Aqua Alta

For some perspective: the water usually only comes up to the first step.

Every year Venice is sinking. To add to that there is a season called Aqua Alta (High Water) when the tides in the lagoon rise (there are a number of different reasons that cause this such as melting snow on nearby mountains, I'll allow you to look up the other reasons yourself). During Aqua Alta, (October-December, and April apparently) the lowest parts of the city are covered in water and all of the city is covered depending on how severe the level gets. San Marco is the lowest point in the city which is why it always floods first.

Sorry this is blurry, I need a better camera, but here is San Marco flooded.

Tonight there was Aqua Alta. The city is warned of it, first on the internet and through the weather forecast, but then traditionally 2 hours before the highest level a loud alarm sounds over the city. It sounds as if there is about to be an air raid, in fact I would not be surprised if the alarm dates back to the war, when air raids were popular.

Even the shops flood.

Nevertheless, the city continues functioning and in the low parts of the city planks are set into place and become temporary walkways. This night was Aqua Alta and we decided to go through San Marco on our way to meet friends in Castello for drinks. This was a mistake. Not because it wasn't beautiful. It was gorgeous with the lights reflecting off the water as it literally bubbled up from between the stones in the piazza. It honestly felt as if we were sinking. No, it was a mistake because the planks are only put out in the touristy area when the water is not extremely high. So after we passed San Marco the water cleared up but just around another turn where we needed to go the water rose up again. 3 of the 4 of us didn't have rain boots. So we had to try a different route, only every 5 minutes we would run into more huge puddles of water blocking our path. What should have taken 20 minutes took 45. This is about the time Aqua Alta stops being beautiful and Venice turns into a weird video game where you cannot forge the water or you'll die so everyone loses. At least that's how my brain spent the night, thinking it was trapped in a twisted version of Frogger.

This is in front of Tintoretto's house. (which is no where near San Marco)

San Lazzaro

Once a day at 3:10pm there is a boat that leaves from the San Marco area and goes to the little island of San Lazzaro. It is named after the Armenian monastery that encompasses it. The problem with being told "San Marco" is that it's a huge port. There are so many docking stations that one could easily spend upwards of 20 minutes running from one to the next in search of the only boat that goes to San Lazzaro. We barely made it onto the boat, but the running around was worth it just to feel the warm wind in your hair and simultaneously begin to sing the theme to Titanic. (The other passengers were not impressed).

Since there is only one boat per day, there is only one tour per day and it begins at 3:25 exactly. There were 2 guides, one of whom was to speak in both English and French and therefore had around 25 people gathered around him, the other was to speak in Italian with only about 7 people around her. Guess which one we chose. From what I understood, it began as a leper colony in the 1100's (I'll let you know if my skin starts falling off) and was then given to a group of Armenian monks who restored a church and expanded the island. It has become a museum for Armenian culture because the monks were obviously also scholars and published around 4,000 manuscripts and house an entire library of over 100,000 books. They also have rooms and rooms of glass shelves which house various wordly treasures that the monks collected and/or were donated to them, such as ivory pipes, swords, ornate metal crosses, and belts, china, and (my favorite) a mummy!

Lord Byron also randomly studied Armenian there for a year sometime in the early 19th century. So there is even a plaque for him:

At the end of the tour we were lead back to the entrance 5 minutes before the next vaporetto was to go back to San Marco (actually the stop is San Zaccaria #20, if you want to get technical and not run all over the fondamenta). Naturally that was plenty of time to stop in the shop and buy some of their famous rose petal jam. (For the price, there better be some gold in that jam as well). We made the boat just in time and this cutie was rowing toward us:

Buona Pasqua!

There are 30 interns working for the museum this month and only about 6 of them left for Easter weekend. Which left 24 of us to participate in what makes my Easter special (besides the obvious Resurrection, of course), the hunt!

We each pitched in a couple euros and 3 supermarkets later I had 30 eggs, 27 candy bars, and 6 bags of various other candies. A problem arose from the beginning because Italy and generally all of Europe only sells brown eggs. So when we tried to dye them yellow and orange they only turned slightly different shades of brown. Red was the only color that worked. But I think my subconcious is smarter than the average bear because red is the traditional color of dying eggs in Europe.

We hid the eggs in Peggy's sculpture garden and when the intern found his or her name they claimed their prize which was a bag of candy. There was one grand prize egg which said "You win!! You are the eggspert hunter!" the finder of which received a giant chocolate egg.

Other trick eggs designed by the decorators (Faberge was too busy, so it ended up being me a 2 other girls) to deceive the hunter into thinking they found the grand prize egg included phrases such as, "You haven't cracked it!" and "Congrats!! Loser." and my favorite, "This is not an egg."

It was a successful hunt except for the fact that we couldn't find one of the eggs. Hopefully we'll find it in a couple days when an egg tree starts spurting out of the ground.

La Libreria

While wandering around today we stumbled upon a really cool bookstore that puts Barnes and Noble to shame. It is covered in stacks and stacks of books, postcards, old prints, and random knick knacks. I don't know how the old gentleman who owns it keep track of anything whatsoever. There are so many books that he ran out of shelves and started piling them all in anything he could find: plastic cartons, bath tubs, boats, barrels, and a gondola.

Although, safety does come first, and every good bookstore has to have an emergency exit. This one happened to have a brilliant plan. In the event of a fire or other emergency, jump into the adjacent canal:

Dragons in Church

There is a little treasure in Venice tucked away in Castello. It's called Scuola di San Giorgio degli Schiavoni. It was the meeting place for the wealthy guild of merchants were from Dalmatia. The patron saints are Girgio, Trifone, and Jeronomo. From 1502-08 the downstairs meeting hall/chapel was painted by Vittore Carpaccio (who was also Dalmatian and studied under Bellini).

There are several different panels, but my favorite is the depiction of San Girgio slaying the dragon. As usual pictures weren't permitted hence this internet version:

It's quite graphic, no? There are dismembered and rotting corpses on the ground as Giorgio thrusts his spear into the dragon's mouth and blood spurts out. The only thing I don't like is that the principessa is just standing there crying. See the tree in the middle? It has leaves on the right side and is desolate and dead on the other? The guard explained that the left side was considered evil, ergo dragon on the left. May I remind you that this macabre scene is hanging in a chapel?

Palazzo Fortuny

On Sunday one of my fellow interns and I decided to meet at Palazzo Fortuny. It's an old palace, as the name suggests, that was owned by the wealthy Pesaro family, but was taken over by Mariano Fortuny, a Spanish fashion designer and art collector. Several of the other interns suggested we go because there is an exhibition on Diana Vreeland a fashion editor, and an instalation by James Turrell. What followed upon entering was the most confusing and strange exhibiton space I've ever been in.

The main part of the museum is on the second floor, and all signs for the exhibition point in that direction. What they don't tell you is that all of the art and shows are displayed together. When you walk in there are large glass cases with elegant gowns in them which you suppose were owned by Diana Vreeland, but next to them is the reporduction of a suit of armour, and I don't think she wore that. There are tapestry covering on the old stone walls on top of which hang dozens of paintings some of them studies of more famous works of art, some of them painted my Fortuny's father, and then Andy Warhol, and photographs of Venice in the 19th Century. There is a giant stair case/ladder that leads to no where and random book shelves, and scale models of amphitheaters and other palazzi.

I didn't know where to look first. What makes it all the more confusing is that there are no labels. You have to get a booklet at the entrance that out lies the entire space and the adjoining rooms with just what you are looking at. The most disturbing part was the James Turrell gallery where you had to walk through a room that was pitch black in order to get to the space within, where a rectangle of color was floating on a wall. It changed colors but very subtly, so that you didn't know it was different until you were looking at a patch of blue when you could have sworn it was pink when you stumbled in.

On the first floor was an exhibition called "Avere una bella cera" (To have a good wax, although they translated it to "Waxing Eloquent") Neither title is appropriate for it though, because it was a creepy display of wax figures made from the corpses of prisoners and monks. There were royal wax figures as well, complete with moles and real hair. It was slightly horrifying and more than a little perverse, to say the least.

Overall, Palazzo Fortuny was unsettling at first, but thinking back to the visit I enjoyed it. Confusion heightens your curiosity, I think. Except for those wax figures. I could have gone my whole life without having to have seen those.

La Prima Giornata

I arrived in Venice, fairly easily, the only problem was my plane was delayed an hour on the tarmac in Newark because another plane had landed in distress. (Although I have experience being trapped in a plane just sitting on the runway. Ask me about my trip to Texas sometime.) This caused us to be late getting to London, where I had my connecting flight. I got a little taste of what it's like to be a business class flyer because I had to be rushed immediately to my gate. Getting patted down and all your luggage searched before everyone else is not much of a luxury though.

Marco Polo is a small airport so it was easy to find the bus that goes into the city to Piazzale Roma. That is where the road ends. No cars, no streets. Just boats, and canals, and bridges. I had to cross a lot of bridges to get to my apartment, but luckily my landlady was there to show me the way. Who knows where I would have ended up and/or where I would still be wandering, if she hadn't.

This is my canal and street: Fondamenta de la Misericordia

I live in Cannaregio, which is in the north of the city and the museum is directly to the south. The problem is that there is a huge body of water that snakes through, called the Canal Grande. Asking for exact directions in Venice is impossible. So is mapping out a long walk. It just can't be done because of the winding nature of the streets and the various positions of the bridges.(Also the taxis are boats and one ride can cost upwards of €50) You just have to look for landmarks such as a piazza or a church and when in doubt, just follow someone who looks like they know where they're going. So on Wednesday morning, which was my first day at the museum, Maria offered to walk me there because she had to go in the same direction. It took us less than 30 minutes to get there.

I had a full day of tours, training, and meeting the staff. Then it was time to walk back to the apartment. Alone. I impressed myself by walking about 15minutes in the right direction using my memory of the morning walk. Then it got dark and it all went to hell in a handbasket. All the streets looked the same and I just chose random alleyways, some of which worked out but more often just lead to dead ends or creepier streets. (The family I'm living with assured me that Venice is a safe place and is really just a small town at heart, but when you're lost in the dark on your first time there, one cannot help but think of how easy it would be to be knocked into a boat and dragged through the canals, then cut into pieces and thrown into the Lagoon.) I had to consult my map by the dim lights of the shops that were still open, pretending to be looking at the merchandise as to avoid being targeted by would-be canal kidnappers. I finally made it back to the apartment, with all my limbs, after about an hour and 20 minutes. Do you know how many bridges that is?

Peggy's Collection

Canal Grande

The Peggy Guggenheim Collection is located in the Dorsoduro neighborhood of Venezia. It was the last privately owned building on Canal Grande and is now the site of one of the most important collections of Modern art in Europe.

Peggy was born into a wealthy New York family in 1898 and after her father died on the Titanic she came into a sizable fortune, and thus had the means to support many artists. She did not get the idea to buy art until she had an affair with Samuel Beckett who supported Modern art and referred to it as a living thing. With the help of non other than Marcel Duchamp, in the late 1930's she began a "diet" of a painting a day. She opened a gallery in London for a year giving several artists their first shows. (Kandinsky!) She had a sizable collection by the time she had to flee Europe during WWII, and acquired even more works as payment for helping other artists escape. (She even bought a sculpture the day the Nazis invaded France.) She helped Max Ernst escape and at the end of the year they were married. (Although it didn't last long, I think maybe he wanted a visa and she wanted paintings, who knows?) The Lourve snubbed her collection as not worthy to be hidden in their storage so she was forced to hide it all in a barn in the south of France.

Palazzo Venier dei Leoni is the small white building on the right. It was supposed to be the largest built on the Canal in the 1750s, but only the ground floor was completed. It is thought that another wealthy family prevented it's construction, not wanting their view to be obstructed.

After the war, Peggy successfully shipped her collection back to New York in crates labeled "household goods". She opened a museum in NYC, where she also discovered and supported artists. (Pollock!)

Peggy moved to Venice in 1949, and is now buried in the giardino of the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni which was her home, along with several of her dogs. They were like children to her, in fact one of them was even named Pegeen after her actual daughter, who died of a pill overdose. (Would you ever name your dog in memoriam of your child? This should give you a small glimpse of the crazy that was Peggy) Until her death in 1979, she made Venezia her own(she was declared an honorary citizen in 1962). She had a private gondola and wore earrings designed by Calder and Tanguy, sunglasses by Melcarth. In a nutshell she was a nut, but a very important one.

Peggy's collection included over 250 works of art, 50 of which are considered masterpieces. So she was also a smart nut.

Il Problema con I Visti

It has been a while my loyal followers, yes I am writing to all 8 of you. Mi dispiace, ma non c'era nulla interessante a scrivere. Well that's not true, I did get trapped in a flat in London and got lost (left behind, thanks a lot, John, I thought we were closer than that) on the busy streets of Hanoi, but those are for another day.

Today's post is dedicated to the work leading up to going to Venezia, because traveling is never simple with me, and Italians are nothing if not monkey wrenches (I mean that in a loving way). I received my letter of acceptance into the Peggy Guggenheim Collection Internship on 30 November. A couple weeks later I asked them about the official documents I would need in order to get a student visa while I got all the other necessary documents together. The Italians need everything to process your visa short of a blood sample, though if I offered that I'm sure it would not have been good enough. For one reason or another I didn't get my paperwork until 16 February. In case you failed kindergarten, that is a grand total of at least 9 weeks, most likely more because the initial application was due in early October. You can see that on a scale of 1 to crazy town I was somewhere between shaving my own head and Jack Nicholson after he gets the lobotomy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

Cut to 17 February when I called the Consulate to make an appointment and the earliest one I could make was Monday morning. So I paid the $15 it costs to make an appointment and they emailed me a list of requirements. As it happens, the insurance I bought specifically for the trip which covers all medical, dental, and emergency costs, was not good enough for them and I had to also get a letter from my insurance listing my primary coverage. This took some doing since the insurance company is based in California and could not assure me that the letter would be in my email on time. (Thanks to my incredible sister for talking me off the ledge and calling them until they promised it would be sent in time.)

The next step was to drive to Philadelphia and simply had in all the documents and hope for the best. Wrong. What should have taken 5 minutes took and hour. Naturally, the Consulate opened 10 minutes late and when the woman finally arrived, I was not on the list of appointments. In fact, the list was blank. What did I pay $15 for? Non lo so. So the woman grilled me about the internship and talked in circles until Pops was ready to start screaming. But she took the paperwork on the condition that I email her a copy of the brochure of the traveler's insurance which they originally said was not acceptable. REALLY?! So at that point I was ready to shave my head and have a lobotomy.

But that is not all! That Thursday she called me asking again about the insurance brochure even though I had emailed it to her right after leaving the appointment on Monday. She then assured me it would be in the mail that day. Nope. Not in the mail. No where near a FedEx. Instead, it was sitting on the desk in her office the next morning when Pops dragged me back up to Philadelphia. At this point Pops ripped it out, made sure it was there, and then wanted to leave. In fact we were still yelling at each other in the elevator down and when it opened to a bunch of people in the lobby. (How very Canadian of us.)

So it turns out the lobotomy wasn't necessary, too late, I can't feel the left side of my face.