ci vediamo, venezia...

I can't believe that just a few days ago, I was a pulling-my-hair-out stress case, because right now I could not be any more content or relaxed. I guess Venice just does that to you.

I am currently sitting on a lovely little park bench (kind of a rarity in Italy, believe it or not - they don't seem to advocate sitting, unless you are consuming large amounts of wine and pasta WHILE sitting) in some lovely little campo somewhere between Rialto and the train station, munching on a lovely little almond pastry and listening to the afternoon church bells from a lovely little church across the campo. I wanted to hate this city, what with all the tourists and the utter impracticality of a massive medieval city built on stilts in the middle of the freakin' ocean that routinely floods twice a year, but alas, I cannot. I ADORE it, in fact. Because weirdly enough, I know EXACTLY how to get around here. Everyone keeps talking about how you spend half your time here being lost, but for some reason, I just know my way. And without a map too, which is so unlike me. Maybe it's just that you can only get lost if you have some agenda, some place you NEED to go - for me, just GOING is the end in itself. Every street here feels like a sufficient destination.

So anyway, the whole scholastic justification for this second trip to Venice (it was organized for my High Renaissance and Mannerism art history class) was ultimately moot, as all of our tours kept getting cut short by churches randomly closing early, tour guides randomly canceling, etc - just another display of Venice's almost patriotic impracticality. So essentially, this trip ended up being about meeting friends, making friends, eating and drinking. The stuff of life, in my opinion. The adorable girl from Brown who I met in Capri, Jen, who I have unexpectedly managed to keep in touch with rather well, was dying to see the Biennale and when I told her that I'd be in Venice this weekend we decided to coordinate, so that was a nice addition to the mix as well.

As our class was slowly trickling into the train station to catch our 8:30am train (ouch), I hit it off with a couple of girls who I had kind of met in passing but never really got to talking to, who I ended up having a lot in common with and who I ended up rooming with in our luxurious, centrally-located, paid-for-by-the-school hotel, which was super fun. AND, as if it couldn't get any better, that night on our way out to dinner (after a refreshing, €2 glass of Prosecco at a little bacaro right near our hotel), along comes a huge procession of basically the entire architecture program from Syracuse, a.k.a. all of my best friends; it turns out they had a class trip to Venice for that same weekend as well!

So as they are all getting settled in their nearby hotel, me and the girls meet up with Jen for a mediocre dinner (but fantastic spritzs) over by the Accademia, and then head over to the Campo Santa Margherita for drinks. The boys come meet us rather late (apparently I'm the only one NOT encountering the navigational problems...), we have some drinks, encounter some skeezy Italians.. you know, the usual. I'm so happy that this was my second weekend here - it felt so great being the one who actually knew where the fun places to hang out where, and how to get there... by memory. SO cool.

The next day, we did some more half-assed (and now additionally hung-over) sight-seeing, and then Jen and I met up for a nice little pizza-and-salad-in-the-sunshine lunch at a lovely, sun-drenched campo (that's Venetian for "piazza", by the way) on our way to the Peggy Guggenheim Museum, our post-lunch destination.

The museum itself was FANTASTIC - basically a perfectly edited mini-MoMA in a beautiful, modernized Venetian villa with a gorgeous sculpture garden, complete with views of the Grand Canal. We stopped for a caffè at an adorable little dive-y bar that had some quaint little tables in back, one of which was nestled in a little nook that overlooked one of the random teeny canals (and it was even better because the barista actually SUGGESTED a cappuccino since it was so bitterly cold outside, which was awesome because I didn't even have to admit that that was EXACTLY what I was craving even though it was way past the generally accepted cappuccino-drinking time). So over coffee we devised a housing plan for maximum centrality and minimum poverty by re-reserving Jen's €50 single in her hotel and having me just sneak in (and so begins my unhealthy habit of not paying for things that I should... more on this later), which ended up working perfectly - I took a nice nap while she went out in search of more layers as it was unseasonably FREEZING, and then we got ready for dinner.

Dinner was quite an adventure - Jen and I met up with my sweet architecture friends Ali and Bryan to scope out some of the restaurants from my AMAZING City Secrets guidebook (again, THANK YOU, Julie White), because we were sick of paying too much for mediocre food, and instead of choosing the cheap solution we decided to go to the opposite end of the spectrum and go somewhere that is at least GUARANTEED to be good, and pay a little more. However, once we found the place (without getting lost once - I mean, I'm that girl who goes into a store and when she comes out again she can't remember which way to walk; how the hell do I not get lost in VENICE? I don't get it...), we quickly realized that "paying a little more" would be QUITE an understatement, so we ditch that idea and are back to square one, hungry kids in a tourist town.

So we start off in the general direction of the bars we're going to later, in the hopes that we will stumble upon something fantastic. Everything either looked too expensive, smelled really fishy, or just seemed too weird (one place divided its menu into three categories: "antipasti", "dreams", and "the food of now"... um, ok???). We were hungry and losing hope, but then we passed this lush-looking gated garden with a menu out front and we thought we'd at least take a look, and we all squealed in unison when we realized that it was actually super affordable. We ran inside and they promptly seated us in their enclosed and - get this - HEATED garden, HEAVENLY since we were all freezing our asses off, and proceeded to feed us one of the best meals I've eaten since I've been in this country - a bottle of the best house white I've ever tasted, a mountain of perfectly tender and ocean-y mussels and clams, tagliolini alla granceola (a delicious crab and tomato sauce), and generous tastes of everyone else's food: Ali's insalata caprese, Jen's gnocchetti alle verdure (little baby gnocchi with veggies), and Bryan's double order of pasta: lasagna al forno, and the best linguine pesto I've had so far (and that's including the dishearteningly uninpressive pesto I tried in Cinque Terre, in its supposed Ligurian birthplace...)

And for dessert... oh Jesus. The most lucious, tart-yet-creamy drink-cum-dessert EVER, a Venetian sgroppino (Paul and Steve, I expect a segment on cocktailbuzz.com on this drink STAT). This is the drink I set out to try this weekend, having already sampled the other must-try-while-in-Venice cocktails, the spritz and the bellini (of which I am currently in possession of two bottles, to join my Caprese limoncello back in Florence). Traditionally a sgroppino is made with prosecco, a little vodka, and - get ready - a scoop of lemon sorbet. But the one we had was even more dessert-like; it tasted like they may have omitted the prosecco and replaced the sorbet with its creamier cousin, sherbert. Screw authenticity - that shit was delicious. We ordered one between the four of us to share, but as soon as we tasted it we knew that we couldn't leave without at least two more.

After dinner, we hobbled our bloated selves over to the Campo for some drinks and the rest of the boys joined us soon after - quite the good time. After a few drinks, we decided to brave the one-and-only discoteca in all of Venice - notoriously sleazy yet temptingly close by - and ended up having the BEST time, dancing until 3:30 in the morning and trekking back to our respective hotels, which were oh-so-conveniently three blocks away from each other, meanwhile getting to soak in the beauty of Venice in a rare tourist-free setting, given the ungodly hour (we were literally the only souls in the whole of Piazza San Marco - it was absolutely breathtaking). I swear, as fratty and immature as those boys can be sometimes, they are some of the greatest people. So joyful and surprisingly sincere, and they REALLY take care of their friends, especially their girls; you can just tell that they would have our backs through anything. Gives me hope.

So after sneaking back into our hotel and spooning the night away, Jen and I took an extended stroll from out hotel to the Rialto market, (AGAIN I managed to miss the fish/food market - all that was left was random glass tchotchkes and awful masks), where we grabbed a classically hungover breakfast (a slice of pizza ai funghi for her, a grilled veggie rotolo for me) and said our goodbyes. She hopped onto a vaporetto headed for the train station while I continued on foot, meandering leisurely towards my afternoon train. I freaking LOVE the signage here, because at pretty much every street corner you will find signs pointing you in the general direction of at least one of the four major landmarks of Venice - Piazza San Marco, the Rialto bridge, the Accademia bridge, and the train station (ferrovia). So I got to wander the most magical, tiny, deserted streets without any fear of getting lost, because as long as you know where your destination is in relation to any of those four places, you are set. And so on my journey following the "Ferrovia -->" signs, I stumbled upon this quaint little square where I am now sitting on a bench, eating my pastry, being so damn un-worried about anything.

I need to find a way to make this my life - to travel and eat and write and have extended periods of time designated for simple bench-sitting or coffee-drinking or otherwise taking a moment to realize how wonderful it is to be alive and to be able to experience these things. I really do feel so damn lucky every second that I am here and its hard to not feel guilty sometimes about the way I am living when the world at large is such a mess right now, but I think for the next two months I am going to continue to let myself exist in this blissful oblivion and see where it takes me - I have this gut feeling that serious inspiration is on the horizon.

Ok, time to catch my train... un bacio a tutti!