were also able to go walk around the terrace on the facade of St. marks right where the replica horses are, which was very cool.

winged lion of St. Mark

St Mark's Basilica and Campanile (bell tower). See I can learn Italian through medieval architecture, at least I all I want to do is point out bits of architecture.

Kelly and I with the replica horses

I join the Roman tetrarchy (293-313). Pentarchy?

Next, we went to the Doge's Palace. The whole building is fantastically pink and lifted off the ground by the lower bit of arcade. Its a very interesting looking place. Most of the palace was built from 1309 to 1424 but some was rebuilt in 1577 after a fire. We walked through all the state rooms and what seemed like an endless parade of various rooms housing the political intuitions o the Venetian Republic. One especially cool room had images of all the Venetian doges around the top of the walls. The portrait of Marino Faliero however is blacked out. In 1355, he was executed and condemned to damnatio memoria after a failed coup. And of course the doge's palace includes the prisons and the bridge of sighs. We went through layers and layers of prison and as we went down it started to smell very damp and was clammy. It was cool to see some of the cells. the ones in the new prison, across the Bridge of Sighs were supposedly created due to the poor conditions of the old prison but they didn't look especially nicer. The Doge's Place was really cool overall and we definitely learned a lot about Venetian history. its also chock full of paintings by Tintoretto and Veronese.

Kelly sighs

Giants' Staircase

Having been through the Bridge of Sighs we figured we should go around the side and look at the pretty outside. We were shocked. Maybe not a much as my parents when I reported this though. The billboards covered the side of both building next to it nearly completely.

I have to admit its a good location for advertising but only if people aren't going to just resent you for it. After going by the bridge of ads we splurged on a nice lunch by the Rialto. It turned out to be a rather expensive, but excellent, day. Because, we were tourists and it was Venice, we of course had to go on a gondola ride. We kicked back in the gondola as the guy pointed out a number of the palaces along the canals, including Vivaldi and Marco Polo's houses.



It was a long and packed day, but we still had a couple more stops. After our gondola ride, we headed to the Frari church which we had passed in the morning on the way to the grocery store. The Franciscan church is one of the biggest in the city and was completed in 1338. The painter Titan is interred here. It was pretty and cool but then again I seem to feel that way about every old church I visit.
That evening, we went back to St. Mark's square again seeking out Orchestras. There were men selling some kind of brightly it toy that they kept throwing up into the air scattered all over the place. We saw them in Florence too later. Eventually a couple orchestras started up and we sat on some benches along the Doge's Palace listening to the orchestras and and eating gelato (of course! its amazing we held off gorging ourselves in a gelato-fest until then) until we were nearly falling asleep from such a full day. A pretty productive full day in Venice + gelato=totally successful day.

Lemon!

Milan: Goodbye Rose, Hello Italy.

March 30th
We left Interlaken in the morning and took a train to Speiz then to Milan. From Milan Rose went to Rome and then to Greece where she would be doing a work-away program with a friend from Oxford. Kelly and I stayed in Milan for the day. We were about halfway through our trip and ready for warm weather. We stored our luggage at the train station and made reservation for some of the more popular trains we needed to take in Italy . The train station in Milan was way busier than the one in Prague had been and we had to wait in line for some time to make reservations. Then finally we were set loose in Milan for several hours. And no, we did not shop. I thought about at least window shopping but we had so little time that we decided to skip fashion in favor of churchs. Our first, and main, stop was the Duomo. It seems like every Italian city has a Duomo which is basically the main cathedral. On our way there we stopped to ask directions from a friendly gay guy who was helpful but then tried to convince us that we should get him to read our palms or auras or something. After extracting ourselves from the conversation, we quickly found the Duomo. All the Duomos we saw were pretty impressive and Milan's Duomo is stunning. The Duomo took nearly 6 centuries to complete in its current form. It's triangular and pointy and kind of ridiculous and completely awesome. The whole thing has 135 spires and is one of the largest cathedrals in the world. The piazza around the Duomo as filled with pigeons and people trying to take pictures with them. There were even guys selling birdseed so you could take pictures with the pigeons. I saw this all over Italy. Pictures with pigeons are apparently popular although I don't really understand why you would want them to sit on you.

across form the Duomo


Duomo


There was really pretty stained glass inside which is really difficult to take good sneaky picture of

I just really like these doors on the Duomo
Piazza in front of the Duomo

After the Duomo, we walked by the Teatro alla Scala, opened in 1778. There's a museum connected to it but unfortunately we didn't get to go in since we didn't have much time and still waned to see some more of the city.
Next we headed off to the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie, which contains Da Vinci's The Last Supper. You have to make a reservation for this way in advance and we couldn't quite figure out how to do this when we were planning the trip. We hoped we could still see some of the church though and so headed over there. We couldn't get in at all but the outside of the 15th century convent is rather pretty.

I like this back bit

Next, we defaulted to wander around mode. We were pretty lucky in our wanderings because we ran into Castello Sforzesco which was originally the palace of the Visconti family and then embellished by Francesco Sforzesco who became lord of Milan in 1450. So, we wandered around the courtyards and outside of this Renaissance palace.
Finally, we had to head back to the station to catch our afternoon train to Venice where we arrived just in time for a three-course dinner and a train strike. But more about that later.

Isle of Wight

Saturday was the first international office-organized trip of the summer term, so it was time to get back into the habit of waking up Saturdays at the crack of dawn (which is actually much earlier these days so it is light outside when I wake up, but still 6:30!). Anyway, two coach-loads of Sussex students and I were up bright and early to go to the Isle Wight. This trip took a good 3 hours but included a ferry ride. We took the ferry from Portsmouth, which was a fun break from sitting on the bus, and very windy. The whole day it was pretty windy so look out for pics of me struggling with hair. Despite this, and some early morning rain, the day turned out to be a fairly nice one for walking around outside. Its a good thing too, because besides being on the bus, we spent the whole day walking along the beaches and cliff of the Isle of Wight.

Portsmouth from the ferry

The Isle of Wight is around 380 square km large and has several small towns on it. Famous past residents of the island include Alfred Lord Tennyson and of course Queen Victoria who moved the summer residence from the Royal Pavilion in Brighton, which she deemed too small, to Osborne House on the island. However, since we didn't have too much time on the island, we spent most of the day looking at the natural attractions of the island. We were all impressed by the sandy beach which actually smelled like the sea since Brighton's beach is very rocky/pebbly and doesn't have that distinctive salty and seaweedy smell. We had a quick lunch by the beach in a little town called Shaklin. One of the international students leading the trip warned us not to walk too far in search of food because "the town eventually runs out and you'll end up waking down a dirt road."

look real sand!

Although we had planned to walk over Tennyson Down the slightly threatening weather forced us to drive instead to Alum Bay where we went on a brief walk, climbing over fences on the way, to see the needles rocks. Despite the plan change, it was a nice walk and we did get get to see the cool rocks which we would not have had time for otherwise.

someone's yard that we passed o the way to the needles.
climbing over fences
the needles

circling boats

Next, we went to see the nearby colored sands which were really awesome and beautiful. They remind me a bit of canyons you see in the southwest. not at all what I was expecting to find in England. It is especially interesting because these colored cliffs are so close to the much whiter ones near the needles rocks. the contrast is super cool when standing between them.

Finally, after only a few hours around Alum Bay we had to catch the ferry back to Portsmouth. Luckily we got on the buses right before it started to drizzle. While it would have been nice to have more time on the island, it was a great trip and it was nice to spend one trip outdoors along the beaches and cliffs rather than in a city.