Venice & Stranded in Calalzo

This past weekend I took a trip with Tn, Alma, Jess, and Julee to Venice! We left on Friday and came back Sunday night. Venice was incredibly beautiful. It was really crowded with tourists though, so much so that we almost couldn't move on some streets. The weather was also crazy hot, it was probably 80+ degrees on Saturday, and I was dressed for cooler weather, whoops! Everything in Venice is overpriced too, but even with the crowds and all it was still totally worth it. It felt like a theme park sometimes, but no...it was the real thing!

On Friday we got to the hostel first, then went exploring. We found the Rialto Bridge (Venice's main bridge over the Grand Canal), St. Mark's Square, saw the Klimt show at the Correr Musem, shopped for a bit, had a little aperitivo, took a gondola ride (expensive and short but still awesome), had dinner, and walked around at night. Venice at night was so beautiful!

Saturday was pretty busy too. In the morning we climbed (well, there was an elevator) the Campanile Tower, the highest point in Venice, to see the whole city. We walked around more (so much walking), went to the Accademia Gallery where there were a lot of Tintorello, Carpaccio, and Titian paintings, and after lunch took a boat to the island of Murano just off the coast of the mainland. There are two main islands - Murano, which is known for its glass (Pandora bracelet wearers - Murano glass beads should ring a bell), and Burano, which is known for its lace. And what's funny about Venice is that all the transportation is actually on the water, so the boat we took was really a bus. The boat bus. By the time we got to Murano, we were all exhausted from the heat and walking, so sat by the water for a while and then just strolled around the island. It was a really calm and quiet place. Went back to the mainland for dinner, then we (minus Tn, party pooper) went to see a Vivaldi concert at the San Vidal church. The orchestra was incredible! They performed the four seasons, and then songs by other composers from Vivaldi's time. Then it was time for bed for me because I had to wake up at 5am...

Right, so on Sunday I decided to go to Auronzo, the town my family is originally from, and where I still have a few distant relatives. Since I have to go through Venice to get there, Sunday was my only opportunity to go. Except, there is no direct train to Auronzo, it's a train to Calalzo, then a half hour bus ride from there, which was fine because I knew the bus schedule and exactly what time I needed to be there. So I got to Calalzo around 9:40am, and the bus I needed, line 31, wasn't until 10:10. At 10:10, a few buses came and went, all other numbers, no 31, so I started to panic a little because Sunday in Italy means everything is shut down and there are less public transportation options. And my bus never came. Finally I asked the next bus driver who came by what happened, and he said that  on Sundays they combine the lines, so I should have gotten on the 33...but how was I supposed to know that?? I was so mad at myself because I watched the bus I was supposed to get on come and go. I could have been on it. The bus driver gave me a business card for a taxi, but I didn't have enough cash on me for a cab ride there and back, plus it seemed a little sketchy (the card didn't say taxi on it, just had a cell phone number). The bus that I missed was the one and only bus to Auronzo until late afternoon, when I would already be on a train back to Venice.

So there I was, at 10:30 in the morning, stranded in Calalzo, a town I wasn't familiar with, where I was the only person around, everything was closed, I had no food and just half a bottle of water. My train back to Venice wasn't until 3:00pm. Almost five hours to do...what? That was sort of my breaking point I think, but then I collected myself and decided to just start walking. Because, the plus side was that I was in the middle of the Dolomite mountains (part of the Alps), in an unbelievably beautiful place, that looked almost like how I imagined Auronzo would look. So I pretended I was really there. I started walking and found myself on a hiking trail which led into a pine forest in the mountains, with a lake in the center. I spent all my time wandering and hiking through the forest. There were a lot of families with children by the lake, but farther away I was completely alone, and it was so calm and relaxing, I think it was actually something I needed. The air was really clean and pure, and I laid in the sunshine for a long time and tried to see all positives about the situation. Now I have an excuse to go back to Auronzo and Veneto one day, hopefully with the rest of my family. It was a rough day but also, in retrospect, an experience I'm glad I had.

 

 

Finally, I took the train back to Venice, power walked to a church I wanted to see with Titian's most famous painting, then met my friends back at the train station to head back to Rome. What an adventure.


(And yes, I have been productive in studio, I will update with scans and photos in the next few days!)

Spring break - Paris

On Thursday morning, I dragged myself out of bed at 4am, said my good-byes to Irune and her mom, then her dad drove me to the airport, only to find that it didn't even open until 5am, and I ended up waiting for an hour until my gate was even posted. Whoops! The flight went well though, I had a 2-hour layover in Barcelona, then another flight to Paris! I met Susie at the airport, and we ventured on a bus and the metro to the hostel, got a little lost trying to find it, but finally found Jess, Molly, Katy, Jamie, and Astrid. I was so happy to see everyone!

That first day, we went for a long walk and ended up staying out until almost midnight, just exploring. We walked down to the river, saw the Opera house, stopped by a few chocolate shops, passed by the Louvre, Notre Dame, had a long dinner, then walked for over an hour along the river at night to the Eiffel Tower. We were all exhausted - I had been up since 4am and them since 5, but Paris was so, so beautiful. Over the few days I noticed that at the same time, it is a teeny tiny dollhouse but also a huge city built for giants. The architecture is all monumental, and the city is HUGE! We kept trying to orient ourselves on the map like we were in Rome, but the scale was much grander so we ended up walking way farther than we thought every time.

Notre Dame

Inside Notre Dame

On Friday, we went shopping for a bit, then stopped by this famous pastry shop, called Laduree. They are famous specifically for their macarons, a French delicacy - a little bit of magic in the form of two tiny circles with different flavors of ganache in the middle. Always expensive but always worth it. Then we went to the Musee d'Orsay, which is full of impressionist paintings from Monet to Cezanne, Manet, Van Gogh, Gaugain, art noveau, Toulouse-Leutrec, Rodin.....so many incredible pieces of art, I enjoyed it all. My feet were almost falling off from all the walking though! Katy, Astrid, and I sat by the river for awhile, then got dinner and walked down the Champs d'Elysees, supposedly the most beautiful street in the world. It's like 2 miles long - it was light outside when we started down it, and dark by the end. At the end of the street is the Arch of Triumph, a massive piece of architecture that we climbed inside to get to the top. We had a panoramic view of Paris at night, and it was downpouring rain with hurricane feeling winds! Somehow my poor little umbrella survived.

The macarons...be still my heart...

Saturday we all woke up early to see Mass at Notre Dame, except it wasn't quite what we expected...it was super small and the complete opposite of what we saw the first day, where the mass was held in the main part, the organ was being played, there was a singer and incense being burned...oh well, Katy, Astrid, and I ended up climbing the bell tower to see the best views of Paris, the gargoyles of Notre Dame, and the big bell. Then we went to St. Chapelle, which is another cathedral known for its stained glass - breathtaking.

After that was an adventure to the Louvre! There was a line, but it went surprisingly fast. There was a special exhibition showing the duc du Berry's Book of Hours by the Limbourg Brothers, and I also saw the Winged Victory, the Mona Lisa, and a few Caravaggios. The Louvre is literally massive. It's like three city blocks long by two wide, and would take a week to see the entire thing, so you really have to choose what you want to see. I didn't have much time there, but it was still a great experience to be in one of the most important museums in the world.

That night, Katy, Astrid, and Molly flew home a day early, and Jamie was staying with her friend's mom just outside of Paris, so it was just me, Susie, and Jess for one of the most incredible dinners. We strolled up to Montmartre, the artistic district of Paris (also the redlight district). This was the Paris I had been dreaming about - it was directly from a film, every street was perfect and filled with young people our age. We splurged for dinner - Jess and Susie had awesome starters, then Jess and I had duck and Susie had pork cheeks. I also had a cream & chocolate dessert with some red wine. The food in Paris was soooo goooood, I didn't have a bad meal the entire time. After dinner we wandered down through Montmarte to see the Moulin Rouge lit up at night.

Sunday was the icing on the cake of this week of perfect days. The woman that Jamie had been staying with, Mary, offered to drive us to Giverny, where Monet's house and garden is located. First we had to lug all of our luggage through two stops on the metro to the RER train for another 45 minute ride to a suburb just outside of Paris called St. Germaine en Laye. Mary met us there with Jamie, and we set off for an hour drive through the countryside. Funny coincidence - Mary is actually the mother of a girl who goes to RISD (Jamie's friend) who I share some mutual friends with - small world! We got to Giverny around 12:30, had lunch (Mary brought us chocolate chip cookies, I almost died of happiness), then went through Monet's gardens. It was so beautiful. It rained in the beginning, but got sunny eventually. There were so many flowers, all in bloom, we saw his house, and the lily pond and bridge that's in all of his paintings. After seeing his residence, Monet's paintings just...make sense.

We had another hour drive to Auvers sur Oise, the location of Van Gogh's last residence. We had tea in a little cafe, then toured the room that Van Gogh was renting when he committed suicide, the room where he died. It felt so...heavy, like you could feel what he was going through. There was just a single chair there. Then we walked up to the church and fields he painted, and finally to the cemetery where he is buried. It was all very full circle, after seeing his paintings in Musee D'Orsay on Friday....I could just imagine him sitting in those fields and painting. There are no words to describe the feeling.

And then, Mary, aka the Saint of the Day, drove us all the way to the airport - so grateful! The flight went smoothly, and the four of us were back to the Cenci in Rome a little after midnight.

All in all, the past 10 days were an unforgettable experience, a challenge in traveling alone but also a joy when I got to spend time with friends, those who I see often and those who I hadn't seen in years, a learning experience in being independent and adventurous, and it was fulfilling in so many ways. Now it's time to buckle down on studio work, and run the rest of this 6-week marathon!

So far on EHP:
Flights: 5
Trains: 4
Buses & Metro: Too many to count