Buon Anno!

By the time we arrived in Venice, we had been traveling for 12 days. And while it's not really a punishment to travel around Italy for 2 1/2 weeks, we were both pretty exhausted. Thankfully, Venice is not a city that demands a lot of exertion. We had nearly a week for sight-seeing, which was more than enough to hit up the main sights (really, way more than enough). So we spent a few days doing nothing but sitting in cafes and restaurants, talking to one another and to new friends. More than the sights, Venice was about the people.

5) The islands


As geographically-inclined readers will know, Venice is actually a city made up of 118 small islands. Individually, these islands are not known for anything besides giving people something to walk on. The more famous islands--Murano, Burano and Torcello--are actually about 40 minutes away by water taxi. Eunice and I took an afternoon to see the first two, which ended up being a nice break from the city.

Murano is world-famous for its glassmakers. The island is small, but it's packed with glass showrooms and workshops. We visited on a Sunday, so things were pretty quiet, but we did manage to tour the Museo del Vetro (Glass Museum) which showcased some truly amazing glasswork done by Murano craftsmen over the years. If I had carried a bigger purse, you would all be getting Murano glass chandeliers as souvenirs.

Next we headed over to Burano, known for being the most adorable island in the world. Well, it's actually known for the lace manufactured there, but that was of secondary importance to us. Which was a good thing, because upon arrival we discovered that the lace museum was closed for renovations meaning that we had literally nothing to do on the island. So we wandered around, admiring the brightly-painted houses (each one is a different color) before taking refuge from the cold in a cafe.

It was a pretty laid-back day, which was exactly what we needed, considering that it was our last full day and we were both falling asleep on the water taxi ride over.

4) Peggy Guggenheim Collection

By the time we hit Venice we were pretty art-museumed out. But our guidebook peer pressured us into one final visit, by informing us that we would be terrible tourists and inadequate human beings if we did not visit the Peggy Guggenheim Collection.

The museum is named for Peggy Guggenheim (yes, those Guggenheims), who spent her last 30 years living in Venice. She amassed a substantial modern art collection that is now displayed in her former home and garden. I've mentioned before that I have a love-hate relationship with modern art, but I had a love-love relationship with this museum. It has a perfect location on the Grand Canal, and is full of beautiful paintings from the likes of Picasso, Pollack and Magritte. And (a big plus for me) it's very manageable. The main building still feels like a home, complete with tables and sofas for visitors to relax in. Across the garden is another building, where we toured two special exhibitions: one on Maurice Prendergast and one on Italian futurist artists. It was a great way to spend an afternoon, and a nice change from the Renaissance works we'd gotten accustomed to.

3) Vitruvian Man

In the months I've spent in Europe, I feel as though I've seen more famous works of art than I can count. Mona Lisa? Check. School of Athens? Seen it. The Thinker? Yep. Birth of Venus? Got it. But there's one iconic piece of art whose location I had never bothered to research: Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man. It's one of the most famous images in the world and in case you were wondering, it's in Venice.

But you should probably wait a few years before rushing off to Italy. Since the drawing is ink on paper, it's too delicate for permanent display. The week we were in Venice it happened to be on display for the first time in seven years. We never would have figured this out on our own, as the sketch wasn't mentioned in our guidebooks and there was very little promotion. But while eating lunch one day, we happened to hear it mentioned by two American women sitting at the next table. They told us that it was the last week of the exposition, and that not many people knew that it was even going on. So we immediately headed over to the Galleria dell'Accademmia, bought our tickets and--five minutes later--were standing in front of the Vitruvian Man.

I didn't expect the sketch to be as fascinating as it was. It was only slightly bigger than a sheet of notebook paper, but it is one of the best art experiences I've had in Europe. One of my favorite things about artwork is the historical aspect, the idea that at some point in time Leonardo da Vinci was sitting in front of the same canvas. It's the thought that saves the Mona Lisa from being completely overrated, and it was especially apparent in this sketch. You could see da Vinci's handwriting, every line he drew and every crease in the paper. Incredibly, there were only two other people in the room when we first got there, so we managed to get a great look free of flash photography and jostling crowds.

2) New Year's



I'm not exactly a party animal. On a Friday night, you're more likely to find me in bed with a book than downing shots at a club. And my New Year's celebrations were always pretty consistent with this, especially considering that they were spent at my grandparent's house. At midnight we would go out in the street, my great-aunt would bang some pot lids together and we were all asleep by 12:02. So this was the first New Year's Eve where my plans did not consist of watching replays of the ball dropping in Times Square.

In Venice, the main celebrations were going on in St. Mark's Square. Now I don't know if you know this, but Venice has a lot of water. And sometimes, especially when it's been raining, the water does not like to stay in the canals. I fortunately had brought my pair of waterproof boots. Others were less fortunate and had to shell out 9 euros for glorified plastic sacks. Let's take a one of those poor noobs.



Anyway on New Year's Eve, a mere twelve hours before celebrations were due to start, the square looked like this:

Luckily, the water drained quickly and the entire place was dry by 1:00 in the afternoon. We thought we had dodged a bullet, stupidly forgetting that the tide comes in twice a day (this is why we are journalism majors). So when we returned at 11:30 PM, we realized that nothing short of Noah's Ark would get us in front of the stage without getting completely soaked. Eunice and I were accidentally separated at this point, and she decided to stay dry as I ventured out into the deluge. My reward for doing this was a spot close to the stage, and a good view of the emcee...



a seeming friendly but somewhat sadistic man who spoke in a mix of Italian and English and would say things like, "I will never forget this night with all of you beautiful people. We are all here together...except you are in the water. Haha!" Or, "The water is all around. It is so beautiful!...but so very cold. Haha!"

The theme of the night was "Love 2010," so there was a lot of random making-out and cheesy romantic songs. But the real fun started after the countdown. I was with three other girls from our hostel, one American and two hyper-friendly Australians who could (and did) strike up conversations with anything that moved. So we ended up wandering Venice, meeting a parade of characters, from an adorable, newly-engaged British couple to a fellow Aussie teenager to a group of locals out for the night. For hours after midnight, music was blaring in the square while people splashed and danced and rode inflatable rafts through the water.

It was a completely random night, but that was what made it great. There was something exciting about wandering the city, making new friends and exchanging "Buon Anno!" with every stranger we passed. Not a bad way to kick off a new decade.

1) The people

There aren't a whole lot of advantages to staying hostels (unless you consider noisy roommates and moldy showers advantages). But they are cheap and they theoretically provide an opportunity to meet fellow impoverished travelers from around the world. Up until this trip, however, I really hadn't made many friends while staying at hostels. This is partly my fault: I'm not the most social person even on the best of days, and after a day crammed full of sight-seeing it's easier to fall into bed than go mingle with strangers.

At our Venice hostel, mingling was pretty much mandatory, as the hostel gave us free breakfast and dinner. So twice a day, between shoveling our faces with pasta, we made several new friends. Among them were two New Yorkers, one Washingtonian and the two previously mentioned Aussies. We eventually formed our own little group. Sometimes we explored new sections of the city. One day (New Year's) we spent the entire afternoon talking in a restaurant. We bonded over the strangeness of our hostel, where it was literally impossible to sleep past 9:30, without having your bed taken apart and sprayed with god-knows-what kind of chemicals. We talked about different expectations put on American and Australian students, compared impressions of European cities and learned that Australians have some not-so-nice names for red-heads...

And of course, the most important person on the trip was Eunice. It's always a little scary traveling alone with someone for the first time, as there's no buffer if you get irritated with one another. But things could not have worked out better. It was the first time we'd been on our own in seven months, and we compensated by letting loose our own brand of unfettered, neurotic craziness. We spent 18 days talking about everything. And I mean everything. Happy subjects, sad subjects, weird subjects. We had disagreements, but we also had identical reactions to certain experiences (Most of these moments tended to be a bit morbid, such as our strange glee at discovering the serial killer museum in Florence, or our discussion of Little Mermaid songs while walking to the catacombs. Perhaps it was best that we were not around other people).

I love, love, love living in Paris and have made some great friends over the past months. But there's nothing like spending time with someone who knows you as well as Eunice and I know each other. Of course the fact that we were traversing Italy helped, but I am convinced we would have had almost as much fun had we spent our vacation in a cardboard box. So thanks Eunice. All of your personalities were greatly appreciated on this trip.
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So that's it: Italy in three entries. It was a great trip from start to finish, but after 18 days away from home I can't say I was sorry to get back to Paris, where the showers are warm and the pastries are fattening.