Venice Rocks

Yesterday I returned from a 4 days (3 nights) long trip to Venice, which I made with a student organisation at my school. What can I say…it was one of the most interesting and fun weekends I’ve had.

We landed on Treviso Airport at around 20:00 on friday evening. From there we took a bus to the center of Venice (Piazzale Roma) where we stepped aboard a boatbus (the common way of transport in Venice) for a trip trough the canales, from which we could see the beatiful buildings and “coastline” of the city. After a while we arrived at the southernmost point of the city, Lido. There we took a larger boat to Punta Sabbioni, near our sleeping location, Camping Miramare.

The next day we got up early to go back to the city, where we visited the Arsenale, part of the Bienalle. We saw a lot of interesting art there (though many things were very abstract, something I can’t really appreciate), after which we went into the beatiful city itself. I had my videocamera with me, but I only wish I had more tape. There’s so much to see there, and it’s all equally amazing, it’s hard to make a selection.

On Sunday we went to another part of the Bienalle, the Giardini (Garden). This park consisted of several buildings, each filled with art contributed by a specific country. While I liked the outside bit of the park more than the Arsenale, I think many of it’s buildings are too clean and white inside. If you ever visit it, be sure not to visit the Hungary Pavillion.

In the afternoon we went for another walk trough the city, arriving at the very, very busy Piazza San Marco. In the evening we ate at a self-service restaurant (which was ok), after which most people decided to return to the camping. A friend and I thought this to be extremely lame, so we went to the northern part of the city (near Ca’ d’Oro), which is less touristic. Here we walked trough shopping streets were we absolutely needed our Italian language book. The further north we went, the smaller the alleys we went trough became. At a certain point only 1 person could walk trough one at once. We sat for a drink at the northern coast, after which we took the boat to the camping (where we spent the rest of the night sitting on the balcony of one of our cabins).

On monday we went to the nearby island Murano, world famous for it’s glass. While in some ways similar to Venice, I think it was in fact even more beatiful. It was more sunny and less touristic. To live there would be like living in Utopia. In the evening we took the plane back to Airport Dusseldorf-Weeze. While I was somewhat glad to sleep in my own bed that night, I felt sad that I was back in reality.

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