Venice

Two weekends ago I was blessed to be able to travel with Chris to Venice. We knocked out our finance final, threw together our backpacks, crammed down some lunch and headed for the train station. About half of the people were heading somewhere in Italy for the weekend so we all piled onto the train to Milan. In Milan Chris and I said goodbye to the others and jumped on our connecting train to Venice. We both took a nice nap on the train and were pulling into Venice before we knew it. We hopped off the train, down the platform and out into the square on which the station is situated.

Venice is an incredible city! No cars, only feet and many many boats! Right before us was the Grand Canal, the main canal that runs all the way through the city. We had a general idea of where our hostel was so we hung a left and started walking.

We walked about a mile through crowded streets filled with vendors and hagglers. After a few minutes we came across the church in which the body of St. Lucy is laid. The churches in Venice are relatively well kept, with only a few if any in serious disrepair, but what was most notable to me the tourist about the operation of Venice churches is the demand for respect.

The churches all seemed to have the same protocol for entry, shorts to the knee, no shoulders showing, obviously no hats for men, and some even had shawls for women to use and then return in order to cover their legs or shoulders. Additionally most of the churches did not permit any photographs, so while I saw many wonderful churches I came away with relatively few photos. To enforce reverence dress and behavior many of the churches had a custodian who kept watch in the church. It pains the tourist in me that I could not take pictures of the beauty that I saw, but the side of me that longs to see greater reverence in churches was happy to sacrifice pictures so that the sacredness of the place could be better appreciated.

Back to the Church of St. Lucy, in this church her body is kept and is still on display. It was a relatively modest church, but her sanctity drew adorned the church with a beauty equally and even more real than that which is perceivable to the eye. My brother as well as my family has always had a devotion to St. Lucy so I took some time to pray there. After prayer we returned to the business of finding our hostel, and after climbing bridges over canals, and walking down a few shoulder width narrow streets we made it to our hostel.  We checked in, dumped our stuff off and headed out into the city.

As our guide we only had a crumby map of the city provided by the hostel. Before the sun set we had wandered onto the Rialto Bridge, the main bridge over the Grande Canal. It was packed with tourists taking pictures so we took a few quick snaps then headed out again to find St. Marks Plaza.

We walked for probably an hour or more down tiny little streets flanked by five story apartments. In each small plaza we would find a well and a church. So we took many small detours into open churches, enjoying the sacred stillness not overtaken by the relentless motion of the city filled with tourists. Eventually, after many instances of total locational dissolution and a lot of backtracking we found our way into the plaza of St. Mark’s Basilica just as the sun was disappearing an the night was coming on. We sat down on the square steps to enjoy our bagged dinner we had brought with us from Riva.  Afterwards we walked along the canal front until our feet had had enough, we got some gelato and after even more wandering and losing our way we made it back to the hostel for the night.

The next morning we got up and ate a simple breakfast which we had bought at a grocery store the night prior. We had tickets to tour St. Marks Basilica early in the morning so we made our way over to the Plaza where we had been the night before.

We went to a local open air market, which was impressive due to the quantity of sea food for sale, all fresh from that mornings fishing. After a quick lunch and meeting a doctor from Kansas, we went to get a ticket for the Vaporetto, the public transportation system of Venice. The Vaporetto is essentially like a subway system but with boats. On our way we ran into some hokies who had graduated a few years ago, we chatted to them a for a few minutes and snapped a picture.

Once we had our ticket we were on our way to the island town of Murano. There are many islands just a few minutes boat ride from Venice, Murano is one of the largest, and it is famous for its glass making. Once there we saw the Church of Church of Santa Maria e San Donato and San Pietro Martire. We spent some time walking about the town and looking in a few glass shops. After an hour or two on the island we got back on the Vaporetto and sped off to Torcello.

Torcello is another, smaller island. It is mainly a wildlife preserve with only a few buildings on the whole island. There is really nothing spectacular of this island but there is a ancient once-cathedral  church of the 7th century, Santa Maria Dell'Assunta. In the church is a beautiful, recently restored mosaic of Christ in Glory. After the church we took a break and had a local beer at one of the few restaurants on the island.

From there we caught a ride to Burano, our final island for the day. Burano is famous for its lace making and it’s colorfully painted buildings. There we spent some time in some of the lace shops, saw the local church, San Martino Vescovo, and wondered about the town. About an hour there and we were on our way back to Venice.

That evening we went to a local restaurant for dinner, we did it up with  bruschetta,  seafood risotto, wine and a sample of the local fresh shrimp and calamari.

The next day was Sunday, Chris and I went to Mass at the Church, San Simeon Piccolo, a church run by the Fraternity of St. Peter. After Mass, for our last excursion we went one of the largest churches in Venice, the Basilica dei Frari. It is a glorious church unfortunately overshadowed by St. Mark’s but for that, much quieter peaceful and prayerful. We spent some time in admiration and prayer before heading to the train station and back to Riva.