I’ve recently been accused of not writing anything on this blog in a little while, and after a lot of soul searching I have to admit that it’s because I’ve been working through my post Superbowl depression. But I’m all done now. On to the next topic, which is, coincidentally, the Superbowl.
One of the funny things about watching the Superbowl in Venice is that it starts at midnight, and since the network drags the game out for as long as humanly possible, it gets over at roughly 4:30AM. There was no chance of us picking up the game with our bunny ears at home, but by chance we stumbled onto a bar that was advertising the fact that they were showing the game right after we got here. We then spent the next three weeks trying to re-find the place, since we were hopelessly lost at the time when we found it in the first place.
Another funny thing about watching the Superbowl in Venice is that somehow half of New York seems to be there watching it with you. Hannah and I were, I think, the only people at the bar who were cheering for the Patriots, and when Hannah wimped out at halftime, it left me to be the sole subject of ridicule in the place. I got out of there pretty quickly after the game, anyway. The funnier thing happens when you meet the most obnoxious New Yorker you’ve ever seen while in Venice. There was one particular woman there who was an absolute caricature, and when I wasn’t trying to ignore her general ear slipttingness, I have to admit I found her just a tad bit endearing.
So now we’re left to sob over the Patriots and the lack of football in general. In better news, I heard that the Red Sox truck full of spring training gear left Fenway Park for Florida the other day. I’m hoping to watch some Sox/Yankees games from here.
For anybody not yet aware, Venice is in the middle of the water. Well, technically, it’s in the middle of a lagoon. Sounds spooky, doesn’t it? It turns out that a lagoon is actually just a body of water that is separated from a larger body of water by some land mass (thanks again, wikipedia). In Venice’s case, the land mass is almost entirely made up of the island of Lido, which forms a sort of protective barrier from the Gulf, mostly keeping the water level from fluctuating too wildly here. Here’s a map. Since it’s easily reachable from public transportation, it’s also a great place to go to the beach. Today was, literally, the first sunny day we’ve had since we’ve been here, so we took a trip out there, and here are a few pictures. It’s pretty much just a beach, but I thought I’d post them anyway.
One of my favorite things about being here is the food. I remember being in Europe before and feeling really jealous of the fresh food and the way things are built around buying things every day at the market to have for dinner. Venice has really taken this idea and turned it up to eleven, and I love it. Not only do they have tons of different kinds of produce/meats/seafood/cheese, but they are all very fresh, very local, and (surprisingly, to me) very very cheap. Since I, suffice to say, don’t have a lot of other responsibilities, this is fantastic because I have plenty of time to actually enjoy cooking.
At the Rialto they have the biggest market in the city, and it’s really something. The main part of it is a fish market, and I don’t think I can come up with a single creature that lives in the ocean that I haven’t seen for sale there. Sharks, rays, all manner of things with tentacles, and plenty of things that I have no idea what they are. Here’s a few pictures from there…
That thing in the first picture that looks like the head of a swordfish is, in fact, the head of a swordfish.
In addition to the fish market, they have what has to be the world’s biggest collection of vegetable stands. Here are a couple of pictures that don’t do any justice whatsoever to the size of it.
Other than the really creep relics, the Santa Maria dei Frari was a really amazing place. It’s a huge church that was built by the Franciscans in 1338 and is probably big enough to hold at least 4000 full grown elephants. Here’s a picture of the interior.
Aside from the size of the place, the most striking thing was the altar, which has an amazing painting by Titian, which Hannah says is his masterpiece. She’s usually right, too.
Some more points of interest… among the monuments in the church was this pyramid sculpture, a monument to a sculptor named Canova. Thanks to wikipedia, I just learned that his heart, but not the rest of him is buried there. There’s a picture of the pyramid, not the heart, below. There was also a strange looking thing attached to one of the walls, and when we looked at the plaque underneath it, we realized that it was a German bomb from World War II that had hit the church and not exploded. Nutty.
OK, this is just weird. While we were in Florence, we noticed that at a few of the churches they had some ‘relics’ of various saints and other figures. I had no idea what a relic was, so allow me to explain… it’s an actual part of a person’s body, usually a bone, encased in some kind of elaborate case that proudly displays the creepy thing. In most cases it was a small piece of a bone, maybe a finger or something smaller and was from a saint who was identified on the container. Some of the containers were shaped like an arm, for example, and had a little window somewhere along the length to display a little piece of bone, presumably where it actually would have been in the person’s arm. Here’s an example (it’s a tooth).
I find this all very, very strange. But what we saw in Florence paled in comparison to what we saw today at the Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari. Click with caution.
Yes, it’s a hand. Creepy.
