Tuesday, September 12, 2006

We had breakfast delivered to our room again at 8:00 because we needed to head off to meet Jeffrey. Christy was very tired, so I did end up eating by myself and then heading off to the market. It was a lot more set up when I got there than it had been the day before, and I spent time taking photos of the octopus, squid, tomatoes, plums, nectarines and flowers. I really enjoyed my time there alone. At the end, I ran into Christy, so we headed back together to meet the group on the middle of the Rialto Bridge.

While we were waiting for the group, I just stood there watching the sun come up and the light flow over the buildings of Venice. I liked watching people on their morning commute via boat. Some of the people working on the boats amused me because they would go about driving their boats with a cell phone and cigarette in hand. I was very amused to watch it all.

Jeffery spent the morning with us in a church called The Church of the Glorious Saint Mary. I really enjoyed the church. It was elaborately decorated. We got to see some paintings that I really enjoyed. We also fulfilled an Aegean Center tradition of throwing a red rose on the grave of the founder of opera music. It was really fabulous. The church was very amazing, it definitely did help me add more pieces to the puzzle I’m working on called the Italian Renaissance.

After the church, I got together with Matt, and we headed out to Torcello. We had a good boat ride together just relaxing and talking about frivolous things. When we got to Torcello, we went in one of the churches and then walked around taking photos before we ran into a group of Aegean Center students. He went up in the campanile with the group, and I stayed down and took quite a few photos. I was impressed there was such a fabulous church in such a remote location.

I decided to head off to Murano and maybe look at some glass. On the way, everyone went their separate ways, so I ended up on Murano with Lindsey. We walked around for a while, but since I had spent a little time there the day before, we looked only a little and walked back to the boat to head to meet everyone for dinner.

I got back a little early, so I took off alone with my camera to take photos of people riding in gondolas. I got some gelato, and had just a really nice walk before dinner.

We met everyone at 6:30, and we were going to go to dinner, but a lot of people wanted to go in gondolas, so a group of them got together to do that. I went for a walk with Georgie to find a supermarket because I was pretty sure that I wasn’t going to go out to eat for dinner.

When we got back from the market, we caught up with everyone getting off their gondola ride, so I decided to go and head out to eat with Mark, Matt, Liz, Marilyn, etc. I decided finally that I was going to eat, so I ended up eating an entire pizza by myself. Matt and I went for a walk to talk about some girl problems while we were waiting for the food to come, and I did the best that I could to help him out.

At dinner, the food was not very good. It was actually very comical. The service was very bad because the waitress did not speak English and wasn’t will to work with our Italian. She got almost every order mixed up and tried to pass off a meal with polenta and cuttlefish on three people in the group. It was kind of comical. We ended up just laughing about it.

I went to the bar with the group after, but decided the best thing was to again be the boring one and head off to bed alone. It was just fine.