Venice was incredible! I knew as soon as I got there I would never believe the photos afterwards, and it's hard. Stepping out of real life and into a photograph for three days is a weird sensation and the beauty of the city felt surreal the entire time.
I arrived Friday morning and headed directly into the city. The first thing on my list was 'to get lost' which was easier to do than expected. I was lost all of Friday and most of Sunday (but not Saturday). While I was lost, I stumbled upon the Peggy Guggenheim museum and that was fantastic! It's incredible how much art she owned and the relationship she had with many artists. She also married an artist (or two) and her daughter was an artist (before she died). Afterwards, I walked around some more, found St. Mark's square, ate two gelatos and a weird vegetable wrap (YES I AM STILL A VEGETARIAN, successfully) and around five I took a bus to my hostel, seeing as I had been awake since 3AM. Around eight, the two girls I was sharing a room with arrived! Surprise! They were two lovely Americans studying in Canterbury, England for the semester. Even better--we were all planning on travelling to the islands of Burano and Murano the next day, so we decided to go together!
Saturday morning we headed into Venice and got tickets for the waterbus. We went to Murano first, home of the glass-blowing trade. We went in a couple of shops and looks at all the different glass-blown furnishings while looking for somewhere to see live glass-blowing. We finally found a place that was having a demonstration and watched the man blow a vase and a glass horse! It was incredible! Afterwards, we had some lunch and then went to Burano. Burano is famous for the brightly colored houses. I have never seen such bright shades of pink and purple; it was wonderful! We walked around the island, admiring the beauty. We went back to Venice for dinner and I had seafood pasta, which was delicious, but not quite filling enough, so we got dessert at another resaturant, I had some ice cream dish with Bailey's that was really great.
Sunday, I saw the girls to the train station and went to the Old Jewish Quarter. I walked around there, looking at the signs and shops, then went to the Accademia. The number of paintings housed there is astounding, it was much bigger than I expected, and the paintings are ginormous! Well worth the trip. I did some writing in a cafe and bought tiramisu from a street vendor. I went back to the hostel fairly early, exhausted from walking around the island several times.
Venice was surreal and I am really happy for the opportunity I had to speak Italian and see such a beautiful place. It's crazy how much of a tourist city Venice is, especially compared to Dublin. It was nice to come back to a place I was familiar with.
Since then, I have been back to work and class. The program ends in less than two weeks, which blows my mind! Last weekend, our program organized a field trip to the National Stud Farm where we saw a horse worth 60 MILLION euro and some miniature horses, as well. There was a Japanese Garden and we all completed the 'path of life'. After that, we went to the town of Kilkenny and toured the castle! Finally, I went inside of a castle. They are currently restoring it to what it looked like in the early 19th century, and it made me want to watch Pride and Prejudice again, the castle truly resembled Darcy's estate inside. I promise to update again after going to the Aran Islands this weekend!
