Venezia

so! belated venice post
but hey its here right?

an awesome weekend for sure. started off with a 5 hour train ride which sparked a very interesting conversation. I realized that a weekend trip to venice required just as much travel time, if not more, as a trip to LA or Boston from NOLA would be. Yet going home for a weekend is seen as too much hassle. then again travel time is upped each way by security and baggage claim, but still. Studying abroad we are expected to take weekend trips to places in order to soak up as much culture as we can. Why doesnt this expand to our own country? i could likely learn just as much in a weekend to venice or pisa as i could in a trip to say Philly or St. Paul. Different ideas and culture and life from my own. But we dont do it. now part of it has to be price since a weekend trip to boston is near $200 and my trip to venice was €100, though really thats not -that- much of a difference. but again i think it just boils down to mentality about it. and thats really interesting.

so! venice. loooong train ride. i only brought one book which was just silly. but we brought snacks! and i wrote in my personal travel journal, whcih is good. i need to keep up on headspace updates/siphoning more. it helps and is good me time (especially since a bath and romance novel wont do the trick here since baths are nigh near nonexistant. sad day)

jaya of course does remember to bring books. her hemmingway and a really horrible romance novel thats actually one of the most amusing things ive ever read. she hid behind it at a few points. its the shame. she really will have to embrace her femininity....heh. yeah ok. but yes so long trip that we braved only by the grace of potato chips, orange soda and eyecrossing. jaya thought she broke me at one point. ive decided for the jillionth time that italy has crap graffitii and it makes me sad. though upon entering the venice station there was this really awesomely done wolverine. it made the massive comic geek inside me really freaking happy

so we get into the venice station about 2pm. and have a gorgeous water view when we step out of the station. hello venice! we walk the excrutiating 3 blocks to our hostel. private room, which is nice, and two bathrooms to split between 6 people. not a bad deal all in all. especially since our room got italian mtv. now see we dont have tv in our apartment so this was very exciting. italian mtv has shows like "pimp my ride" and "next" subtitled but others like reality shows following people around are very badly dubbed. very badly. but more on that later. so we decided to just wander. and thus we did.

now wandering in venice gets you in trouble. or sore legs. whichever comes first. we definitely got the sore legs. the trouble only came when we realized we had sore legs and had 3/4 of the city to cover to get back to where we were staying. small place. easy to get lost. freaking gorgeous



we crossed a couple hundred thousand bridges and saw breathtaking awesomeness all along the way. the street vendors were so cool. masks and veggies all mixed in along the street. we mostly just window shopped and experienced the city going to the ponte rialto and seeing the grand canal and all the shops and people and business and it was awesome. decided we should make it over tothat st. marks square thing with lots of pidgens (bah pidgens. i did chase them though. felt like i was four. totally worth it)

so we did. and saw the bridge of sighs which i failed to get a good picture of. bad wish. le sigh. i like old buildings. good city for it. for sure. so about there we realized the sun was going down and we were nowhere near our hostel. so we hotfooted it over to the hostel and chilled for a while, watching hilarious mtv and wondering why on earth some punk kid would want 7inch screens playing music videos on his mudflaps. or a snow maker. i mean seriously give me a decent sound system and a pretty paint job and id be happy as a clam. so eventually we decided to head out for food.

my goal? seafood risotto. since seafood and risotto are of the region figure why not mix them? so we found a place.
can we say amazing? good im glad we can. now thing of something better than that and youll get what that risotto was. im ruined.
im going to come home and be like..this is not food.
anyway so we ordered fish for main course as well and i got some weird whitefish thing with artichokes that was very vinegar-y and not so good. jaya got cuttlefish

which for those of you that dont know is a member of the cephalopod family and thus has ink as a defense mechanism. now cuttlefish venetian style is made with a sauce that utilizes said defense mechanism. thus! black sauce that turns your tongue black. its so amazingly visually cool as well as tastingly good. so much love for that. followed up by the best tiramisu ever and you have a meal that cost about 35 euros each but was worth EVERY penny. yum.
i love food. and here it is life, so why not get in the spirit right?

so then we are full and happy and head back to do that sleeping thing since the next day will be full and has two objectives. 1. buy glass for peoples. 2. buy leather carnivale masks for us.
so if you get something from me from this trip? chances are its from venice.
so! we get up at 9am. we both groaned at the clock and rolled out of bed. we ate some plum cake (which is really pound cake) and an apple and walked out the door. we got on the waterbus and luckily we got the Direct Morano one because that was long enough with only two stops. can you imagine learning to drive using a boat? no freeways, just confusing poles sticking out all over dileneating the water. i think id die. so we get there and head over to a furnace and get to see

a guy blow a vause and make a horse. really pretty and so awesome. i cant wait to take glass at tulane next eyar. they didnt have much in the store there so we decided to wander the island. so really murano at like 945 in the morning is super dead. nothing was open since it was saturday, especially the one glass hosue we wanted to go to. so much time was spent shopping. we found wine glasses after looking -everywhere- so thats happy.ù

went back and dropped off glass, grabbed pizza and headed back out. leather mask time. we found so many beautiful (and expensive!) paper mache masks but we were dead set on leather. finally we walked into a very very small shop that wed walked past like 4 times the previous day. full of leather masks. the older man sitting at the work table in the back greeted us and helped us look at the masks, making suggestions and the like. i fell in love with this one and ill have to post a picture later because its AMAZING. it was expensive but i love it. vibrant blue on the left eye side that fades into this beautiful autumn leaf on teh right. handworked, hand dyed leather?
perfect for sure.
we wandered a bit more because jaya wanted to find something else, but we ended up back at the same store wtih the nice maskmaker man who you can tell really really cares about the work he does and such. he really is a master at his craft. so jaya got a gorgeous mask as well. we win
then!
dinner!
went to a different restaurant. got gnocci all dogese whcih is gnocci with seafood. amazing.
and then got cuttlefish,. and amazing tirimisu.
another happy night ended we went to sleep to get up at 9am again to get our train. the train didnt leave til 1130 so we broke open the 3 pack of bellini (a venetian cocktail thats made with sparkling white wine and peach nectar) and wore our pretty masks on the steps of the train station while each drinking a very small bottle of bellini.
the train arrived and we got on it for teh 5 hour ride back. i read the book jaya had finished and wrote and then slept a little. we got home and took a nap. and then did school work. saw jen and went to Good Cafe and chatted with our friends who are servers there.

so!
glass: check
masks: check
Awesome weekend: Check Plus