Today began with a chilly morning and three and a half hour bus ride to the Venice-Mestre train station, most of which involved me sleeping only waking up every now and then to find the towering mountains of Italy’s countryside drift past us.
If you don’t count subways and trams, that was my first time in a train today. Almost made me miss Pittsburgh a little thinking of watching the trains barrel past as I walk to campus early in the morning.
The second we stepped off and into the city, I knew Venice would be a favorite highlight of this trip. From the colors popping from every building and flower pot to the boats moseying past, except for the water ambulance we saw (yes, apparently that’s a thing,) we all quickly found that Venice is a dream, and just another notch on the list of “Things That Don’t Make This Trip Feel Real.”
My only complaint is that we had so little time. For lunch, I was riding the adventure of eating that two pound steak and knew I wanted seafood in this particular city, so Kost and I split some salmon. I wasn’t expecting it to be raw and had never eaten salmon like that before, but I still loved it. And of course, after another pointer from Matteo, we had to try the Venetian Spritz.
A walking tour afterwards immersed us into the city’s rich and beautiful culture, diving into everything from its ancient well system to it’s Fat Tuesday/Lent traditions to its flooding habits. More things reminiscent of Pittsburgh (I’m looking at you, Mon Wharf.)
We also ran into a few more English word origin stories today. For example, the white salt that forms on the walls of Venetia buildings and sticks to your fingers used to be referred to as “white gold” for its value way back when. So valuable, people used to be paid in salt, hence the word “salary” coming from the Italian word for salt “sale.” Even more, the word “carnival,” as in the weeks-long Carnival of Venice celebrated leading up to Lent, comes from “carne” and “vale” in Italian, or “farewell to meat” as we are familiar with during Lent. Might change my major to linguistics. Not hype to go back to boring English in a few days.
The magic is not and was not over yet though. Everyone on the trip had the absolute privilege to go on a gondola ride, which is everything you’d hope it would be in more. Bobbing up and down along the jade canals of one of the most unique cities on Earth listening to the gondolier whistle us a tune was truly 
special, and it reminds me yet again of all of the incredible stories and experiences I’ve had all thanks to Point Park.
We did get a little free time after, which was spent in a secondhand bookstore with a few friendly cats hanging around that we passed on our tour earlier. I was hoping to find a copy of Dante’s Inferno in Italian, but let me tell you this store had little to no organization. I did find an old Bee Gees record though with a track list even I didn’t recognize.
I was also hoping to look at the beautiful glass stores and masks hanging in the windows sold for the
Carnival of Venice. The masks are strange and creepy but in an enticing way, it reminded me of the voodoo shops in New Orleans. But again, no time. The city is expensive, but I do wish we had our free day in Venice instead so we could navigate ourselves through the maze-like streets and tunnels that I have to duck down in to pass through.
Just gives me a reason to come back I suppose.
We finished the day taking a train back to the bus, then the bus back to Italy’s mainland, where we now reside in a small town called Padua. Which is not as quiet and sad and boring as you may think!
- It’s home to the University of Padua est. 1222 where Galileo Galilei was once a lecturer.
- It’s rugby team boasts 12 national championships between the years 1970 and 2011.
- It has the oldest botanical garden in the world dating back to 1545.
See? Not s’bad after all.