This past week has flown by after we returned from Paris last Sunday and resumed classes and our life in Venice. After having a fabulous long weekend in Paris, we returned to begin the second part of our class entitled the "Modern Venetian Experience" where we met up with local Venetian college students attending Ca'Foscari last Monday night. As most of them are language students, we were able to blend our Italian skills with their English (with a little Spanish interspersed as well!) to get to know our groups who we will be meeting up with four or more times throughout the rest of the semester. The book we were to read this past week for Professor Lubin's class was Survival in Aushwitz by Primo Levi and therefore the week's theme was the Holocaust which also meant that our films mirrored the same theme. As I have studied this subject multiple times throughout middle and high school and even college, I was beyond thrilled to find out that our movie for Tuesday was one of my absolute favorites, Life is Beautiful. After seeing this movie for the first time my freshman year in high school, it ranks among my top three favorites.
We found out early last week that our friend Aubrey that toured us around in Paris was coming to visit us for the weekend as she was able to secure a moderately cheap flight and hotel. So, we got started planning a weekend that would hopefully be as incredible as the one Aubrey had hosted for us. Wednesday we continued with our Modern Venetian experience with a guest speaker to Casa Artom. She gave a presentation about the life of the Russian poet Josef Brodsky who had spent a considerable amount of time in Venice and his art reflected his time spent in the city. We started Thursday with our art visit to the Frari, a famous church in Venice completed in 1338 showcasing famous works of Donatello, Titian, and Bellini.
After we finished classes for the day we awaited Aubrey's flight to arrive and organized the ingredients that we needed for our Friday night family dinner. We had decided to make my mom's go-to party dish of chicken marbella along with fruity nut rice and sautéed veggies which we decided we would get on Friday at the Rialto market. The chicken recipe called for 4 quartered chickens to be marinaded over night. Once the marinade was assembled and Kelly and I had to leave for the airport, so Rob painstakingly quartered the chickens (which I will have you know are nothing like the oven stuffers at home but far more 'natural', with feathers and all...) and Kim made sure they were marinaded and refrigerated. As this was our first family dinner sans Mrs. Lubin's help, we realized the hours of labor that go into cooking for such a large group of people.
Yet due to the strikes still going on in Paris, Aubrey's flight Thursday night was delayed a couple hours. However, Kelly and I decided that Aubrey needed the proper arrival into Venice and instead of waiting for the next bus to take us from the airport to Venice, the three of us splurged and got a water taxi that took us straight to our dock at Casa Artom. Although both Kelly and I had taken water taxis into Venice when we first arrived in August, we had yet to experience the posh mode of travel at night or since getting to know our city.
That night after we introduced Aubrey to the remaining housemates she had not already met, Kelly and I took her to her hotel to check in and then we met everyone out on the Zattere and showed Aubrey where the cruise ships and ritzy yachts dock everyday. The following morning we journeyed to the Rialto market where we got all the fresh ingredients needed for the dinner. As an appetizer we found some fragolina grapes. These are literally called strawberry grapes, and they are the most delicious bright blue grapes I have ever had.
We returned to Casa Artom and met up with Kelly and John to go have a pizza over the Accademia. It was my goal to make sure Aubrey had either pizza or gelato everyday, as I had done with crepes in France. After lunch we walked to San Marco to show Aubrey the piazza and walked to the bridge of sighs which is unfortunately heavily masked by scaffolding. We returned back to begin cooking dinner by way of a traghetto, the gondolas that for 50 cents take you across the Grand Canal which gives a sense of riding a gondola but without the 100 euro price tag.
Family dinner was a jovial affair, and we again celebrated Kelly's 21st with the brownies that the 3 M's (Mandy, Mary Beth and Meaghan) had made decorated with the '2-1' candles Aubrey had go the weekend before. All the hard work certainly paid off. Following our lengthy meal, we had all decided to try out Venice's only discoteca and surprisingly had a great time dancing the night away, of course to mostly American tunes.
The following day, Aubrey and I toured the Guggenheim early so as to miss the crowds that swarm the small palazzo come noon. On our 30 second walk back from the museum to our house, we stopped at an artist's stand outside Casa Artom that painted scenes of Venice and he talked to us about art and his city in broken albeit extremely passionate English, hand gestures abound. I would say that this was perhaps Aubrey's most authentic encounter with an Italian.
We then joined Kelly and Kim and walked to the other side of Venice to hop on a vaporetto to the island of Murano to see some glass blowing. We had lunch on the island and Aubrey found the perfect souvenir, a Murano glass vase. On our way back on the vaporetto we stopped of at the island of San Michele, the cemetery of Venice. Ezra Pound and Josef Brodsky are among many famous people buried here. We walked back from Fondamenta Nuova and passed the beautiful architecture of the Venetian hospital and the Chiesa di SS Giovanni e Paolo (the church houses art which we have studied in art history). We of course stopped for gelato along the way.
Saturday night we had all decided that we wanted to try a restaurant on the way from our house to Santa Margherita. We enjoyed a meal of a variety of pastas and then returned back to Casa Artom and made dessert (homemade chocolate banana bread) and popcorn. That night we were exhausted after a long weekend of touring so we enjoyed a night in watching Rain Man, which was one of VHS tapes in the Casa Artom collection. Sunday we went to mass at San Marco and when we left the basilica, we experienced Aqua Alta for the first time as we were forced to walk along the "pasarella" or raised planks that directed the masses from the sides of the square to the Grand Canal. Sunday was the day of the Venice marathon, in which one of our own Rob was a competitor. As we walked along the Grand canal around noon at San Marco we were able to see the very fastest runners come up to the finish line. What was so impressive was that they had fashioned a pontoon bridge connecting the end of the Zattere by Santa Maria della Salute (a mere 3 min walk from our house) to San Marco and we saw the runners cross the bridge as we took the traghetto back to our house. We then decided to go up along the Zattere and try to catch a glimpse of Rob before having to take Aubrey to the bus back to the airport. After seeing many a runner, we were able to spot Rob and cheer him along before grabbing lunch along the way to Piazzale Roma. It was a fabulous weekend in Venice, and bittersweet to realize it is one of very few remaining.
Today we met up with our Venetian partners again this time in Campo Santa Margherita where we had lunch together. They had recommended we try an Emilia-Romagna sandwich called a piadina, which is what I would describe as a flatbread panini. Perfetto.
Tonight is our second Casa Artom concert, featuring a violinist studying at the Venice conservatory to compliment our 'Modern Venice Experience'.
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