September 24, 2011

September 24, 2011

Today, I woke up at 8:00 after a wonderful night’s sleep. We went downstairs to find a delicious breakfast with yogurt and granola, DELICIOUS croissants and jam, meats and cheeses, fresh fruit, juice…so much more than we usually get for breakfast! After breakfast, I decided to go on the optional mini walking tour with Jodie. It really turned out to be a wonderful choice as only six of us decided to do it—it was wonderful to travel around with such a small group, and such a good group. We began by walking to the church of San Zachariah, which was a beautiful old church with incredible artwork, including a famous divine conversation painting by Bellini; a very stunning little church that was not overrun by tourists! From there, we went to a confraternity that was home to some very famous artwork by Carpaccio. It was really a wonderful morning of some incredible art. We all took the little gondola for 50 cents that crosses the Grand Canal from San Marco to our hotel. On our short walk back to the hotel, we noticed another huge cruise ship sailing by…I cannot tell you how surreal it is to see such huge ships driving though such small channels in Venice, they just dwarf these huge churches!

At 11:40, we met up as a group to walk to the train station to head to Padua for the afternoon. We grabbed lunch at the train station and headed out around 1:00 on the train. Our reason for visiting was to see the Scrovegni Chapel. It looks so little and mundane from the outside but the frescos in this chapel are absolutely breathtaking between the juxtapositions, colors and different storylines—I actually got goosebumps. After our time there, we caught a train home at 4:30 and arrive back in Venice about 40 minutes later where we were free until dinner.

Erin and I stuck together and decided to follow the signs to San Marco rather than use our maps, which turned out to be a lot of fun. It brought us past the Rialto Bridge and a few other places we had not yet visited. We got to San Marco in a while and did some shopping. After a while, we headed back to the hotel for another wonderful dinner. This evening, we started out with some very wonderful pesto pasta. For our second dish, the others had fish while I had a really yummy omelet and we finished off the evening with a kind of yellow cake with chocolate chips in it that was very good. We also had white wine with our meal that was really quite wonderful—I had a small glass and loved it! It was also a dinner of wonderful conversation—I sat with Alex, Katie and Erin and we had a really great time together.

After dinner, Erin and I decided to go on a walk because it was still pretty early (dinner was at 8:00 tonight.) We walked across the bridge and meandered to San Marco, enjoying the beautiful lights in the piazza and the lights on the water along the way. We ran into a few family parties going on that were so beautiful and looked like so much fun! We decided to sit down by the water and talk after wandering for a while. All of a sudden, we saw a flash and heard a boom across the channel from us. Before we knew it, there was a spectacular fireworks show right across the channel, over a beautiful church and we were in the best seats in the house! It was such a fairy-tale-like moment! When the fireworks were over, we walked back to the hotel and I went to bed.