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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?

I haven’t done this in a little while, and it’s about time to get back on top of it. I’m just realizing that it’s been so long since I wrote something on here that there are things that I’ve forgotten most of the details of already. Oy! I’m going to try to write up about an article-a-day for a little while, at least until I get caught up.

Quick, name three beers from Italy…

I got you, didn’t I? Maybe you came up with Peroni, or Moretti if you’re really good. And why have we not heard of the fantastic beers that just have to be pouring out of this country and into our living rooms? It’s because they don’t really drink beer in Italy, that’s why. Why would anyone other than an uncultured swine (i.e. me) want to drink beer in a place where wine is cheaper than bottled water? I don’t know, but I haven’t given up yet, and that’s why I bought this beer today. That, and the fact that its name exactly describes my feelings about the beer here… slightly better than eternal damnation, but a bit worse than not very good.

On another beer-related note, Hannah and I were planning a trip to Belgium for some bar hopping over her Spring break when we discovered that renting a villa on the Amalfi Coast for a week was $500 cheaper than slumming it in the cheapest hotel in Brussels. So, I guess I’ll suffer through more wine. Life is not hard here.

And just for fun, here’s a picture of the Hell Bier with his friend Mr. Dunkel, which I’ve taken to calling Skunkel… but I drink it anyway.