Venice is completely packed with tourists, and is becoming almost a ‘museum city’, because the actual residential population is dwindling so rapidly. However it is still breathtaking to see all the old houses along the canals, and the city is maze-like and very easy to get lost in (even with a map!)
The first afternoon we went to visit the Doge’s Palace on the Piazza San Marco. It was an amazing building, with huge council rooms painted in incredible detail. I was however extremely concerned by the number of people feeding the pigeons. Disgusting.
We then wanted a real Italian dinner and we certainly found it. A delicious caprese salad and then amazing gnocchi. We also got to see a lot of Venice by night, which is beautiful.
The following morning we caught the vaporetto to Murano, the small island just off Venice which is famous for glass blowing. We saw some of the maestros at work, and wandered through the glass shops but everything was wayyy out of my price range.
In the afternoon I had a quick visit to the Gheto Novo, the place to which Jews were restricted under the Venetian Republic from around 1500 - 1790. The English word ‘ghetto’ was derived from here.
On the way home we stopped in at the Basilica San Marco, which has an incredible gold tiled roof.
By then we were melting and decided to head back to the hostel for dinner in preparation for our arty adventure!
The final day was an artful extravaganza. We crossed the Ponte del Accademia to the Peggy Guggenheim collection, which I absolutely loved. Lots of surrealist work, and my absolute favourite was L’Empire des Lumières, the Empire of Light, by René Magritte.
Then it was time to explore the 52nd Venice Biennale! In the main section each country has a pavilion and exhibits the work of one artist. Australia’s representative Hany Armanious was quite interesting, but I liked the USA’s ‘Liberty on a Sunbed’ and the treadmill-powered tank, and France’s ‘Roule de la Chance’ (Wheel of Chance), which was a huge metal structure rotating faces of newborn babies. The installation ‘The Impostor’ in the British pavilion was also quite interesting.
There was so much to see, but aside from the exhibition in the American pavilion there is the coolest ATM ever. It is inside a pipe organ, and plays a different tune every time a card is inserted according to the pin code and transaction required. There is also a rumour that the bigger your bank balance the longer it plays for…
After seeing the main part of the exhibition we headed over to a second part of the Biennale where there are individual artist exhibits. We didn’t have much time as it was closing early, but I really liked the giant candles (including one of an office chair) that were slowly melting.
The final exhibit was the best though. It is a movie called ‘The Clock’ by Swiss-American artist Christian Marclay. The Clock is a 24 hour movie, composed of short clips from thousands of films and each clip has to do with time. Every time you see a watch or clock it is on the right time. We watched it for over 45 minutes and it was mesmerising, as he has even managed to have the clips flow into one another. I think I could literally sit there and watch it for the whole 24 hours, but here is a snippet from 4:07-4:12...
We had dinner with Laurence, a lovely French Canadian girl from the hostel and then I tried to get a good night’s sleep in preparation for 30 hours of travel, but the explanation of that epic adventure will come soon!
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