24. Settembre 2011: Walking Far From Home

Our hotel serves actual breakfast. Not just coffee and toast, we were given an assortment of croissants, sweet raisin bread that resembled German Stollen, yogurts, cheeses, meats, cereals…it was a welcome change for this breakfast-person. After this filling breakfast (I think I had about five croissants on top of everything else…they kept bringing them out so I figured it was appropriate) I set off on my own to find a post box with a special bounce in my step. Not two blocks into my walk, I passed a garbage man going about his work and singing loudly in Italian. It was so beautifully cinematic that I had to smile. The man noticed my smile and greeted me with a booming “Buongiorno!” that echoed across the little square. I beamed and responded with enthusiasm, “Buongiorno!” I wondered if he knew that he had just made my day. I found myself singing my own special song for the rest of the day. I hummed to myself, walking from one colorful neighborhood to the other. Hardly anyone was up and about yet, at 9 in the morning. My smile only grew when I crossed a bridge to see Alex, a young man in the same program as I, sitting in a niche of a church building cross-legged with eyes shut, meditating. It was like he was meant to be there; a beautiful morning ritual.

I finally found a post box then promptly found myself at the Peggy Guggenheim Museum of Modern Art. The gates to the museum grounds were a beautifully intricate design of woven vines. I wish I could have taken pictures at this most extraordinary collection of artwork. Peggy Guggenheim, the same woman who had discovered Jackson Pollack, had collected and displayed works by Salvador Dali (a personal favorite of mine), one of her several husbands Max Ernst, Paul Klee, Yoko Ono and many others. If photography had been allowed inside the museum, I would have displayed here pictures of my favorites in the collection: John Tunnard’s “Psi,” Robert Delauney’s “Windows Open Simultaneously, 1^st part, 3^rd motif,” Gino Severini’s “Mare=Ballerina,” and Salvador Dali’s “Untitled, 1931.” Outside of the museum were some more interesting pieces, including Yoko Ono’s donation. She had given Peggy Guggenheim a live olive tree. The piece was entitled, “Wish Tree Venice 2003. To Peggy with Love x Yoko.” The branches were trimmed in such a way that one could—and we were advised to—write a wish on a small piece of paper and impale it onto one of these branches. Some wishes were personal; others wished for the obvious world peace, justice, etc. I wrote a wish of my own and impaled it on a branch close to the trunk.

I could have spent the entire day in this museum but had to duck out after only an hour to meet the rest of my group in front of the hotel. From there, we walked about forty minutes to the other side of the island and boarded a train for Padova (or Padua…another Shakespearean locale). About an hour later we arrived and trekked to the Scrovegnian Chapel. This chapel was built as a gift to God from Signor Scrovengi as a mean to help ransom his father from hell. This sounds more like a prideful venture (hey God, check it out! I have enough money that I can build you this amazing chapel…wanna let Dad free? Pretty please?) than a truly Christian sacrifice, but hey, this was 1300. The inside of the chapel was temperature controlled (at freezing!) and only 25 people were allowed in at a time for fifteen minutes. Supposedly this was to protect the incredible frescoes painted by Giotto the Florentine from 1305-1308. However, our group of 29 (we had split into two groups for the tours since 29 was too big for this chapel) arrived late for our ticket times. The first group got in fine but when the next group tried to enter, our access was denied and we ended up filling in the open slots in the next four ticket times. It was a little ridiculous and the ticket man was kind of a jerk, but what can you do. When I finally entered the chapel I understood why the tickets are so hard to come by. The frescoes are breathtaking and the symbolism is beautifully thought out. It was like reading the world’s oldest, biggest, holiest cartoon strip that told the birth and life of Mary and then the birth and life of Christ. Each frame of the story was particularly placed so that one could draw meaning from the vertical juxtaposition and the decoration around each frame also symbolized an Old Testament story that could be related to the New Testament story being told.

We scurried back to the train station, expecting to be late but making our train and arrived in time for dinner in Venice: the-type-of-pasta-that-is-like-a-tube-that-I-forgot-the-name-of-but-I’m-sure-it-ends-in-an-i with pesto, fish, and finally stracciatella torta (chocolate-chip cake). Wanting to see more of Venice, I joined several friends on a nighttime adventure of the island. We discovered quickly that the nightlife in Venice is almost nonexistent after 9 o’clock, though we did find a place that served bellinis (recommended to me by the all-knowing-Italian-learned-genius). A bellini is simply prosecco (a sparkling white wine, an Italian specialty) and peach juice. Delicious, refreshing and the perfect nightcap. We clinked our glasses in the name of celebration (I proudly toasted to my wonderful boyfriend, Joseph, of six months!) and wandered back to the hotel as the moon glimmered magically off of the canals.