Monday, September 11, 2006

After the long morning, it was time to get up and get going again. A funny thing to think was that it was in fact the anniversary of September 11, 2001, and I thought to myself as I woke up in the morning that I was very glad to be in a country that wont be spending a lot of time buying in the drama of the whole thing. I took some time to remember that there was definitely some work still left to be done in the world and again vowed to renew my purpose in that. I think that was a just remembrance of the day.

We were supposed to meet Jeffery at 9:00 at the door of the Academia. We were also told that before that if we wanted to do something interesting that we could walk to the market to take photos. Christy and I had breakfast delivered to our room at 8:00, and we left early to head to the market.

Venice looks amazing in the morning light, and I took photos of the local people getting up and getting ready for the day in their beloved city. The market was still setting up, but I did take photos of the vegetables and fruit in the morning sun, and I was quite happy with some of the photos that I did take. Christy and I admired the boats all going down the canal, and I watched the local people take gondolas across the river. It was very lovely.

We took the boat to the Academia stop, and we ran into Liz and Jeffery in the coffee shop right next to the museum. It was fun. We spent time talking to them because we were early, when John Pack and John Van Buren showed up. I was surprised to see John because I didn’t know that he was coming. I was glad to see him though because I knew that part of the scholarship John was able to give to me was in part due to the kindness and determination of John Van Buren. He is an amazing man, and he deserved to spend time in Venice with us. I was told that he was actually going to spend the rest of the Italy session with the group, which was very nice.

The Academia Museum did have some very good masterpieces in it, and we had a lot of fun looking at them. I must say that I am a Florentine Renaissance woman. The Titian paintings were interesting, but I can’t say that I am the biggest fan. The paintings we did look at helped me to piece the Renaissance together in my mind, and a lot of them are Masterpieces. It was a very enjoyable museum visit.

After the Academia, Jeffery said goodbye to us for the afternoon. Part of the theory of having so much free time was so that we would be able to go out and get a feel for Venice on our own. I decided with Christy that I wanted to go out and visit some of the islands just outside of Venice. One is known for lace called Burano, one is known for glass called Murano and one is known for its church called Torcello.

I used my map and some advice from Jeffrey to head on out to the islands. Unfortunately, we took the long way, and we ended up going from stop to stop transferring boats, and it took us about two and a half hours to get there. At that time, it was too late to be able to go to Torcello and have a lot of time to go to the museum, so we went to Burano, and it ended up being the best decision.

I do have to say that Burano was one of my favorite places on Earth (even close to Bruge and Paros). All of the houses are colored and the method of transportation is still boats because it is built on canals outside of Venice.

There were almost no tourists there, so we had the place to ourselves. We walked around the entire island, and it was really wonderful. I have a lot of photos of the colorful houses.

Christy took some photos of me, so it is even documented that I did go there.

We decided to head over to Murano because Burano was so cool, but by the time we got there, we were so tired that we ended up just heading back to Venice to be with the group.

When we got back to the hotel, we ran into a group that was going out to eat, so we decided to tag along. We found a nice but expensive restaurant in a quiet area. The food was not very good, but it was nice to sit out in Venice and have some good time with friends. I had pasta with tomato sauce and some bread.

After dinner, I was headed off to bed to avoid any more drama like that of the night before.