wien.

I don't know why, but being here in Vienna is so surreal. The cold and the subways and the turning leaves feel like New York, the food and architecture remind me of the probably-misguided, romantic conception that I have in my head of Paris, and the language makes me feel like I am on a different planet. And what is hilarious is that I am finally the one who blends in here, what with the overtly Aryan blonde hair and blue eyes - EVERYONE starts talking to me in rapid-fire German and then laugh with surprise when I respond with my pathetic little "I'm sorry, I don't speak German," which I don't even know how to say IN German. It's SO weird not even knowing how to say "hello" (aufwiedersehen? or is that goodbye?) or "please", or "I would like", or "excuse me"; being here makes me realize that I really DO speak Italian, because THIS is what it feels like to NOT speak a language.

My first experience on a rickety European "budget" (read: potentially death-inducing) airline was actually surprisingly pleasant - I was able to carry my bag on (thanks, host mamma Elisa, for having a tiny roll-y bag for me!), I got searched by they didn't take anything (I think the x-ray machine got confused by my umbrella...ella, ella, eh, eh, eh...), and while we were waiting at the gate (apparently arriving at the airport only one hour before your departure time is more than early enough), we got to peruse the duty-free gourmet food and wine shop and ogle the jars of sliced black truffles (€65) while enjoying a €7 bottle of wine from paper Coca-Cola cups with the 10+ other people who I am traveling with for this leg. I think I'm gonna like this trip...

pesto and presents

HALLELUJAH!!!

My hypothesis was correct; my roommate indeed got too settled in her little cocoon of filth and stench to take me up on my empty promise to switch rooms after fall break! HOORAY!!! So I remain the proud inhabitant of a palatial spread while she continues to stink up the dinky little windowless mole-hole across the hall. Sa-WEET. That, in addition to the fantastic pasta al pesto that my host mom made using the tagliatelle that I brought back from Cipriani in Venice (I mean, if she's not gonna make me pasta on her own, I'm definitely gonna drop hints...), was the sole redemption for my otherwise horrhendous day.

So first of all, I had 3 midterms, none of which I studied for (two sweet little words: PASS/FAIL)- this semester has really been a testament to how lazy I really am when given the opportunity to be so. My one spirit-lifter (aside from the cappuccino doppio...) was a text I got from Danny that said "Presents in the mail - good luck today!" So I look in my mailbox and find the mix CD he had promised me way back when on the airplane ride, when I first discovered that he had a fantastic music collection. It looks fantastic, however I haven't had the chance to actually listen to it, as my computer is dead and I managed to leave my charger at school the day before I leave the country for a week and a half. Yay me.

And in addition to my lovely CD, I find another "present" in my mailbox (or so I thought): a package slip indicating that my mom's care package/birthday present has arrived!... in Venice... where it is being held hostage by Italian customs. And for some reason, I had to physically GO to this odd shipping center all the way downtown, after my 10 straight hours of class and exams, only to be told that my package would not be here before my trip and that I would most likely have to pay around €100 to simply receive it at all. Birthday presents and other miscellaneous goodies in the mail are graciously welcomed, but for the love of God, DON'T DECLARE VITAMINS!!! Send me whatever the hell you like - clothing, candy, heroin for all I care, but dear God do NOT declare anything, or Italian customs will decide it needs to tax me to death in order to allow me to receive it. And a special thank-you to Syracuse for sticking our fall break the week before my birthday, because once the package arrives in Florence (at which point I will most likely be somewhere between Austria and the Netherlands), I will be charged an additional €5 for each day that it sits there waiting for me. I think this would mark the end of the so-called "honeymoon period" of living in Italy.

(disclaimer: please do not think I am a brat. Thank you so so much mama for whatever you sent me, but come on, everyone appreciates a good gripe, no?)

But ANYWAY, I need to go make sure I have enough sweaters and, like, SOCKS to keep my ass from freezing during my northern travels... I regret more and more each day my valiant attempt to "pack light" for Italy, because in reality what I really needed was to bring a second suitcase stocked with the entire contents of Target Greatland.

Live and learn.

foto emotive

God, I’ve spent the past hour looking through my entire iPhoto library for research for my painting class, and it made me so nostalgic. Or maybe that is not even the right word; it just filled me with emotion of every kind. I realized how much I’ve changed, how much my life has changed, how many people have come into my life and how many have left it, and that I have already experienced some things that I may never get to do again, and yet there is so much I HAVEN’T experienced... this has been very trippy. But through all of it, the overall feeling is one of really really intense happiness, like the kind where it almost makes your chest hurt cause it feels too big to fit in there. And this is all from freakin' PICTURES. SO weird.

It’s amazing how photographs, and just imagery in general, can really evoke such a full and intense reaction; from just your sense of sight you can re-create all the other senses, and almost experience what you are seeing all over again. It’s very odd – having considered myself a painter for almost ten years now, it is slightly disorienting to see how much my interest seems to be slowly turning away from painting and more towards photography. There’s something about the strong basis in reality of a photographic image that gives the medium the ability to conjure such intense emotional responses – painting obviously elicits an emotional reaction from the viewer as well, but a more abstract one, as the painted image is fabricated completely by the painter, while a photograph, no matter how retouched or altered, still has an undeniable connection to the imagery we are familiar with in real life. Come strano...

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!

what's your sign?

Ok, so I have this horoscope "widget" on my dashboard on my iBook and this is literally what my horoscope was today:

"Its all about the finishing touches today. Completion should be on your mind, including everything from major work projects to small personal tasks. Finish making those travel plans now - before it's too late. There are new experiences waiting for you, but you won't have the time to explore them fully unless you clear off your plate. Make room for adventure!"

Is this a freaking JOKE??? How weird. I´ve been stressing so hard about break and this stupid presentation for my Art History class that I was actually thinking of coming home from Venice early, thus screwing up the playdate I had planned with that sweetheart Jen who I met in Capri since she's going to be in Venice this weekend too, but thanks to this trivial piece of astrological doo-doo, I am now ready to accept that I am going to engage in the minimum amount of planning necessary for both my break and my presentation so I can throughly enjoy Venice this weekend. YAY! I'll let you know how it goes...

viaggiando...

PHEEEWWWWW. Man. I FINALLY came to a decision and booked my flights for fall break and let me just tell you, it was ABOUT TIME. I have been so deliriously happy since I’ve been here; I literally have not shed one tear (which I’m sure most of you know is a BIG freakin’ deal...) and have totally forgotten what it feels like to have anxiety or feel overwhelmed... but then this past week rolled around. Venice was obviously INCREDIBLE, but then I got back Sunday night and realized, oh wait, I have a week and a half until I am kicked out of my homestay for 10 days and I HAVE NO IDEA WHERE I’M GOING. Plus, for some reason all my professors have decided to act like this is real school and give us “homework” and “projects” and “midterms” over these next two weeks, but trying to get myself on flights and in hostels with enough money left over to, oh, FEED MYSELF for the next couple of months was a big enough project on its own. So I had my first bout of anxiety last night, after spending two hours at one travel agent and then two hours at another, only to come to the conclusion that I am an IDIOT for waiting this long to figure my shit out and that unless I made organizing this trip my number one priority over all else, I would either be a) stranded and homeless in Florence for a week and a half or b) incredibly, unfathomably broke. Trying to explain the cause of my anxiety, through tears, IN ITALIAN, to my host mother did not make it any easier.

HOWEVER, after bailing on my friends for my first meal at Acqua al Due (I DON’T want to talk about it...) in order to sit at home on the computer for four hours poring over crazy European our-planes-are-so-rickety-they-may-kill-you airline websites, I finally solidified my October break. Here it goes:

Thurs Oct 25 - Sun Oct 28: flying to Vienna with some friends from the program; staying in some crazy hostel

Sun Oct 28 – Thurs Nov 1: flying to Amsterdam to stay with some friends from USC who are studying there (particularly excited about this leg)

Thurs Nov 1 – Sun Nov 4: flying to Barcelona to meet up with Sam, Jess and Tyler; probably staying in some crazy hostel again

So yeah. Many stories to come, I believe.

arte e barche

Jesus. What a weekend. I feel like everywhere I go and everything I do here, I could spend twice as much time doing. I could have spent 5 days at the Biennale, and at least a week in Venice... probably more like two.

Damn, that show was CRAZY BUSINESS. Just to get everyone on the same page, the Venice Biennale is a huge international contemporary art show that takes place every two years in Venice (I mean, duh). In theory, each country in the world gets its own "pavilion" where it can display the work of one artist that it chooses to represent the contemporary art of that country - however, this was definitely not the case, as this was the first time that Africa was included at all, and there was only one pavilion for the entire CONTINENT. But anyway, since that is A LOT of work nonetheless, the show is split into two sections, in two adjacent neighborhoods of Venice: the Giardini (in Venice's only public gardens) and the Arsenale (which - you guessed it - used to be an arsenal). We did the Giardini yesterday and the Arsenale today, however, the "school trip" portion only offered to train the students up to Venice Saturday morning, pay for their entry to the Giardini, and train them back THAT NIGHT; so students wouldn't even set foot in the Arsenale, let alone have even a spare second to explore the rest of Venice, so naturally me and some friends decided to come early and leave late for a whole-weekend affair, which I will get to later.

But as for the show - SOOOO incredible. Well, parts of it. I am now OBSESSED with a French photographer named Sophie Calle - her piece for the French Pavilion was freaking INCREDIBLE and would take to long to explain fully, but in a nutshell, her lover broke up with her via email and she was so flabberghasted by it that she had the email translated into every conceivable language and sent it to 100 different women, chosen on the basis of their particular profession or background, and asked them to give their interpretation in whatever format the would like. Thus, a Japanese pianist turned it into a musical composition; an Italian mamma made fun of the author's melodrama and self-pity, while ironically chopping an onion in her kitchen; a French teacher boiled it down into words simple enough for her students to understand; and all the while, Sophie photographed each woman reading the letter and often filmed their interpretation as well. It was SO innovative and mind-bogglingly comprehensive, and yet so accessible and relatable as well. It just felt so utterly HUMAN, and particularly made me really appreciate the mother-tiger instinct that seems to exist in all women, lying dormant until it is provoked and we need to swoop in to protect one another, regardless of what language we speak or what background we come from.

Language seemed to be a major theme of the Biennale as a whole, come to think of it; I guess being an international exhibition, this would kind of be a given, but it really spoke to me for some reason. Maybe because I am living in Italy, in this grand mega-country we call Europe, where so many different languages and cultures are squashed together and constantly rubbing shoulders, but where each one is constantly vying to maintain its sense of identity and keep from disappearing into the gradually homogenizing western mass of Europica. I am simultaneously enthralled and repulsed by the fact that I can cross a border and suddenly have no idea what anyone around me is saying. I am dying to become fluent in all the romance languages, and yet find it totally strange that I would even have to.

I found myself really drawn to long-term projects and series like Sophie Calle's, as well as politically charged works (there was A LOT of stuff about the war), but at the same time I was equally drawn to things that I simply found clever (like a tiny projection of the bottom of tap-dancing feet onto the inside of a hanging light bulb in the Spanish pavilion, making it appear that there was a tiny tap dancer tapping away inside the light bulb), and even to works that I simply liked because they were really, really pretty. Haha. I basically have no idea what I personally am driven to create as an ARTIST, since it appears that I am too damn busy admiring everything that is already out there to even sit down and bang anything out myself (unless you consider taking 300+ photos of pretty buildings and other people's artwork as creating "art"...). Oh well, I've got some time.


As for the non-art part of the trip (or at least the non-Biennale part, since pretty much everything in Venice could be considered art...):

I don't know how, and I don't know why, but I have somehow managed to be traveling with the vulgar alcoholic girl from Capri, Sandy. I really really don't understand how Mel is friends with her, but somehow, she is, and she also managed to include her on our trip this weekend. But luckily my friend Irene came as well, so we managed to split off from the group most of the time to avoid the whole Mel-and-Sandy-are-total-assholes-when-they-are-together aspect for the most part. However, we did all end up spending the first day together and making a pretty good time of it.

It turned out that our hotel was also a SAILING SCHOOL, and well as a design school, so it was very sleek and well laid out, and when they mentioned the option to take a four-hour private boat tour around the city for only €100 total, which we could then split between the five of us, we obviously jumped at the opportunity. It didn't hurt that our driver was an adorable little 23-year-old Veneziano named Marco, who not only drove us to the train station to pick up Irene (who came in later than the rest of us because she had a class trip earlier in the day), but also took us out for a spritz afterwards at his favorite bar which just happened to be on the water overlooking the Rialto bridge. And for most of you who have not experienced the joys of the Venetian spritz (Paul and Steve, get ready to start salivating, Paul and Steve), it is a cocktail unique to Venice, usually composed of white wine, a red liquer (usually Campari or Aperol), and some sort of carbonated soda component (sometimes aranciata, sometimes tonic, and sometimes just plain soda water), topped off with an olive. Our were particularly classy, as they were made with Prosecco, as well as regular soda water and Campari for a more bitter, bubbly take on the classic. We certainly started our trip in style.

After our drinks, graciously paid for by dearest Marco, Irene took charge as our personal tour guide, as her brother studied abroad in Venice a couple of years ago and he had shown her all the insider spots when she went to visit him, so she had the city down to a T. She took us to this totally eccentric, FANTASTIC restaurant called Trattoria alla Madonna, which just happened to be conveniently around the corner from the bar where Marco took us for drinks. It had a line around the block (good sign..), but they still somehow managed to seat our party of five in under ten minutes, and on our way to our table, we passed an enormous spread of every kind of antipasto and vegetable imaginable, their daily selection of seafood all laid out, and a giant vat of what appeared to be tar, but that we later discovered to be their indescribably rich and ocean-salty house specialty, nero di seppia, otherwise known as squid ink.

We started off with a bottle of the house white, which was already drained by the time the bread arrived at the table (thanks in the most part to our token alcoholic, Sandy), followed by a fantastic platter of verdure stagionale (seasonal vegetables... i mean, duh.), of which the peas were so freakin delicious (and by "peas" I really mean butter with a sprinkling of peas) that we promptly ordered "un'altra porzione - una GRAN porzione, per favore - dei piselli, per favore!!" Our enthusiasn for those little buttery peas was so great that our waiter gave us the extra portion (and it truly was a GRAN porzione) on the house. Cute.

Next came mountains of seafood and carbs of all varieties: spaghetti alle vongole (dressed with crushed tomatoes and again, drenched in butter - thank you, Northern Italy, for your whole-hearted embrace of this glorious dairy product), spaghetti al nero di seppia (smothered with that fantastically tar-like, tooth-and-tablecloth-staining, salty, life-giving elixir of the sea), and a plate of grilled calamari with polenta, doused with MORE nero di seppia. Heaven. We finished up with a slice of torta di mandorla (almond cake so delicious that we promptly ordered another), and left our table looking like a mix between a war-zone and an early Jackson Pollock, what with all the abstract blobs of red and black from our convivial, albiet messy, meal.

After dinner Sandy and Mel went back to the hotel (probably a good thing), while Marinna, Irene and forged on, making the winding trek to Campo Santa Margherita, the evening hangout for 20-something Venetian students and in-the-know international travelers. Were we not so cripplingly stuffed we would probably have stayed out longer, but alas, after like 10 phone conversations in my shotty Italian with different water taxi companies, we managed to track down our hotel's shuttle and collapsed face-down into our beds.

The next day was a Biennale binge: we grabbed some coffee and headed early to the cute neighborhood around the Giardini to do a little exploring, then met up with the rest of our class, who were just arriving from Florence that morning at 11:30. From then until the closing of the show, we soaked up some damn fine international art, and afterwards, a damn fine sunset. Pretty idyllic.

But after the glory of the sunset passed, we looked around and realized we were surrounded by something like 60 hungry Syracuse students all looking for "a good dinner," and acting like we were somehow all going to share this "good dinner" together - sensing the imminent disaster of this situation, Irene and I fled the scene ("um, we're gonna run to the bathroom really quick"), grabbed ourselves a bottle of Bellini, some plastic cups, and Irene's friend Whitney, and parked it at the foot of a nearby statue, conveniently hidden from view by some lovely garden foliage, to discuss OUR dinner plans. Marinna wandered by so we clued her in, and eventually set off in search of Trattoria dai Tosi, a quaint little pizzeria where Irene's brother worked while he was studying abroad and living in that very same Giardini-adjacent neighborhood.

We found the place, had a wonderful, leisurely meal (house white, Bella Napoli pizza and a fantastic "big salad", or insalatone, with tuna, baby shrimp, mushrooms and parmagiano, followed by the best profiteroles I have ever had), all for a huge discount (thank you, brother of Irene).

After dinner we made a more successful expedition to Campo Santa Margherita, parking it at Caffe Noir (all the bars are named after different colors - can't decide whether I think it's dorky or cute...), where Marco and a couple of his friends eventually came to meet us, which was just OH so ideal, as Whitney was taking a 3am train back to Florence so we didn't want her to wait around the train station for hours by herself, but the hotel shuttle - which is the last mode of transport back to our island hotel for less than €40 - ends at 12:30. So this is where it becomes VERY convenient having friends with boats. And this time we REALLY lucked out, as Marco's friend is actually a water taxi driver, and those boats are freakin' SWANK... so we got a lovely taxi ride home, warm and cozy in the taxi's wood-paneled cabin.. for FREE. Score.

The next day we made a valiant attempt to do the Arsenale portion of the Biennale, and while I did make it through the whole thing and was even moderately moved by some of the work, I must admit that my attention span was much shorter this time around; I can't decide if it was a matter of the work itself (because this section was notably drier, and it was basically in the format of one large curated exhibition rather than a lot of smaller pavilions, as the Giardini was set up); or that I was just a teensy bit exhausted from our late-night antics the night before. But anyway, I ended up finishing the exhibition in a little less than two hours, and spending the rest of the day taking a solo stroll through the city. Wandered through the Rialto market, grabbed myself a rotolo (this GENIUS Venetian-street-food invention of wrapping a slice of pizza around typical panino ingredients - this particular rotolo had arugula, mozzarella, prosciutto and tomatoes - thus creating a perfect union of the two best Italian lunch foods of all time), and made it to the train station in time to buy the first train ticket with an actual SEAT reserved for me in a LONG TIME. All in all, a lovely weekend in one of the most beautiful cities on earth.

Can't wait for next weekend.