BolognaVenicePadua

This weekend was my last week of traveling before the study abroad program ends in two weeks! I managed to see three different cities though, albeit two of them I saw only briefly. We set off on Thursday afternoon to Bologna, where we had tickets to see the concert of an American band called Deer Hunter. We got to Bologna fine, and headed to our hotel, which had been booked online a few days prior. Unfortunately, when we got there the hotel had no record of our reservation, even though we had a confirmation email pulled up on an iphone and everything. It was frustrating but eventually we figured it out, and we all had to pay a bit more than we'd planned, but it worked out okay. By the time we got settled in it was late and we were hungry, and it was getting close to concert time. We hopped in a taxi and went to pizza place that had been recommened to us by the hotel. We got there and sat down, and who was sitting at the table behind us but the very band we were going to see that night! Our friend Julian, who's a really big fan, went to say hi and embarassed himself but they were pretty nice. If anyone asks, we had dinner with Deer Hunter. We had our pizza, which was very good, and then headed to the show which was a lot of fun. It had been a long time since any of us had been to a concert and we were all excited.

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The next day we got  up and headed to Venice! Walking out of the train station was an experience in itself, because no city will ever be quite like it. There's that whole no streets, only canals and boats thing for one. It's a lot of fun just to wander around, crossing bridges and enjoying the tall buildings everywhere. And the tiniest little alleyways are actually the streets you need to get anywhere. It's an adventure. Our hotel in Venice was great, pretty close to the train station and close enough to everything else. It was actually more of a bed and breakfast, a little apartment which the lady rented out rooms, and made us breakfast and just generally took very good care of us. I think my favorite thing that we did in Venice was see the Peggy Guggenheim collection the next day. For one, it was refreshing to see modern art, aka no Jesus or Mary's anywhere. It was great though, I was really excited to see Picasso, Calder, Severini, and Pollack paintings. I think my favorites were the Severini's, and if it would be easier to travel with I would have been tempted to bring home a poster of his Sea=Dancer.

We spent a lot of time in Venice just wandering around and taking things in. We also tried to go to Harry's bar one night, but it seemed to be closing right when we got there, which was took bad. Then today after checking out of the hotel we took a train to Padua to see the Scrovegni. We ended up having just enough time in Padua to see the chapel and hop right back on the train, but that was all we wanted to do anyways. And of course, it was beautiful. It's amazing that Giotto frescoed that entire space. And it was fun finding the panel that I had written a short paper on, The Last Kiss of Judas.
I'm sad to be leaving Italy in two weeks, but I'm really excited to travel, I think the time will go really fast once I'm changing cities every few days. Krissy and I got our tickets to go to Vienna as soon as the program ends, so that will be exciting!