Verona was quaint and cute, although rather expensive. We were told that the Veneto region was home to a more wealthy class of people, and that definitely showed. Verona did, however, offer very good fruit cups for only 2.50 euro. First we saw the Castelvecchio, a museum whose exhibit I could tell you nothing about. Our purpose for being there was to look at the modern installments by Carlo Scarpa, and architect who would dominate our trip. It was interesting, and some people were fascinated by the questionable architectural moments, but it didn't particularly peak my interest. We also went to a photography exhibit, and that I loved. It made me kind of sad that I don't have my SLR with me here, although since it's manual that would cost me so much money. One day I need to invest in a digital SLR so I can more easily experiment with photography.
On our way from Verona to Venice we made three stops. First was at Le Bolle (The Bubbles) by Fuksas. This project is a meeting and laboratory space for a grappa distillery. From the outside I found the building to be a bit ugly, but from the inside it was absolutely amazing. I particularly enjoyed the diagonal elevator. It felt like we were in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Our second stop was another Scarpa intervention, but this time at a cemetery. I do not like cemeteries, but this one wasn't so bad. I was still not overly impressed by Scarpa's work, for some reason it just wasn't my cup of tea. My favorite part of the day was our final pit stop at the Villa Emo by Andrea Palladio. Of all the classical architects Palladio is my favorite, and although I didn't get to see my favorite Palladian Villa, the Villa Barbaro, I still enjoyed seeing one of his works outside of my history books.
Venice was very relaxing. You are always by water and that was a nice feeling. It was amusing how dependent they are on their canals -- even garbage trucks and DHL trucks are boats there. They gave us more free time instead of walking, walking, walking all day, but I found out why. There's really not very much to see in Venice. It really only deserves two days out of your life, after that it's almost a waste. We arrived in Venice Wednesday night, and I decided to stay through the weekend. Kate flew into Venice on Friday and she's back in Rome with me now on her Spring break. I now realize that staying in Venice through the weekend was quite possibly not worth the extra money spent for it, but it was fun and it was good for Kate because it was finally a city that her dad had not been to before.
Yesterday it was back to classes and reality. We only have five weeks left in Italy. I'm not sad that I'm going "home" soon, I just don't understand how we're going to finish our design projects in such a short amount of time. Although after Spring break we have two weeks solely devoted to design, so I'm sure it will all come together. Now I need to get to some design work, however I am finding myself somewhat uninspired by this project. A lot of people really enjoyed all the Scarpa work we saw on our Veneto trip and are now decently enthusiastic about our design project. I was not so mesmerized, and am still not very motivated, but hopefully something will come to me.
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