Snapshots of Venice

Well, here goes. 

That was basically my sentiment as I headed to the airport Thursday afternoon. I was headed to Venice - a city I had never dreamed of visiting in a country I had never been to - to study photography and art for the next six weeks. I don’t speak a word of Italian, and the only other time I had traveled abroad was on a middle school trip to Spain. So things were only a tad bit different.

I was excited, obviously, but now that I was actually at the airport ready to go, it started to hit me: What if I can’t communicate as easily as I’ve been told? What if I get hopelessly lost, without my phone, and have to deal with the language barrier? Will I worry too much? Or actually enjoy myself? What if I find it hard coordinating with people to go out and do things, and I spend more time alone than I want to? I put these thoughts aside and told myself I would take advantage of the opportunity and not let myself miss out on new experiences because of a little anxiety.

I met up with our group at Boston Logan and we boarded our first flight with no problem. We then proceeded to sit in the runway for over an hour while some unknown electrical problem was fixed. 

When we were finally flying I was already stiff from sitting so long, which wasn’t a good start to an 8 hour flight. But then they served us dinner!

Yes, I took a picture of my airplane food. I’m a dork. And I obviously fly a lot.

The food was appetizing enough. We had some sort of curried chicken with a fancy-ass salad and a role. And some kind of cross between cheesecake and lemon square for dessert. Oh and wait:

Complementary wine. Aww yeah.

(It’s blatantly obvious how often I travel internationally, right? Yeah, got it)

But we didn’t have wine glasses, unfortunately (Iberia was too classy for that), so we drank it out of plastic airplane cups. 

Pinky up and everything.

After that I attempted to watch the in-flight movie, something about Drew Barrymore and whales, and then I attempted to sleep through it. Didn’t work. We landed at Madrid at about 8:15am local time, which is 2:15am Boston time. Our connecting flight left at 9am, so we had to book it through customs and security - at the equivalent of almost 3 in the morning - to catch it. Somehow we made it, and I promptly fell asleep until we landed in Venice two hours later. 

We met up with our professor and went to our hotel, and in the process travelled on the equivalent of Venice’s subway: The Vaporetto (water bus).

It’s exactly like a subway, but on the canals that wind through the streets of Venice. Neat-o. 

After we got settled in a few of us went exploring. Venice is a gorgeous city, and I hope to take many pictures this trip that do it justice. 

Bridges like this are as frequent as sidewalks, since the water is basically everywhere. 

Yep, that’s normal.

Later we had dinner at an Italian pizza place and most people went back to the hotel to hang out and crash, me included. 

More pictures and stories to come later, but now it’s almost midnight here and I’ve got to fight jet lag. The world definitely seems different when you haven’t slept in 31 hours o.O

One more picture to leave you with: I didn’t take any shampoo or conditioner with me because of the weight issue, so I had to buy it here. 

…and I can’t get over it because it’s in Italian. It’s like… we’re in Italy or something! Wat.

Ciao!