Getting Used to Venice
Throughout our study-abroad program, Venice was to become home base. Not that I realized this immediately. My first overwhelming impressions were of water--canals and bridges everywhere!--and of color, and crowds, and noise. Venice is a city for tourists: everywhere you look, bright and gorgeous things are on display, artists peddle their pictures, shop windows glitter and gleam. For the new tourist, it’s a wonderful place to walk because there are no cars! Instead of roads, the cobblestone sidewalks border deep canals; if you're not on foot, you have to travel by boat. If you are on foot, you'll quickly get lost and confused: every alleyway looks the same, and it’s hard to find a direction. But the longer you live in the city, the sooner you realize that its tunnels and twists are knowable; you recognize this church or that piazza, and all of a sudden you realize that Venice is becoming like home.

Sweet Home San Servolo
Our program was housed on the tiny island of San Servolo, which was a four-minute boat ride from the docks near San Marco Square. The buildings where we stayed were orginally a monastery; then it became an insane asylum. Now it houses students attending classes, artists attending workshops, and businesspeople attending conferences.

Cruising the Canals
Click here for an audio file of my impressions of Venetian transportation...

Labyrinthine Venice
During my first few days in Venice, I spent the whole afternoon out and about in the city: I had no destination and no map, but just the weirdest, highest, most extensive convolutions of buildings, alleys, canals, bridges, hidden gardens and open squares. Under the many-storied buildings of Venice, the sky shows only in crazy-quilt patches and there is no such thing as "straight ahead"--although that phrase features prominently in the natives' speech when you ask them for directions. Even the arrows on street signs are crooked! Everything feels so old, and so high, and so timelessly fine...even when it's under graffiti. It's easy to understand why people assume that Venice will be here forever.

“Rats with Wings”
One of the first things I learned in my Art History course was that it takes extensive--and expensive--restoration projects to maintain this city's art and architecture. Some elements are already beyond repair; and natural forces and pollution are real and constant threats. Did you know that one of the foremost public enemies of Venice is the common pigeon? They are everywhere in the open squares, thronging almost as thick as the tourists. The Venetians call pigeons "rats with wings"--not only are they pesky, they’re carriers of disease. Yet you will regularly see tourists holding crumbs in their outstretched hands and waiting for pigeons to jump up and feed. Note for travelers: When in Venice, DO NOT do this!

Gelato Conoisseur in the Making
One of the joys of this city--even though it's full of expensive shops and fake Italian restaurants and kiosks all selling the same souvenirs--is finding the little pockets of reality. Laundry lines. A little grocery store selling cherries out of crates. A gelato (ice cream) place that has walls instead of wheels, where two euro will get you three scoops instead of just two. Gelato became one of our staple foods: in all the cities I visited, it is sold on every corner in a bewildering variety of flavors--from strawberry and stracciatella (chocolate chip) to champagne, pear, and pure white cream. Whatever else changed from city to city, gelato was one thing you could always count on.