Sunday in Venice

Our first real encounter with the floods happened about 9:50 this morning.  4 of us met up to go to church at Basilica San Marco, which we believed to be at 10am.  We hopped on our ferry, but were surprised at San Marco to see water bubbling up from below.  None of us had even thought to put rain boots on.  Luckily, Venetians have devised a pretty useful system of platforms that go above the water.  These are pretty effective, but there were definitely some puddles we had to jump over, to applause and cheers by the Italians. 

When we entered the Basilica we saw that even the lobby was flooded and there was a somewhat smaller system of wooden planks to the side door where we were told to enter for the service.  The church itself is definitely a sight to be seen, but so busy and full of gold that the eye doesn't know where to look.  They had rows of plastic chairs set up, and we found a row for 4, but the service did not appear to be starting any time soon.  In fact, a group of italian tourists were taking pictures at the altar with the priest.  What a country...

We used our time trying to decipher what story each picture represented.  Ryanne and I figured out that the 4 men writing were Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and that a set of pictures indicated the temptation by the devil and palm sunday.  But there were images of innumerable people, whom we could not place at all.  As Ryanne said, it was a bit gaudy. "Let's build a city on water and then fill it with the most expensive crap we can find."

We somewhat underestimated the length and confusion of mass in a different language.  I think there were meant to be papers on each of our chairs with the mass parts, but I am the only one who had all of them, and even then only the readings were translated into English at all.  The choir was beautiful, they had the most gorgeous harmonies and often sang accapella, definitely the highlight of the mass.  The low part, however, was the homily which was incomprehensible except for a few phrases, and went on for at least 25 minutes.  The only part I caught was something about "the evil world we live in", so I am not sure I wanted to understand anyway.

The peace surprised us, and we weren't sure how to say it in Italian, so we were definitely the row of awkward Americans who only said peace to each other.  That got me worried for communion, but then I realized that Amen is pretty universal.  However, communion was still an event with people just basically rushing to line up.  Also, by that point we were all freezing as the church has no heat and the temperature had dropped at least 10 degrees.  Once mass ended we joined the bumbling throng through the doors and out into the now completely flooded piazza.

We crept behind the long queue of tourists and people without boots until we finally came upon dry land and booked it for a restaurant.  I am proud to say that we ate our first 3 course meal, and it was absolutely delicious.  Everything is just so fresh, and after being out in the wet cold, the warmth was exactly what we needed.  We ate the European way, sitting for a few hours and savoring our food, before paying and American-ly rushing for our ferry. (Which we ended up missing anyway.)

We had planned to stroll and explore today, but the weather decided to cancel those plans, so the rest of the day has been spent on the island, organizing for classes tomorrow and taking a nice siesta.  Tonight we are going to an Irish pub ( http://www.inisharkpub.com/ )to watch the Hockey Finals on Sky Sports. 9:15pm, I've already looked it up.

That's about it for now.  Time for my nap.  Ciao bella!

<3 Allie