Venice part 3

Thursday, March 17

The day began same as before, yummy breakfast but sans coffee this time. Luckily, the rain weather forecast was wrong and it was sunny and mild. Joy! Kelsey and Cara slept in a bit as usual and needed more time to get ready for the day, so Heather and I ran some errands and then went to the beach on Lido. There was some building and stair structure that wasn't open at the time, so we found our way around it to the actual shore. The beach was kind of dirty, but it was still peaceful...well, except for the random scarf vendor walking around trying to sell scarves to the 5 people on the beach that day. After the beach, we went back to the hotel to pick up Cara and Kelsey and then hopped on a ferry bound for the Ca'd'Oro. Quick note: the Ca'd'Oro (also called the house of gold) has basically been my favorite piece of architecture since I saw a picture of it in my architecture history class freshman year. Needless to say, I was psyched out of my mind that I was getting to go into it. The line that we took went down the main canal and made tons of stops, so we basically got the grand tour of the city center on our way. Everything along the grand canal is absolutely beautiful, especially on a sunny day. The girls and I exited at our stop and made our way into the Ca'd'Oro museum. On a normal day, it would have cost 12 euro. However, today was the celebration of 150 years of Italian unification day (ps, it was also St. Patty's day), so we got in for free. I love Italian Unification!!! Our tour guide from the previous days mentioned that Venice wanted to be it's own country, like Texas, and probably wouldn't do much for the unification day. Free museum entry is good enough for me.

We first entered into the lower portion that opened up to the canal. This portion of the house had flooded the night before, this we gathered due to the random seaweed hanging out on the floor near the canal entry. Although this portion of the house was relatively original, the rest of the interior had been converted into a modern museum to house some of the artifacts. I was a little disappointed by that portion, but the exterior balconies were really nice and the girls and I took lots of pictures there. Or as our friend Alice says, we had a photo-shoot. After the photo-shoot, we grabbed paninis, gelato, shopped, and then headed to meet our class at the Peggy Guggenheim. As we were making our way to the Guggenheim, clouds started rolling in and we didn't have umbrellas with us. Just as our group assembled and started to make its way into the museum, it started pouring. We couldn't have timed it better. There were some interesting pieces in the collection, some Jackson Pollock, Alexander Calder, Picasso, Mondrian and so on. We finished with the gallery as the sun was starting to come out, so we went out to the museum's little courtyard. Outside was a wish tree where you wrote something down and stuck it on the tree. Some of the wishes were really sweet, like "please help Japan" in little kid writing. And then there was one that just said "rich". Nice.

After making our wishes, we headed back to Lido to freshen up for dinner. The plan was to meet up with some of the Orvieto group for dinner. When we were talking to the other group, they hadn't decided where they wanted to eat so they told us to meet them at the train station. The station is an hour away from our hotel, so we were a bit late getting there. When we got there, the group had left Cooper by herself to come find us. She talked to the group about where they were, and they went to a place that would have been only 20 minutes from our hotel, so we had to hardcore backtrack. Nice planning team. Once we got to the stop, three different people on the phone proceeded to give Cooper wrong directions to where they were eating. After wandering around for awhile, we finally found the place. By the time we got there though, almost everyone was done eating so they left in about 10 minutes. Failure. We ate our overpriced food and after the rest of the group set out to find the pub that the rest of the Orvieto group had gone to. While this was going on, Heather and I decided to bail and go back to the hotel since we had a flight in the morning. The rest of the night was pretty chill, just packing and hanging out with Heather and Brittany, my travel buddies for the next week. Best part of the night- Since mom has taught me well, I always check under the bed when I'm leaving a hotel. While checking under the bed, I found a glasses case. Upon opening it, I found RayBan sunglasses that actually fit my face perfectly. Jackpot!

Things I've Learned:

If I ever have too much money, I'm definitely getting a little villa in Venice, for at least some of the year. I know I haven't been all over the world or anything yet, but it's my favorite of all the places I've visited.

Although the ferry system is exactly like the subway system,but on water, it throws a lot of people off for some reason. Also, I have better sea legs than most of my friends. This is another signs that I should live in Venice part time.