adopting a new lifestyle

My day started pretty early. So early, in fact, that it was a whole 24 hours longer than anyone else’s. Why did I pull an all-nighter? I’m not quire sure, but as I lay on my bed and shut my eyes, not more than 20 minutes had passed before the alarm I had previously set several hours beforehand reminded me that I should hop in the shower before heading to the airport. So there I was again, in some same sort of déjà vu similar to the start of the northern Spain trip, tired as ever, this time sporting a new haircut and some new kicks (shoes, for you non-hipsters..Coolways, to be exact).

We landed in Venice Marco Polo on October 14th in the late morning and took the Alilaguna water bus to Piazza San Marco.

After some incredible geo-navigation by Ian, we found ourselves close to the apartments we booked for the weekend. We stood in this plaza for a good 10 minutes before agreeing that we had no idea where to go, so we asked a nice man operating a kiosk if he spoke any English. He offered to call the apartment landlord who then directed us to Dimora Veneziana Apartments. We stood outside and rang the doorbell endlessly for 30 minutes until a representative finally greeted us. I was responsible for booking the 8-person room for all the boys, so I was asked to sign some papers inside. On the phone, I heard him speaking to one “Guendalina.” Let me backtrack for a moment here. Several weeks ago, when I booked the Apartment, I tried to use my AmEx card, but was rejected. I called up AmEx using Google’s new “Call anyone in America FREE over Gmail” and got the matter sorted out. Kinda. I called Dimora in Venice using my Spanish SIM, but was losing credit fast. I asked the lady on the other end if she could call me back. My phone rings with a lady on the other end introducing herself as Guendalina. She asked me what the problem was, and I explained to her I was trying to use my AmEx. She asked me where I was currently, and freaked out when I responded, “Barcelona.” She hung up because she refused to pay the rates herself, but realized she might not get any business. She called back 5 minutes later and explained that she cannot accept AmEx and that I had to use another card. Michael offered to pay, but the reservation was under my name.

Back to Venice: The representative got pretty fed up with Guendalina over the phone (as I had, as well as everyone in studio who had heard my frustrating conversations with her) and basically told her to shut up and then hung up on her. Our rooms weren’t ready yet, so we grabbed some lunch on the grand canal and headed back a few hours later. Turns out Dimora owns several apartment complexes, and the 20 of us had been split up into 4 different apartments spread across Venice (as opposed to the 2 adjoining rooms we had booked). The guys decided to be gentlemen, though we feel it worked out towards our advantage in the end, and took the 2 apartments off on the eastern edge of the city by Giardini. Guendalina had gone to escort the girls to their establishment nearby, and told us to take the water bus to Giardini, roughly a €7 ride. We decided to save our money and lugged our luggage halfway across Venice, up and down tons and tons of stairs. When we finally arrived, we had to wait for little miss perfect at the water stop. She got there 10 minutes after we did and started yelling at us to hustle because she has other clients to which she has to attend – RUE! (Kevin, that was for you). She gave us the shpiel on the apartment, and that if we twist the knob we’ll have it in our hand (??) and to leave the garbayge outside. At this point my camera battery died, and I had to use my iPhone 4’s camera for the next day or so, so I apologize for the quality. Here’s a view from outside our apartment:

We dropped off our stuff, unwound, rewound (with more layers), and started walking back towards Piazza San Marco. Here’s a shot of Campanile di San Marco (St. Mark’s Bell Tower) and Piazza San Marco (I may or may not have tecktoniked in the plaza):

After dinner, we found a nice Gelateria and got 500g of some of the most excellent Gelato ever. (Nocciola, Stracciatella, Frutti di Bosco and Cioccolato Scuro):

In the morning, we all met up in the Giardini for the Venice Biennale of Architecture, an event that occurs every other year (hence “biennale”) and exhibits work from various countries in their respective pavilions. We started off in the main building:

A caffé in the Biennale that surely has to cause some upset stomachs after digestion:

The Hungarian pavilion featured an exhibit on drawing. They hung and scattered thousands of pencils throughout the pavilion:

Israel showcased an exhibit on Kibbutzim:

The U.S. pavilion focused on urban farming and had some cool glass models of desert conditions:

Finland, Norway and Sweden were grouped together:

Some cool models from the Denmark pavilion:

Holland:

Russia:

Czech Republic:

Australia’s ‘Now and When’ exhibit had cool neon lights with stereoscopic animations:

We walked through just about every country’s pavilion and were pretty tired by then so we headed back home after taking some shots of the sunset over Venice:

We headed back towards Piazza San Marco for dinner and ran into a BERNESE MOUNTAIN DOG!! I used my broken Spanish to ask the Italian if I could pet him and take a picture, and that I had one waiting for me back home.

On our way to Ponte di Rialto, we stopped to get more Gelato (another 500g, this time replacing the Cioccolato Scuro with Malaga, or Rum Raisin). We continued onward to see Ponte di Rialto (The Rialto Bridge):

As we crossed the bridge, we bumped into a group of girls studying abroad from England, and ended up hanging out with them at a bar on the other island.

The next morning we had tickets into the Arsenale to see the rest of the Biennale exhibits and hear Bjarke Ingels from BIG lecture. We walked through this room with a suspended vapor cloud:

And then Bjarke!

That night we hung out at the girls’ apartment close to Piazza San Marco and on our way, picked up another 1kg of Gelato. This time we were able to get a few more flavors so we added Pistachio and Lemon Sorbet to the original mix. We left for Paris in the morning.

And that was our time in Venice – pretty intense 3 days. It’s a very small city, and pretty much forces you to walk everywhere, unless you feel like shelling out €100 on gondola rides through the canals. The public transportation system was unlike anything I’ve seen before..all the buses are water buses and have to take into consideration different circumstances that are simply alien to us, such as tide levels..sometimes high tide prevents the taxis and buses from passing under certain bridges and therefore the line is temporarily closed.

Up Next in Eurotrip Part 2: How we almost missed our flight from Venice Marco Polo to Paris Orly and our time in Paris.