It's a city on a lagoon with canals dicing up every few streets. It left an impression on me of a ball of yarn being let to unravel messily, threads spreading out in a vague circular form -- that's what the streets and canals are like here in Venice, messy and confused and thin.
For my first night, I walked with the unabashed newness of a first-time tourists. I'm very chocked by how many mask shops they have here, everything ranging from a blank eye cover for you to decorate yourself to hugely ornate rhinoceros and elephant heads that I can't imagine anyone possibly putting on without two or more people standing by, helping to support the weight.
I grabbed a pizza and returned to my hostel, which isn't called a hostel but goes by the more formal "studio"; the difference, it turns out, is that the owners, while being friendly and courteous, are also extremely strict with their rules and very stern about noise at night. Normally, that's no problem for me, but I had a rude conversation with the night manager when I was Skyping home.
While I was Skyping, one of the people I was sharing my room with -- a Frenchie who speaks practically no English -- walked up and took a seat nearby, just sort of chilling for a good bit before finally (after hanging out for like 10 minutes) interrupting my phone conversation to say something in French while pointing to the nearby computers. I was talking with Andreina at the time and she tried to translate some stuff from school, but all I got from him was a very confused look. I let him borrow my iPad, which was charging next to me, since it cost about 1€ to use 15 minutes on the studio's computers. As soon as I finished Skyping, the night manager came up to us and basically pleaded with us to go back to our rooms and go to sleep.
Yesterday was my first full day of walking around the city. I manage to snag a great map of the city that two girls had left behind when they left for Rome, but the map was still only minimally helpful in the crazed tangle of streets, plus the weather continued to conspire against me and stayed cloudily for most of the day. I've gotten so used to the intense heat that the cloud cover really threw me off; the entire time I walked around, I felt like I should be sleeping, like I was walking around in a dream, and only felt normal when the sun broke through the clouds for a bit in the early afternoon.
Walking around all day has left me with very mixed feelings for the city. It's still beautiful and very romantic...but it's dirty as anything! The streets are lined with bags of trash. I don't know if there's a trash collection program but I didn't see anyone picking those bags up the entire day. The streets are endlessly confusing. Yeah, it's sort of fun to get a little lost the first time, but in this city "sort of" lost turns into "hopelessly lost" in an instant, and then you're driven nutty trying to figure out where you are. It's not a big city at it's center. You can walk the major islands from one end to another in just about two hours...provided you don't get lost.
I've gotten very used to big cities having tons of greenery, with huge majestic parks. Venice, with few exceptional is limited to only the flower boxes hanging from every couple of window sills. It's a very cement-mortar-stone-canal city. They have a park on the far southeast side on the furthered island, but it's not very big and it's not very creative. It's a bunch of grass, trees, and playgrounds for the kids. Every so often, you can catch sight of a tree growing behind a brick wall, but for the most part it's a green-lacking place.
There is plenty of blue everywhere. Or, off-blue, since the canals aren't exactly the cleanest waters.
This is beginning to come off as depressingly sour! I still retain my initial impressions of the city, my very wonderful introduction, and it's a marvelous place to see that first time. Maybe I'm just still spoiled by how marvelous Florence was. Venice, though, comes off as a very big tourist trap, what with all the mask shops and glass shops and tons of other shops all selling many varieties of the same goods. It also feels like I'm continually walking through a back alley somewhere, with how narrow the streets are. It's an interesting experience to walk around in a place that has no cars whatsoever -- no scooters, no bicycles, just pedestrians and water transportation.
I'm also possibly being completely overwhelmed by the mental countdown going on until Andreina gets here. I can't wait until she flies in!!
Location:Verona, Italy
Lol, I could tell that it was all going to be going downhill when you started to describe the steets as tangled yarn. :)
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