Berlin, Germany

I apologize for not writing yesterday as I promised. But as typical of my school (school of technology mind you) the internet was not working. Probably nothing I should be that worried about as it happens quite often. Just only causes mild inconveniences.

Some, if not all, of my pictures from Italy are posted on my Picasa page, so please do take a look.

By the way, sun feels amazing after so long without it.

Italy started with a side trip to San Vito. It was a little less than an hour from the Marco Polo Airport. The drive was nice. It was really beautiful to see the small countryside. And there were vineyards everywhere! It seems as if you own a house there you have to have at least a small vineyard. I’m thinking that’s a fantastic idea.

We saw Villa Barbaro and Tomba Brion. I would say that Tomba Brion was my favorite part, mainly because we got to experience it. Villa Barbaro they only let us see from across the street. I would have loved to gone inside. Tomba Brion was really unique in that it is a cemetery with a park like atmosphere annexed on. It’s a really neat space and you can tell every little detail was thought of.

After that it consisted of a long bus ride into Venice, which I think I can say 85% of us napped on. When we finally did get to Venice it was dark out, but it was still really cool. We took a boat, because that is their public transportation system.. like there are actually dock stops along the way, to the hotel area. Now one thing I never knew about Venice, and I’m not sure why I guess I just never thought about it, but there are pretty much no roads. Obviously you can’t drive there, but their idea of streets is basically all alleyways. It seems as if everything they told us about not going into dark alleyways back home, just goes straight out the window in Europe. Even in Prague, the best restaurants were usually in alleyways.

Anyways, we had dinner near our hotel because it would have been extremely easy to get lost, especially on the first night. Had some pretty good food and even better wine. Also, note to wine lovers: hot sangria = amazing. Someday I will figure out how to make some. We just kind of explored the city for a little while.

Friday we went to the Arsenal area. It used to be where they made large ships, but today it really isn’t used for that, although, there are a lot of boats in the area. The area still has a more industrial vibe. Today a company called Thetis owns the buildings. They’re an engineering type company and they uniquely placed their lab buildings inside of the existing buildings without touching the existing walls. It was definitely unique.

Following that, was a look at San Giorgio Maggiore Church. We got to go up in the bell tower for probably one of the best views of the city from above. Not to mention the church was beautiful.

Excited by the nice weather, we ate outside.. even though it probably wasn’t even 50 degrees F. Delicious pizza. I know pizza is stereotypical, but it really was the cheapest thing to eat there. Plus it was Friday, so no meat!

Later in the afternoon we did class work and studied two squares for my urban design class. San Stephano’s square and San Marco’s square. So there are plenty of pictures from there. (I love school…)

Friday night, as well as most nights in Venice involved food, wine, and wandering through alleyways. No more explanation really needed. It’s not a very late city, which worked to my benefit I think. This night also involved a lot of shopping on Rialto, which is one of the 4 bridges that cross the Canal Grande. This bridge fortunately enough is lined with shops on both sides.

Saturday we went to San Paolo. The church there is also another beauty. There was also some more analyzing done in this square so again, lots of pictures. We also visited the opera house as well as a garden designed by Carlo Scarpa. Neither of these could we take pictures in unfortunately. The opera house was awesome, I wish we had time to see something there it would have been so great to see that.

Saturday night, unfortunately involved my possible case of food poisoning. Needless to say, the night ended very early for me. And Sunday was rough. Sunday we headed to Vicenza to see more Palladio works. As you can probably tell by my photos, I wasn’t really feeling up to it that day.

But all in all, I got back to Berlin, my stomach got back to normal and I think my family stopped worrying some point soon after that. And now unfortunately I am back to the reality of school.

Next weekend will be spent in Berlin, as Michael will be arriving :)