So Long and Thanks for All the Fish

So this is it, the end of the Italian tour. I left Boston about a month ago and five cities later I'm ready to call it a trip. There was a big shift around the time of Milan, from the rush of the first few weeks into the more relaxed and personal pace of the last couple. The switch couldn't have come at a better time. It's not like I've done less each day, but it became not as focused on the individual places visited and more about what I wanted to explore or see one last time. The relaxed attitude probably lead to the slacking in updates (sorry guys), but the terrible wifi also played a part. Anyway, I digress. Venice. Venice has been amazing. We've been here about four days; the first few scheduled with island tours and a trip to the Doge palace but activities have been less frequent with more time to burn in between lectures. This lack of structure has really allowed me to explore the alleys and bridges so unique to the floating city and in a sense...make Venice my own. Well, as much as one can own a city in four days. I have a favorite cheap pasta place, a favorite coffee shop, a favorite restaurant. I only ever experienced this same sort of pull from Florence but to put it one way; if I were dropped into Venice without so much as a map I could formulate a pretty fantastic daily routine.

Yesterday we went island hopping to Murano, famous for its glass, and saw a glass master at work using a long metal pipe to shape molten glass into a chandelier. The amount of craftsmanship that must go into every handmade glass set is staggering. That was our last official activity, which we ended by presenting Professor Rappaport with a Hawaiian shirt and a round of applause. Grace, William, John and I ended up following the Professor for the rest of the day while others went to the beach as he entranced us with tales of a beautiful mosaic on a neighboring island in a forgotten church. Torcello. Grandma I know no other way to describe the scenery and beauty of this island than the farms around Chichester if they were twenty degrees warmer. It was beautiful and besides the main drag absolutely untouched. The church was beautiful but the island really stole the show. From there we moved on to Burano, home of multicolor everything before the storms kicked in and we headed home.

Today the rains continued, and after a real late start I hit the markets for some last minute trinkets before saying goodbye to the city in the Lagoon.

I'll probably touch up this blog when I get home, fix grammar and all those things as well as upload a lot of pictures to really flesh it out but for now I think this is goodnight. See you next time Italy. OH! One last thing. I was able to find the place where Emma was roped into singing with those random tourists in Venice and the weapons stand I saw two years ago! Whether that's related to the trinket I found...anyway I'll be home soon!

 

Land of the Boats

We arrived in Venice yesterday, a little weary from our long journey but certainly excited to see the floating city first-hand. Let me say the view from the train station is simply gorgeous. As far as first impressions go, Venice knows what it's doing. That being said, lugging around suitcases certainly isn't the best way to enjoy any city so our first stop was the hotel. For the first two nights, I'm staying in this cozy little converted house with all the small, cramped staircases required for authenticity. My room has a chandelier and a polished mosaic floor. I feel like a royalty.

After settling in John, William, a couple others, and I decided to go find lunch and do a little exploring. This including walking up and down Strata Nova and eventually running into another group of people from the trip AND finding the largest grocery store I've seen in Italy. Seriously. I wish I could say we then decided to roam further, but we were still pretty knackered and headed back for a siesta.

Dinner was the driving factor in getting us up again. John, William, Grace and I found this amazing pasta place right on Strata Nova with the highest prices I have yet paid for pasta, but well worth the extra few euros. I think one of my biggest fears when I go home will be trying to enjoy pasta that isn't cooked to perfection…The dinner was accompanied by a couple guitar players who showed up and started playing through the meal and really added to the atmosphere and feel of Venice.

Today was our first official day in Venice...so we all slept in. First movement occurred around 10:00 after some light reading when William and I found a coffee shop for some cappuccino and croissants. An hour or so later we realized that wasn't nearly a decent enough breakfast so we rounded up some compatriots and stormed the all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet. This was a minor let-down to say the least, the only saving grace being delicious dumplings.

FINALLY! We saw the city. At two, a guide named Mose showed us around Venice from the southern to northern lagoon (it's not a very big city), he explained the various islands surrounding the city, the churches, the fountains...easily one of our best guides yet. Mose was articulate enough and good humored to answer all questions and explain places like the square of St. Mark in fascinating detail. At four we parted ways until tomorrow. Now, William and I are preparing to work on our final presentation due Tuesday and what to do to cap off a day of mediocre meals. It should be a fun one!

 

Milan and stuff

So Milan has been a bit of an experience. It's certainly not a Florence or a Rome, or it hasn't been presented to us in the same way: exploring the history of the city as a primary point of contact. Milan was probably our first fully modern experience of a city in Italy. Starting with a guided tour through a few of the main streets on Wednesday hitting the Duomo and the major galleria before turning to a hole-in-the wall sandwich shop and then headed back to the hotel for lectures in the afternoon. I never recall the lectures as well as I do the cities or the experiences...which is probably a bad thing. Anyway that was the day of our second set of lectures which went alright, just far too many in a row. This was done to open up Friday which I'm eternally grateful for now, just not at the time. The night was capped by going back into Milan for a group dinner in a small family restaurant that we really dominated the top floor of with our antics. A wonderful, if busy, day making the food taste probably three times as good.

Thursday began with two amazing marketing talks: the first focused on coffee and the second a more broad discussion on Italy design tactics. They were probably my favorite lectures of the trip. Focusing in on what coffee companies are doing to expand the market and push to the far east where coffee is seen as a sign of wealth and when a nation like China suddenly develops a middle class...well the possibilities are endless. What really surprised me was the relationship to increase in income and increase in coffee consumption being almost 1:1! To cap off the morning Professor Rappaport talked about wave harmonics and then we were let loose upon the city. William, Grace, and I along with a few others decided to do the typical thing one does in Milan and go shopping. Some for a blazer, others for a purse, but I really had no intentions of buying anything. Of course that's before I found a tropical bucket hat and an English soccer jersey, so I guess Milan caught another in its web of fashion. After a long day on our feet we headed home to relax before dinner and take care of things like laundry. Grace got me hooked on Smallville which took up an embarrassing amount of time last night, only justifiable because we didn't have class today…

...So I took full advantage of that and did not arise until around 10:30. Grace, John, and I started what remained of the day with some pool before heading into Milan searching for this aquarium we'd discovered online, the third oldest in Europe! We took a relatively long way exploring the parts of the city outside the general scope of fashion and dense cobble-stone streets. The aquarium was relatively small but well worth the small entry fee. It had this amazing outdoors turtle exhibit where we spent far too much time watching as the turtles tried to climb on a sunken log. After that we strolled through the nearby park and got some, wait for it, Italian Ice which we consumed at the base of a statue of Napoleon III. At this point we were all a little tired but decided to check out the rest of the park and see what we could. The end result being that we found the hokiest American restaurant known to man and couldn't resist the call of burgers and fries. Horrendous food. Absolutely horrendous. In fact I'm starting to feel a little funny….