A Titanic Experience

This weekend marked the beginning of my independent travel adventures. My roommate Meredith and I went to beautiful Venice, which was, of course, very exciting. However, another exciting aspect of our trip was that, apart from some helpful advice from Dr. Webb, we planned the trip ourselves. It was the first time I had ever found a hotel on my own, and the very first time I had ever been on an overnight trip without an “adult.” From Friday to Sunday, we managed successfully to catch four buses, five trains, and countless vaporetti (the aquatic bus system of Venice). That is an accomplishment considering, that until a month ago, we had never used public transportation.

Not surprisingly, our weekend excursion was not without a few glitches, but these served only to give us better experience and a few stories to look back on and laugh at. When we arrived in Venice, we had a hotel reservation for Friday night, but not for Saturday night. We contacted several places ahead of time but all were full, so we headed to Venice in hopes that our Friday hotel would have a cancellation for the next night. When this plan failed, we picked up a hotel book from the tourist office and spent an hour in Piazza San Marco on Saturday morning making phone calls. By the 40th call, Meredith and I felt as if we were rehearsing a script:

Hotel Person: Buon Giorno! [Italian words I didn’t understand]
Me: Ciao! Parla inglese?
Hotel Person: Si, a little.
Me: I am looking for a double room for tonight. Do you have any available?
Hotel Person: No, I’m sorry madam, we are all full.


Thankfully, we eventually found a hotel on the Lido, a long island about a 30 minute vaporetto ride from the main island of Venice. We were not sure what we would find when we arrived, since we chose the hotel without having any information about it except the name. However, it turned out to be beautiful and even nicer than our hotel on Friday, which was the same price but somewhat dirty, smelly, and left much to be desired. Our slightly stressful ordeal of finding a last-minute hotel turned into an evening spent in a lovely, immaculate room eating the most delicious pizza and pastries and watching Shrek 3 in Italian before bed.

Once all our travel plans were settled, Meredith and I were able to enjoy exploring Venice. First we visited the island of Murano, which is famous for its glass. The glass makers’ kilns started many fires, and so in 1292 the glass artisans were forced to leave the main island of Venice and relocate to Murano. At the Museo Vetrario there were many glass exhibits, some from as far back as the first century A.D. The large collection from that time period contained very practical objects, such as cups or vases, and, although of a more simple design and cloudier glass, they were incredibly delicate and well formed. It is astounding to think that civilizations so ancient had the ability to create objects so beautiful and refined, and it is even more astounding that the fragile glass relics have survived for thousands of years. The museum exhibits are displayed chronologically, and as we walked into later centuries, eventually arriving at the 20th, it was very interesting to see the progression of using glass making as an artistic medium, rather than solely as a means of forming practical objects. Some of the pieces were like three-dimensional brightly colored paintings, and truly mind-boggling to look at. Actually, many of the pieces were glass interpretations of works by other artists, such as Picasso. In fact, there was even a glass version of Michelangelo’s Pietà.

Later, we stumbled upon a free glass-making demonstration. The demonstrator made creating a delicate piece of art look easier than breathing. He pulled a red hot blob out of the fire on a long metal rod and with another metal tool poked it here, pulled it there, twirled it around and in about a minute, held up a nearly cooled rearing horse. After that, Meredith and I wandered down little streets until we ended up in a truly Italian area of Murano, without any tourists in view. We sat down at a café where we lunched on mortadella sandwiches (a type of meat that comes from Bologna) with the locals. Before we left the island, we browsed in more glass stores than I could count until we found some good buys and a few Christmas presents. My favorite purchase is a pair of earrings made of pink Murano glass with sparkling gold swirls.

We spent the rest of the day in Venice proper. It truly is a gorgeous city, far more so than I anticipated. The effortlessly arched bridges, elegant statues and architecture, and rosy pink houses against the sea green water form a superfluously romantic setting. Aside from pushing, shoving tourists, Venice is very quiet and serene, I think because of the absence of cars and other noisy disturbances. Meredith and I thought about taking the iconic gondola ride, but decided against it. For one thing, it is expensive; for another, I don’t think sitting in a romantic gondola looking into Meredith’s eyes would be quite the same as looking into my boyfriend Curtis’. One evening we sat in Piazza San Marco, a large square surrounded by the Doge’s Palace, the Basilica of San Marco, and other beautiful buildings that are lit up at night. It is lined with cafés, which have musicians playing swooning melodies. The Piazza is also filled with couples who sit and stare into each other’s eyes as the music swirls around them, or dance together, or simply walk slowly and hold hands. The entire scene is so picturesque it is dripping with melodrama. It was almost reminiscent of the scene in the movie Titanic when the boat is sinking, teary farewells are being made, and in the midst of it all the string quartet is playing touching songs to the last.


I think part of the reason Venice is so romanticized is because it is mainly a tourist town—a show put on—but not so much lived in by “real” people. Venice has a long history with lots of ups and downs—literally. Venice is sinking, and floods many times a year. In fact, while I was walking around I saw what appeared to be stacked benches or tables, but what were actually the “sidewalks” Venetians use when there is too much flooding to walk on the ground. In 1966 there was a particularly bad flood, and since that year Venice’s population has shrunk from 150,000 to around 65,000. The flooding along with the fact that everything on an island is more expensive makes living in the famous city very difficult.

Venice truly is a one-of-a-kind city. It first became populated after the fall of the Roman Empire, when the Lombards invaded, forcing some people in Northern Italy onto Venice. Eventually, the Venetians governed themselves by electing a doge, or duke. Because the island of Venice is isolated and easy to defend, this is where the doge built his palace. Over time, other nobles wanted to build their palaces near the doge’s, and so Venice became populated with the wealthy. Its strategic location made it the dominant trade center, and in the Renaissance it was one of the biggest and most important city-states in Italy. Unlike other regions of Italy with land-based feudal systems, Venice’s unique situation created a merchant-based nobility. Even before the 12th century, bridges and canals appeared as a means of connecting the nobles living on the many different islands of Venice. Eventually Venice began to lose its political, military and trade power, but still remained popular through the 18th and 19th centuries as a tourist destination for the wealthy.

Going to Venice was a unique experience for me, one that probably will not be matched since it is completely unlike any other city. Sitting on the back of a vaporetto at night while gliding through the quiet water past ancient candle-lit buildings and pulling up to the steps of cathedrals was a beautiful and ethereal experience. I can’t wait to go back.