Genev-heh?

And I'm back in Venice!

The weekend was great! I am very much in love with Florence/Tuscany. That blog post is going to be very, very long since we did so much (and I took 300+ photos-- no worries, I won't be posting them all). In the meantime:

Geneva!

Okay, the exclamation point might be a little much there...

We were there on Wednesday and Thursday for a class trip to the UN and other very official sounding business.

Our hostel was about an hour away via public transit, and was actually right over the French/Swiss border (yay I've been to France now!) so that was realllly inconvenient for us. Luckily our professor was smart enough to lie to us about when we had to be at the Mission so even though we were late, we were actually still early.

Apparently their Security isn't too great there because I got my camera in

The League of Nations symbol in the UN

One of many UN rooms

I know I was supposed to be impressed by the UN, but yeah, not so much. We've been learning how the UN is really just not effective at all as any type of governing body so the luster of the UN was gone. It was just big rooms with lots of chairs.

This ceiling was incredible though, way cooler than a lot of the art I've been seeing.
It should be cool. It cost something like 13 million Euro

Photos of how they constructed this ceiling

So after many many hours of "why you should be a civil servant" propaganda, we were in the need for some food and alcohol.

Even our professor was intrigued/impressed with these 3 liter beer tubes.

We killed those beer tubes just waiting for food. Meanwhile, the Italians taught us to curse in Italian, and we taught them drinking games.

Our very stoned waitress told us that these "Flamm Dogs" were traditional Swiss food. I'm sure she was probably lying though. It was Viennese sausage with ketchup, mayo, and sauerkraut wrapped in a thin pizza-like crust. It was really good, and even better just because we were half delirious from the day, kinda tipsy from peach beer, and saying Flamm Dawggg became really entertaining to us.

and some things are just cooler abroad. like mustard in a toothpaste tube.

This is the biggest water fountain in the world. It was 'made' by accident-- a water main busted and it looked cool, so they decided to just leave it! The water reaches a height of 140 meters and at any given time there are 2 tons of water suspended in the air

Then we made our way over to a festival.

Yes, he is wearing a fishnet hoodie.

Then we did the bars, nothing crazy, oh except we were amazed by the rotating/self-cleaning toilet seats at the bar. Like in awe of them. Maybe we were a little drunk at that point or maybe we're just really American but it was really spacey. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, here's a video


I have my "final" for class tomorrow so I will do my best to get the Florence/Tuscany post up as soon as I can after I get that done!

The trip is almost over! Nice on Friday for 3 days and then last stop at Rome! AH!

Miss you all!!!

Ciao!

There's Always Room For Gelato

Buona cera!

Yesterday we realized that we're running out of time in Venice! We leave for Geneva tomorrow after class, we'll be gone all weekend, we get our final (take-home) on Tuesday which is due on Wednesday and leave for Nice on Friday!! So we figured we'd better start doing all the touristy things that we've been putting off!!!

First we stopped in some violin making exhibit. Lots of really old cellos, mandolins, etc etc. I don't know-- making memories I guess! Whatever, it was free.

Then it was off to the Basilica di San Marco! We've passed by it a million times but never felt like waiting on the line to get in. But like I said, time's a tickin'.

They had flags up for Redentore still

The Venetian lion between the Basilica and the Doge's Palace
That's a book under his paw, so I guess he can not only fly, but can read too! No wonder they love him here

Then we headed next door to the Palazzo Ducale (aka Doge's Palace).
The consensus among us: the Doge was a baller. The place was just completely over the top extravagant. Mom- I'm sure you love that place!

The Doge's private gondola, pimp-my-ride style

Jill got caught taking a picture of a chastity belt. I was a little sneakier taking this picture of the ceiling in the ballroom.

Today we had a class trip to the Peggy Guggenheim to hear a speaker on Non-Profits.

The Guggenheim is literally next door to our house.

After the speaker we just walked around the museum for a while. A few really good pieces, but I didn't "get" a lot of it. Especially their special exhibit 'Gluts', which is pieces of rusty, twisted scrap metal welded together... yeah, a few with stop signs....

This this was really cool.
It was just glass and mirrors but when you walked around it there was a weird optical illusion where you got very confused about it's shape.
(leave it to me to be impressed with the art that most resembles a carnival trick)

So like I said, Geneva tomorrow!!

We are going to hear a few speakers and get a tour of the UN, then we go to (or hear from--I have no idea) the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, and then on Thursday go to the Center for International Environmental Law. It all sounds cool so hopefully it's interesting!

Hope everyone is doing well at home.

Miss you all!
Wish you were here!

the week in review

Ciao!

Sorry I was so slack about posting this week! It has been like 92 degrees with no breeze so I've been laaaaazyyyyy! This house is great but would be a million times better if it had some air conditioning! Or if I had a working fan in my room!!! Also, the mosquitos have been terrible this week (thanks to the lack of a breeze), so I officially have bug bites on my bug bites!

Anyways, here's a glipse of the past week...

Monday:

Jill, Russ, Tiffani, and I went over to Murano (I'm sure my sisters will be happy to hear that!!). Mostly it's just shopping but we did get to go into a glass factory to watch the guys blowing glass (it was dark in there and bright outside so forgive the picture quality)


Glass factory was fun for about 30 seconds

Around Murano they just have these beautiful glass sculptures randomly strewn on the streets

This sculpture is a bale of hay made with individual glass shards!

I think this one was called Cosmic or Comet or something... Maybe Cosmic Comet (that actually sounds about right)

besides all the glass stores, Murano basically just looks like a quaint part of Venice

Tuesday: I have no idea what we did! I think that was the day of truely sweltering heat so we just hung out at the house, went out for gelato and made dinner here to be honest!


Wednesday:

Wake Dinner! The professors, their families, our Italian and French students, and all of us went out to dinner. Wake picked up the tab too... had we known they were going to do that we definitely would have ordered a lot more wine.

Didier, the French guy, got an egg on his pizza. Obviously we thought this was interesting. He thought it was interesting that we DIDN'T put egg on our pizza and thought it was even more interesting that we eat eggs for breakfast almost exclusively.

After dinner, the Italian students (and the French guy) took us out to Plaza Santa Margharita to drink. They taught us one of their drinking games, which we've grown to love. So expect us to bring that back to America with us!

Thursday:

After class, we went on a tour of 'Cosmopolitan Venice'.

taking the tragetto
(which is like a gondola but wayyy wayy cheaper and it only buses you back and forth from one side of the canal to the other)

a statue of a lawyer!
(he was also a friar) and is credited with starting the idea of seperation of church and state. Bottom left is the Italian professor giving us the tour

Then we went to the Ghetto. This is the original Ghetto (and where the word comes from). Our tour guide/the Italian professor is an expert on the Ghetto and Jewish-Venetian history so this was the best part of the tour. He pointed out a ton of things that none of us would have noticed.

the synagogue (looking pretty nondiscript amongst the other buildings)

That night we went over to Harry's where Hemmingway invented the Bellini! They are like 17 Euro each but we figured who cares, we're only going to be here once. Too bad Russ was wearing seersucker shorts (since it was still well over 90 degrees at night) and there's a men-in-pants dress code so we couldn't stay! Attempt #2 coming soon


Friday:

A few of the Wake kids from the Vienna program came for the weekend! First order of business was hitting up Lido Beach

yes, we are so in Europe

We all went out to dinner after the beach. We tried to ignore the lightening.... then the thunder... then the rain.... then the torrential downpours

umbrellas at the table

But once it starting hailing golfball sized hail, and it looked like the awning was about to collapse on us, we ran inside

soaking wet but having fun

wayyy too many people trying to fit inside

little kids looked like they were having a blast jumping in puddles, we were wet anyways, why not have some fun too

We made it back to Casa Artom, dried off, and starting drinking. The professors and their families had left for the night, so we figured we could just party in the house

dance party

we drank the house dry, which is a feat

After killing all the wine in the house we went to Santa Margharita again, hung out there for a while and a few of us headed back around 1. Others stayed out another hour... others went to "club piccolo"- the only dance club in Venice until 4 am (apparently it looks like a strip club and smells like a strip club, only no strippers)

Saturday:

Redentore! There is a big festival in Venice, celebrating I don't know what! All I know is that everyone comes here for the weekend to party. We watched the parade of boats heading over the lagoon from our deck.



Then we had our dinner in the house with everyone! Brette made about 30 pounds of pasta for everyone and I made the garlic bread, Jill helped with everything (and Russ did lots of dishes).

then obviously we needed to get gelato

For the Redentore they actually build a bridge from our side of the lagoon to the other. It's pretty ridiculous. We took a walk over there to check it out

that bridge will be there for less than 24 hours

boats lining up to party and wait for fireworks

crossing the bridge

We came back to the house to get our wine before the fireworks started and I left my camera to charge :( We tried to watch the fireworks from our upstairs porch but when we thought we heard the fireworks going off, we panicked and tried to go find a better spot to see them. Meanwhile it wasn't the actual fireworks (they were supposed to start at 11:30, but it's on Italian time so they didn't actually get rolling until 20 minutes later). We ended up on a bridge with our professor and his family but the view was pretty obstructed so we all split up looking for a good viewing spot. This kid Stephen and I ran over to the Salute Domo at the end of the penisula and had the absolute greatest view. We stood on the bridge and had a historical monument on the left, a pretty old building on the right, gondolas under us, and the fireworks between the two buildings. It was exactly what you would think of if you said "yeah, I watched fireworks in Italy".

Alrighty so that was the week!

We're off to Geneva on Tuesday and then Florence on Friday so I'll do my best to post in between!

Miss you all--- Wish you were here!