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Published: April 8th 2006
Gondole
The six metal things sticking out signify the six neighborhoods of Venice called "sestiere".Hey!
Last week was exchange week for me. Exchange week is exchange between cities and gives exchange students a chance to see cities they probably wouldn’t have seen were it not for this wonderful idea. For my week I went to Venice!
On Saturday I arrived and my host family came to pick me up from the train station. Before even going to the house, the two sisters, Silvia and Elisa, and I went to get some gelato, this family knows what I like! Silvia worked at the gelato place last summer and the owner was really nice, he explained the difference between ice cream and gelato to me, gelato has significantly less fat and is tastier. At night I went out for pizza with Elisa and her friends in Mestre which has a piazza that is really pretty at night.
Sunday, Silvia took me around Venice with her friends. We saw Piazza San Marco, various other things and had some more gelato. My host mom in Venice is an excellent cook. Every meal we had I asked for the recipe. If I lived in Venice for more than a week I definitely would become a balloon. The
whole family was just really nice and fun. They live in a small town outside of Mestre and about forty minutes to Venice by bus. Olmo, their town, is really cute, there is not much to it, but it is very beautiful.
Monday all the exchange students met in Piazzale Roma(Venice) to take a tour around Venice. We saw the Jewish ghetto in Venice which was small and when it was only inhabited by Jews could be closed off from the rest of Venice for the night. Jews were normally wealthy merchants and the city closed them off at night because they were always suspicious of the wealth. The only other place in Venice that can be closed of completely from the rest of the city is the Arsenal which is where all the boats were built. Boat making was very important for Venice so they would close off the Arsenal if there was ever plague or some kind of contagious disease. We walked around for a long time seeing lots of things, of which I don’t remember the names of. At some point we took a traghetto/gondola from one side of a canal to another. There was about
Piazza San Marco
The famous Piazza San Marco fifteen of us standing up in the boat and to be honest it was not fun, I was near the edge and there was someone behind me who kept pushing. In the afternoon we finally got to Piazza San Marco, a really large piazza with the church of San Marco and the Palazzo Ducale at one end and other buildings all around. The piazza is full of pigeons and many tourists (the stupid ones atleast) buy dried corn from vendors. The stupid tourist puts the corn in their hand and is then bombarded with about fifty pigeons who want food and will even sit on their hand to get at it. I have two photos of me absolutely terrified feeding the pigeons. After the nice encounter with the pigeons our group went to visit the Palazzo Ducale which is where the Venetian government did their business and where the Doge lived. When Venice was it’s own city state it was governed by aristocrats and at their head was the Doge. The Doge was elected for all his life and was subject to the same laws of everyone else. One notorious Doge was accused of high treason and in the Palazzo
Palazzo Ducale
This is where the doges lived. Dulcale the painting where the notorious Doge should be is covered by a painting of a black cloth. Of all the Italian reigns, Venice was the most democratic and the richest reign of them all. The Lion is the symbol of freedom and also of Venice. When Napoleon came he had all the statues and figures of lions taken out so the people would forget about the freedom they had before. Venice is in the shape of a fish and has six sections sort of like neighborhoods, they are called sestieri because there are six of them. When it rains a lot in Venice some parts of the city become flooded and tables are put up for people to walk on and residents have to wear hip high boots. The weather wasn’t so great and before the end of the day my camera had run out of battery, so I did not get many good pictures, if any. The day ended well with some more gelato.
Tuesday in the morning before going to the meeting point, my host mom took me through the market in Mestre where the fish was so fresh it was still moving.My group from Venice,
A map of Venice
I saw this on a window, and thought it was cool. It shows its fish shape and the 6 neighborhoods. about fifteen of us, went to visit a school in Dolo to talk about Afs and our experience. Visiting schools is not my favorite thing to do, because usually the students aren’t interested and only the teachers ask questions or the students ask stupid questions. A picture of all of us exchange students ending up in the local paper with a small article explaining what we were there for. After our trip to the school we when to a town called Stra which is full of large villas which the Venetians came to during the summer. The Villa we went to was called Villa Pisani and it was one of the largest or maybe the largest villa around. It has gigantic gardens that are beautiful and a labrinthe which was unfortunately closed the day we visited.
Wednesday we went to the islands of Venice; Murano, Burano and Torcello. The weather was really great and the sun was shining. First we went to Murano, the island famous for glass making. We saw glass being made and then were let free on the island for a while. Next island, which was my favorite, was Burano, the island famous for its colorful
houses and lace. The houses were painted bright colors because when Burano was only a small fishing town, the fishermen painted their houses so that when they came back and there was fog or darkness they could recognize their home. I had some really good gelato here too. The last island was Torcello which is famous for its monastery and church. It was very tiny and there was not much to do. I’m not completely sure but I think that on the island is a throne which is believed to be the throne of Attila the Hun.
Thursday I went to school with my host sister Silvia who goes to a Turistic school. For lunch Silvia and I went to her grandparents house where we ate gnocchi made by hand with ragu sauce and then breaded meat and mashed potates, yummy! In the afternoon I went to Padova, we walked around a lot, but did not enter into any places. I know there are old Roman ruins of the city and Petrarca’s house, but we didn’t go see those so I don’t know what they look like. While we were walking around we saw something I have never seen before. There were university students who were graduating and the students were dressed in almost nothing standing on top of benches holding a larger poster with a caricature of them and a lot of things written by family and friends. The students had the read the poster, and every once and a while the crowd would throw flour or spray whip cream at them or yell “drink!”and the student would have to drink wine or coca cola. Then the crowd would sing a song, it went like this: Dottore, Dottore, Dottore al buso del cul, vaffancu, vaffancu, vaffancu! I’ve never seen anything like it, I thought it was so neat. Oh yeah, had some more gelato before getting on the train back home.
Friday we went to Verona with the train. The weather was great and the first place we went to, the Arena, which is like the Colosseum in Rome, made for good suntanning time. We walked around a lot and saw many things of which again I can’t remember the names of. Around lunchtime we went to Juliet’s house. In the courtyard there is a statue of Juliet and it is supposed to be good luck if you touch her right breast which is shiny from all the touching. Also there is sort of an entrance tunnel that is covered by writing and notes stuck to the wall with gum all about love. I don’t know if the story of Romeo and Juliet is true, but in Verona there did exist two feuding families called the Montagues and the Capulets. Before leaving around seven we ate gelato and tanned in the sun some more.
Saturday was a free day to spend with our host families and do what we want. In the morning I went shopping with an exchange student friend and I finally got new shoes which were much needed and a pretty shirt. After lunch, my host family took me to see the beach. The first beach they took me to was Jesolo, which is a very large tourist-y beach with one of the longest shopping streets. We walked along the beach, which was basically deserted and took a few pictures. In the car my host family was trying to introduce me to Italian music, and they were all singing at the top of their lungs which was so much fun. I haven’t been around fun chaos for a long time, I really enjoyed it. The next beach we visited was Caorle, which was much smaller but to me much prettier. I had some vanilla gelato with smarties. Caorle has a beach part and a rocky part. On the rocky part, the exterior rocks have been carved by sculptors in contests and have some interesting subjects. At night there was a pizza party to say goodbye to other exchange students.
Sunday my host family had lunch really early just so I could taste one more good meal of theirs. At noon we had to go to the train station to catch the train and that was the end of my trip!
Ciao!
~Alyssa
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Jennifer
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Alyssa... You need to blow that picture up and save it. It's precious.