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Hi everyone. Hannah here. This is my visual journal for you of patterns in Barcelona.

A few weeks ago, we finally stopped procrastinating and went into the Basilica at St. Mark’s, and judging by the crowds that are already piling up outside of the place, I’m glad we didn’t wait any longer. I’ve learned a lot about Venice since we’ve been here (obviously), but it’s pretty funny now to look back and what my idea of it was before. And since pretty much the only things I knew about it before were that there were canals and St. Mark’s here, this seems like a pretty good time to look back on it…

One thing I had only a vague idea about but that everybody else seems to see as the highlight of Venice is the pigeons. There are A LOT of pigeons in general, but the piazza at St. Mark’s really takes it to a new level. And for some reason, when confronted with such a sea of pigeons, at least 75% of the tourists just completely lose their minds. I can’t think of another way to explain the sudden, uncontrollable desire to have giant rats with wings land on you, which is what everybody does. Here’s a picture of a woman who is probably sane in other circumstances covered in the things, along with one of the crazy people who sell pigeon food all day in the square to enable this insanity.

Another thing I didn’t know was that St. Mark’s is so named because the remains of the man himself are kept there. I also didn’t know who St. Mark was, but hey. In any case, St. Mark was one of the four evangelists (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John), who seem to be the upper echelon of saint-dom, at least here in Italy. In the early days of the Venetian republic, some local merchants went to Alexandria, appropriated Mr. Mark’s remains, and brought them back here, where he became the city’s new patron saint. Venice already had a patron saint at the time - Theodore - but he was pushed aside in favor of the new one. Theodore is supposed to have killed a dragon, which is pretty cool by me, but I guess they liked Mark better. The evangelists each have a symbol (Eagle, Ox, Human, and Lion - Mark), so the lion became the symbol of the city, and today there are lion decorations on all manner of things. A funny side note here is the Venetian justification for the theft… Mark was supposed to have passed by the lagoon in a boat and had a vision that he would be laid to rest there. The funny part is that Venice didn’t even exist at the time. Sounds fishy to me. Anyway, here’s a picture of the man himself and an (admittedly bad) one of a mural on the facade of the church that depicts the body arriving there, and is also the oldest known image of what it looked like.

Another thing I didn’t know about Venice was that most of the things here were stolen (ok, plundered) from other places. The facade of the church itself looks a bit like a patchwork because it was used as a gallery of loot for a few hundred years. There are also some really impressive sculptures of horses, called the Triumphal Quadriga, in the upstairs of the church that were taken from Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade when Venice laid a smack down on that city. Here are some pictures of the facade and the horsies.

And to wrap things up, here are some pictures of the interior of the church (yeah, it’s about solid gold), the Piazza and Piazzetta from the balcony, and of course the obligatory creepy shriveled hand relic thing. I can’t help myself, I’m sorry.

Is this guy a cheeseball, or what? This was on the door of a beauty salon here in Venice, and it continues my confusion as to why they only seem to be able to put pictures of people with ridiculous hair styles on these places. This young fellow has got himself a ‘Soccer Mullet,’ which is hilarious for more reasons than I have time to recount here.

I thought it was funny when people started making fun of rednecks for their mullets back in the 90s. It was funnier still when all of the hipsters in Brooklyn showed up with their irony-laden mullets. And now we have the European, irony-free, soccer mullet, as if it were some statement of athleticism or something. Doesn’t everybody know that only works for hockey players?

This past weekend Hannah and I took a trip to Trieste. We thought it was about time to take another weekend trip, and after looking through our Italy guidebook for a while we decided on Trieste for a few reasons:

• First off, it’s in the Friuli Giulia region of Italy, and that’s really, really fun to say. Clearly they at least have a sense of humor there.
• Second, our guidebook (Lonely Planet) listed the food as one of the major attractions, focusing on their abundance of meat products and beer, and made several mentions of the local specialty, boiled bacon. Now I know they have a sense of humor. Boiled bacon, seriously?
• They call these restaurants buffets. You mean it’s all you can eat boiled bacon? Let’s get on the next train.

Predictably, our first stop was one of these restaurants. At first we (well, really just me) were disappointed because there was no buffet as we think of it, just a regular restaurant. My stomach was bitterly disappointed until I looked at the table next to us and noticed that the man sitting there was eating something that strongly resembled an entire pig. My happiness increased when I opened the menu and found that pretty much all they had was sausage. We had a great time, drank a few good beers, and I ate so much that I felt disgustingly full until Monday.

It turns out that they have things in Trieste that aren’t food, and it’s really a beautiful place. It’s up in the far eastern corner of Italy, and it’s on the Adriatic and surrounded by mountains/hills, which made for some fantastic views. At the top of the hill that’s closest to the center of town there’s a castle and an amazing church that has some seriously beautiful Byzantine mosaics.

And, yes, of course they had something creepy as well.

In the middle of town they have an old Roman amphitheater. It’s totally dumbfounding to me how old these things are. When you’re standing there in front of a thing trying to count on your fingers how many centuries old it is and you run out of fingers it means it’s really, really old. Here’s a picture of the amphitheater and a few others from our walk around town.

On Sunday we also took a trip to the Risiera di San Sabba, an old rice husking plant that was converted into an extermination camp by the Nazis in 1944. Today there are the well-preserved remains of the place along with a small museum, and it takes no time whatsoever to be confronted with the significance of the place and how absolutely horrifying it must have been. The museum had a good deal of information about the spread of fascism in general and had copies of some of the memos documenting the formation of the camp, most of which were highly disturbing. My overall impression was of how trapped everyone must have felt, not able to leave the country and knowing that they could be picked up at any time and taken to a place like this. You want to believe that it couldn’t happen today except that of course it actually is happening right now in places like Darfur and Iraq.

Ok, it was time for something more lighthearted, and Trieste had just the thing… a castle!!! Castles make everybody happy, right? In 1855, Archduke Maximilian of Austria built a castle in Miramare a few miles (they call ‘em kilometers here) north of Trieste that overlooks the Adriatic, and it’s really something. The castle itself is quite beautiful, and it’s surrounded by a large park with some fantastic gardens. Here are some pictures of the castle and surroundings.

And one last picture… here’s the “what not to do” sign from the park surrounding the castle. Hannah astutely observed that it’s a little strange to forbid people from washing their hands with squirrels, but I guess they wanted to have all of their bases covered.

Burano is another of the well-known islands here in the Venetian lagoon, and Hannah and I took a trip out there this past Sunday. Though the island is well known for the lace that has traditionally been made there, we just went because it sounded like a really cool place. And is it ever. While things here in Venice are generally very old, very ornate, and very grey, Burano decided instead to go with very quaint and very colorful. I think this was a good decision for them, and it makes for a truly beautiful place just a thirty minute boat ride from Venice.

Burano has got to be the most photogenic place I’ve ever seen, and if I had any idea whatsoever how to take a good picture, I’m sure you would be so convinced. As it is, I’ve just got some decent, humble pictures here to share. Here are some of the general colorfulness…

You may notice from a few of these pictures that Burano also seems to be the laundry capital of the world. I’ve never seen so much laundry in my life, or such a uniform display of it at nearly every single house. But I’m digressing. Oh, and they also have tons of cats.

And to wrap this up, here are a picture of my beautiful wife and of Venice in the distance seen from Burano.

By the way, I know that colorfulness isn’t really a word. Promise. I do proofread these things, you know.