Venice, Firenze and the Tiramisu Curfew

Hi Everyone,

I'm in Florence right now. Others are at a bar, but I wasn't feeling it, so I decided to blog more.
We drove into Florence today and will be doing the tour tomorrow. Tonight is really a recup night.

Yesterday, I had such a great time in Venice. Such a cool place. I can't believe how much I did. Here's the rundown in rough chronologic order

1) Getting Lost
We took a ferry from camp to Venice at 8am. It was great to walk through the city with nobody around, especially when you're forming your first impressions. I love it that the streets are so narrow. The buildings are very unique and eclectic in style, since Venice used to an important trading center. The city has influences in and around the Mediterranean. Our tour guide was supposed to take use to St. Mark's Square, but couldn't find his way. Like a true guy, he refused to fully admit that he's lost, but instead said that he gave us a very authentic traveling experience.

2) St. Mark's Square and Basilica
After arriving, I immediately ditched the group with another girl, Ning. We decided that it was best to venture off and skip the glass-making demo, even though Murano, a small island off the coast of Venice, is very famous.

Anyhow, our first objective was St. Mark's Basilica. Interesting story, Venice wanted to become a more prominent state, so to make itself more important, at least religiuosly speaking, they raided the body of St. Mark from Alexandria! Anyhow, the line into the basilica (like in all major churchesbasilicas) was long, but at least it was fast moving. We got in half hour's time. The interior was sooooo awesome. The entire ceiling was gold and all the artwork was done in mosaic. We visited the Pala d'Oro, this large golden panel of many saints and such. The best part was going into the second floor (loggia) It takes out right up close to the mosaics and also outside for a great view of the Square.

Oh yeah, I'm going straight to hell for snapping pictures all around, even though it was prohibited.

2) Doge's Palace
The Doge's Palace was next door, so Ning and I hoped on over too. It was very impressive. The Doge is essentially the ruler in Venice. He's chosen through a very complicated system, which I do not fully understand. Anyhow, what's really cool is that you see everything. All the state rooms, apartments, and even the prisons. All the rooms were so impressive. It's easy for me to compare this to Versailles since they're both residences for royalty. Personally, I thought the Doge's palace was more impressive and way better since less tourists were there.

As we moved from one impressively beautiful and ornate room to another, we followed these tour groups around and listened in on the history and functions.

One of the coolest parts of the Doge's palace was this huge state room with very HUGE paintings on the ceiling. It was meant to hold a procession and has no columns. The way it was supported is by suspension from the second floor.

Another cool thing was seeing the prisons. First off, the accomodations were way better than any of the campsites on this trip. Second, there was this gallery of stuff that prisoners had drawn on the wall. Let me tell you that the human race has changed much in the last few hundreds of years. Boys still draw pics of women and their penises (?) whenever they have a chance.

It started raining really hard at around 1pm, so Ning and I statyed there for lunch. Cool eh!

3) Some church that I forgot the name of right now.
This church is recommended as a little gem in Venice. It's a Franciscan chruch and the artwork is once again great. The body of Titan, one of Venice's resident artists is there. Ning and I spendt a lot of time taking pictures of the place.

4)Gondola Ride
At around 4pm, we went bnack to St. Marc's Square to meet the group for a short 40min gondla ride. It's deinfinitely an experience of a lifetime. After rushing every where all day, it was great to just sit back, relax, and just take in the sights, especially around the back canals.

5) Galleria dell Academia
Took a visit to the Accademia because it was highly recommended again. SIt housed the largest collection of Venetian art, so I saw oa lot of relighouis works. We took a audiotour, which took you around through the gallery's 24 rooms and gave a brief description of its architectural history, a, as well as a highlight of some of the important works per in each room. Definitely made me appreciate 13th-16th century artwork more, since for the most part, I didn't really care to spend the time for this kind of art before hand. You start picking up on the usual scenes (ie Passion of the Christ, Mary's coronation, Mary and the child). After a while and being saturated with all these artwork, you begin to notice nuisances and changes through out time, both in depiction and style. The best piece is a series of 8 large murals about the story of St. Ursula. The audiotour definitely made a difference in my appreciation of it.

6) Ride up and down the Grand Canal in the Vapporetto.
You can't go through Venice without just sitting back again and taking in all the buildings on the grand canal. So snapped a lot of pictures. It was here that I broke teh momentuous 1000 mark with photos taken.

7) Dinner near Rialto Bridge
Finially, it was getting late and hunger had befallen upon me and Ning. So we stopped to find food at a nice restaurant (might as well). We walked around looking for a restaurant that would serve tiramisu. Apparently, they don't serve tiramisu after 8pm. It's very peculiar to me and I don't understand why. If anyone has a clue, please tell me.

After dinner, we went back to the campsite, just in time to catch the last ferry back to the campsite. I was tired out and decided to call it an early night.

Side note: The masks of Venice are super cool and beautiful. Wanted to get one but chickened out for fear of destroying it during transport.

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Other side notes

1) Saw the Leaning Tower of Pisa today. Really surreal to see this building lean. Of course spent time taking in lame pictures of myself tipping it down etc.

2) Bug bite count is up to 20 plus. Most of it came from the couple hours I spent in the FLorence campsite. These bugs are vicious.

3) Had 5 scoops of gelato today within the span of 15 minutes. I went to one gelateria, got three scoops. Finished half of it, then saw another gelateria and had 2 more. My favority so far is a flavor called baccio. I am planning to have more tonight after blogging.

4) Looking forward to seeing statue of David and being impressed by the works of Michelangelo, Raffaello, Leonardo, and Donatello. You know, the turtles! just kidding.

This all, more updates later!