First Day in Venice! ---January 8th

Tiffany Rose

January 8th, 2024

Day 1: Venice


We had an amazing start to our trip in Italy!

We were able to explore a good chuck of the surrounding city near the place we are staying, as well as a small island connected to Venice, called Giudecca. On the way we experienced many amazing views, as well as a wonderful tour by our guide, Alessio, and one of his local acquaintances. Below is some of the view of the canal along the way!

Our guides took us to many of the original factories of the more industrialized period in Italy. Below is an example of one of the repurposed factories that we were able to view. This is only one of the many factories that we were able to observe today, although there are many (not pictured) that have been abandoned or re-purposed into other types of spaces. The city of Venice seems to extremely value historical preservation, which is one of the reasons why these buildings were likely not torn down, when industrialized goods were less in demand by the end of the world wars. 

We were also able to walk through a very long and narrow brick walkway. This walkway was used for the creation of large ropes, which used to be in demand for larger ships. In our research, my group members, Lilly and Madelynne and I predicted that these ropes could have also had a high demand to be made when Italy's economy was not the strongest. Especially during the times of increased slavery, which Venice participated in through trading slaves from Rome to Muslims in Northern Africa, the immense number of chains and other industrial transporting materials, was simply too expensive for production. It is a prediction, but likely that this very walkway may have been used to create the influx of cheaper rope production for the purpose of slavery as well. 

By dinner time, we experienced the dining hall environment, but this time overseas! Our guide took us to a local college campus to eat in their dining hall, and it was so cool! Below is what I got for the meal. There were many options, much different from back home! (The small green container was a peach sauce, much like applesauce, but better. It was amazing!). 

Very thankful for this incredible start to our journey of Italy!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Digital Scrapbook of My Time in Italy

Image
It's astonishing to think that our incredible adventure through Italy is over! We started in Venice and worked our way south through Orvieto, Fontecchio, the Amalfi Coast, Rome, and many places in between. Here, I will share some of my favorite pictures and memories from each location. Venice We started out in Venice where we took tours of various sites such as the locations of historical factories and the Venice arsenal. While in Venice we had a free day, and I went to the islands called Murano and Burano. Murano is known for its beautiful glass and also has a really nice glass museum.  the island of Burano ~ known for its colorful buildings a canal in Venice a sunset we saw while on the taxi boat on the way back from Burano a cat crossing a bridge in Burano   a gondola! Venice is full of tiny walkways and beautiful bridges and canals the group I went with to Burano Orvieto After Venice, we continued on to Orvieto. Orvieto is a small town perched high on a hill. This location...
Read more

Environmental Hazards in Italy

Image
      While in Italy, we discussed and visited a few locations that have had notable environmental hazards. The most prominent one, and one which most people who haven't ever even been to Italy, is the eruption at Pompeii. We took a trip to Pompeii and got a tour of the site and it was shocking to me how huge the site was. It seemed like it stretched on and on and would take hours and hours to explore the whole thing. It was so interesting seeing everything that was preserved at this site. So many things were excavated and are still being excavated to this day. It was very interesting in the article about the Pompeiian vineyards reading how they were able to make casts in the holes left by decayed organic material in order to learn about not just the people, but also the plants and animals in this area. For instance, they were able to make casts of the roots of trees to identify them and could even see the mathematical precision the romans used, planting vines exactly fou...
Read more

Looking Back on Italy- Emma Penick

Image
      After spending three weeks in Italy, I learned so much about the History and Present day culture. In terms of what I was expecting, there were some things that certainly were how I thought they'd be. For instance, the views. The beauty of Italy was just as incredible if not even more so than I was expecting, which given that that's what I was most excited for, was definitely a wonderful thing to experience! In my first post I also talked about the food, and while there were many tomato centric dishes, as expected, there were also a plethora of dishes I had never heard of that were absolutely amazing! My favorites of these were the pistachio pasta and the truffle pasta.      One thing that I was not expecting how BIG the portion sizes would be!  Though, by the end I did get used to having bread, then pasta, then a main course, then a dessert, somehow! Also the fact that there would be bread available at basically every meal, I never thought ...
Read more