And One for Shade

And One for Shade

            We had a night train into Venice.   When we woke up, we saw that the place we were arriving appeared to be floating on water.

            No, but actually.  It’s definitely on water. 

            We got in at 07:00, so we got to see something that very few people have ever seen: St. Mark’s Square completely empty.

            Normally, St. Mark’s is filled with tourists, pigeons, and tourists covered in pigeons, as it was later in the day.  

            The first thing we went to see was the Doge’s Palace.  The Doge of Venice ran the place back when it was a city-state and a huge naval power.  They had some cool art, a prison, but best of all, a fucking phenomenal armory.  They had approximately a billion glaives and more claymores than we had ever seen.  A lot of the swords showed signs of wear, like this one:

            They had so many swords that they built sword-peacocks.  This is a quarter of one room.

            Furthermore, they had crazy shit, like GUNMACES and GUNAXES. 

            Will and I have kind of had a problem with Asian tour groups following us everywhere.  They fill any attraction we are visiting, and they swarm!  It’s scary.  For anyone who has played Starcraft it’s like a Zergling Rush, but with cameras.  They stand in front of everything, blocking it so they can take pictures of themselves in front of it.  They also stand in the middle of corridors, blocking all progress.  There were three of these groups in the Doge’s Palace.  We got ahead of them while they stopped in the painting rooms, but they darted through the armory like nobody’s business.  For once, they were actually not a problem.  It was nice.

            The prisons were pretty neat, and there was this bridge called The Bridge of Sighs in between the room where people got sentenced and the prison.  It’s an indoor bridge, with tiny windows so you can get a last look at freedom before you’re locked away forever.  Oh, and executed, probably.  Yay Venice!

            We then were going to go up the belltower, but there was a huge line.  We then tried to go into St. Mark’s Basilica, but there was also a huge line there.  We ended up going to another museum that was three-museums-in-one.  It had the Correr Museum, the Archaeological Museum, and some art gallery.  The Correr museum also had a neat armory (but not as awesome as the Doge’s Palace). 

            We grabbed some pizza for lunch.  Will was sad.  He ordered a mangiafuoco (literally, “eat-fire”) and it didn’t live up to his spiciness expectations.  We then tried to go to the naval museum.  Good news: for students, it was 66 Euro cents.  Bad news: it closes at 13:30.  We didn’t get to see it.

            We tried to give the belltower another try.  The line was gone, but it was too expensive.  We checked out St. Mark’s Basilica, which was pretty neat (and free).  We also went to another church, St. Maria Salute.  There was a sign outside the door that said in both English and Italian, “Absolutely no one is authorized to ask for money.” Despite this, there was a lady with a container for money standing outside, requesting “donations.”  I read her the sign in Italian, and she said accusatorily, “AMERICAN!”  We ignored her and went in.  There was a GOLDEN THRONE for a frugal pope who knew how to spend the Holy See’s money wisely.

            We then went to go find the Jewish quarter.  This required walking across the entire fucking city.  We got there, and all of the synagogues were closed.  We also realized why it was a ghetto.  It held the entire Jewish population of Venice on one little island, and I could walk across its entire length in about 30 seconds.  Yup.

            We then went and got some food.  We both had gnocchi. It was tasty.  Finally, we got on the night train to Hungary.  As we were waiting for it to leave, I struck up a conversation with an Argentine dude.  He said that Budapest was where “the party” was at, and beer was 1.2 Euros for a liter (that’s 2.2 pints).  We were excited.  We were also sharing a room with an Indian family.  We went to sleep.

Will’s Corner

            Why surround yourself with water if you don’t even get to swim in it?

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Dear Joe,

            You’re our Venice Queen.

Love,

Will and Andy