So for my final trip of the semester, I headed to Venice again. But this time with my parents! They came in for the end of the program on Wednesday, saw my concert Thursday (more on the end of school another time), helped me move out on Friday, and then Saturday we headed to Venice. Despite it being my third time I saw a ton of new stuff.
Saturday we more or less got in (our train was really late, well, not as late as one of the trains coming into Centrale which was over 200 minutes late), walked around a bit, and had dinner at one of my mom's favorite places from my parents' visit two years ago (by the way, Saturday was my mom's birthday). It was this enoteca with the crazy owner (I believe) who would walk away while half mumbling things. But we had a great dinner.
Sunday we went and saw the Peggy Guiggenheim collection. Peggy Guiggenheim was an American heiress who collected modern art. She has multiple Picassos and Pollacks and other well known modern artists. It's in her old house too so we saw many places where she was a learned about her crazy life (look her up!). After that we headed to see Maria Della Salute, a church I'd wanted to go in since my first trip to Venice but never made it to (well, Aaron and I tried but it was closed in the afternoon). Then we headed to see the Doge's Palace which was beautiful and interesting. Best part...you get to walk across the Bridge of Sighs. Win.
Monday was really cool because my parents had scheduled a cooking class. We went to the island of Lido (where there are cars) to this professional chef's house (she catered the wedding in Venice for one of the producers of Grey's Anatomy and has been featured in Bon Appetite, she's that good) and she taught us how to make a few seafood dishes. We had a full five course meal for lunch which was fantastic and we got all of the recipes to try out again when we get home. After we went to see San Giorgio which is on its own island and my parents had missed before (I taught them how to take the vaporettos around Venice) and the church where the artist Titan is buried and has many of his major works.
Tuesday was a lazier day after all the craziness. We wandered the Rialto markets (the fish markets were pretty cool), saw the church with Tintoretto's "food fight" Last Supper (Rick Steves' words, not mine...but he was accurate), and took two of Rick Steves' walks in his Venice book (one of which we did backwards, turns out that Venetian streets aren't always the same name depending on what direction you're coming from). We also ended up during one of the walks at La Fenice, Venice's opera house. We went inside and the ticket came with a free audio tour. La Fenice means the phoenix and like a phoenix La Fenice has actually burned and risen again from its ashes, not once...but twice. First in the mid-1800s and again in 1996. It was really beautiful though. We finished with a dinner near our hotel and packed for Wednesday.
Wednesday morning (today) we had a water-taxi to the train station, way earlier than our train, but it was raining so we just hung around the station until our train came. We headed back to Milan and now we're waiting for morning (aka, 4:15) for the car to the airport and then our flights to Rome and to Chicago. Fingers crossed the weather is good!
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