In which we go away and see Venice.

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So, back from holiday. Everyone ready? I’ve got some slides to show you…

So, despite the fact I hadn’t (haven’t) finished my dissertation (proof reading only) we set off on our brief sojourn in Southern / Eastern europe. We headed down to London painfully early in the morning, the availability of flights being strictly limited on our Air Miles funded holiday. However, it meant that our coach ride (Oh megabus, how studenty I feel in your company) was fairly traffic free, important as both Kathryn and I react to Coach travel in a “Ugh, I don’t feel well” way). We landed up at the airport somewhat early – but I’ll always side with early over late – supped tea/coffee and had breakfast before checking in. London City has an insane take-off path, and also features the same dinky kind of layout that Bristol Airport sports. You can imagine that it could be staffed by 1940s stewards/esses, because it’s about that size. It’s not, sadly.

(I have this whole disconnect between the actual experience of flying, and the way I think it will be. I imagine that it will be like this, but apparently it’s not anymore).

Anyhow, we got on the flight which was surprisingly roomy, and headed for sunnier climes. The alps were stunning… and we landed in Marco Polo airport, cleared customs and made our way into Italy. I’ve never been to Italy, and this was a new bit of Italy for Kathryn, so it was quite exciting :)

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Also, neither of us speaks Italian, so entertainment was predicted as we navigated the language barrier. Thankfully, that first day, the bus-ticket-machine was in English, so we headed to Venice on the bus with no fuss, and thanks to Kathryn’s excellent navigation, we found our hotel and checked in, dropping off our bags and heading out for a wander. And to find food. Because BA didn’t feed us (the mini bag of pseudo pretzels doesn’t count).

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Venice, it turns out, is an incredibly beautiful, if slightly unnerving city. I understand that there is a constant battle being waged between the lagoon and Venice. Venice wishing to stay slightly out of the water and the lagoon rather fancying a new underwater toy for its fish. Many of the buildings, particularly the large historic ones had many disconcerting cracks and crack/movement monitoring devices… and floors that were insanely uneven despite being made of a sort of agatey-marbley substance. The floors are the really disconcerting bit. They’re all upey-downey.

Anyhow, back to the pretty.

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There’s a lot of pretty, and we wandered between the tall Venetian buildings in and out of beautiful sunlight. It is an incredible city, the architecture is just beautiful, and the canals (being as it is October) weren’t smelly :)

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Having meandered around and eaten a cheap lunch earlier in the day (at the Dodo Cafe… it has Dodos on the sign, what else could you possibly want? Also, they endured our appauling Italian). We then did more of the meandering, visiting St. Mark’s square to, briefly, see the duelling orchestras, and then we started to hunt down dinner. Now, bear in mind we’d been up since 4am their time (3am UK). The complexity of managing menus seemed a little beyond us, and thus we selected a place (well, they selected us) with a set menu. Normally any form of pushyness on the form of the staff before we’ve selected them is enough to make us run, but the genial host who sucked us in did so with us happily accepting the sit-down-eat-here approach. Make decisions for us, we’re too tired!

We knew the fish was meant to be good, and it was excellent. There was, however, an awful lot of it. We tried to indicate that we wanted a starter that wasn’t fish based, because we were having a whole entire sea-bass for the main. That wasn’t the fixed price menu, by the way, that was his expert steering of the decision process… We ended up having a delicious sea-food salad. This wasn’t a salad with some sea-food as I was expecting. No. This was a salad made of sea-food. Prawns, Squid, etc with a few select leaves. It was lovely, but when the Sea Bass arrived it seemed a bit excessive. Because I was full. Still, we both trundled on, and glad I did because it was beautifully cooked and incredibly fresh.

We ate the last remains of the evening away, drinking italian wine and following it with complimentary limoncello.

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The next day was spent in a mixture of more exploration and visiting museums (as you’d expect with us!). We hit up the Accademia (which has some incredible paintings, including one of the Annunciation which features an Angel in what appears to be a foil dress. I was rather fond of that, also we also got to see some of the work of Hieronymus Bosch, who, as we know is a nutcase). We then bought a museum pass for “11” of the venice museums. Museo Correr, which we headed to, it turns out houses “3” of them. Mainly we went to Correr because we wanted to see the Monumental Rooms of the Biblioteca Marciana. This involved walking through a museum of sculpture (with some stunning and beautiful pieces), the Correr itself, which is a museum of Venetian life and art (itself incredible) and through to the Monumental rooms (which are pretty nifty in themselves). Sadly, the Monumental Rooms are devoid of books, and women’s history and art appears to be somewhat underrepresented (apart from the Empress Sissi).

It was interesting and beautiful, but yeah, somewhat cheeky on the ‘three museums’ trick, because you can’t actually visit only one of them. Well, you can, but only the first one. The other two require walking through each preceding museum.

As a side point, no chairs.

Seriously.

No chairs.

What is up with that?

The Monumental Rooms are gorgeous though. As are many of the rooms of the Correr, with utterly captivating paintings adorning the ceilings and walls, each containing incredible detail. Sadly, they don’t allow photography (even without a flash) so my shiny new camera stayed lurking in my bag. But, the prettyness was awesome, you’ll just have to trust me on that.

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We headed out, again, questing to find dinner.This time we landed up at a Pizza Restaurant (trying to curb the Venetian food costs a little!) and had an excellent Pizza. I was particularly cheered to note that, actually, our Pizza dough produces pizza that isn’t miles from their pizza. Of course, Venetian pizza is apparently not a patch on Italian pizza. But still. Our feet, by now, were killing us, so made our way back to the hotel room for some relaxed reading before our last morning.

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Our final morning we shot from the hotel like startled rabbits, having deposited our bags for safe keeping, heading as fast as possible for Ca’ Pesaro. Of course it turns out, Ca’ Pesaro doesn’t open until 10. So we did a bit more meandering before heading in to what was probably both of our favourite of the museums visited. It had some really wonderful modern pieces, and a fair bit of both myself and Kathryn pointing things out to each other. Also there was the highly amusing moment when one of the staff fell asleep in their chair. I was just contemplating coughing gently when she awoke and did that ‘oh-shit-did-I-fall-asleep’ look around thing.

It was a little sad that we had to rush this one as we were heading off to Slovenia, because it is probably the museum in which we would have happily spent the most time (though again, they seem opposed to benches). In it were the paintings and some of the statues I enjoyed the most during the visit. Whilst not all to my taste, in general, it was incredible. Sadly, as with Museo Correr, it’s actually two museums in one, and we didn’t get time to even glance at the asian art section (which, to be honest, is fine, except that we’d paid. The British Museum and the City Museum in Bristol contain sufficient Asian art to keep me entertained for a long while).

Sprinting off from the Museum, we flew to the hotel (well, walked), grabbed our bags, and headed out to Marco Polo where our cheap-as-possible hire car was waiting.

There are, as you’d expect, more photos here

KateWE

Kate's a human mostly built out of spite and overcoming transphobia-racism-and-other-bullshit. Although increasingly right-wing bigots would say otherwise. So she's either a human or a lizard in disguise sent to destroy all of humanity. Either way, it's all good.