Feast of St. Lucia, the MOSE, the Port, and Paolo

Pictures: Christmas trees for sale on the side of the canal; the outdoor sale; inside the Miracoli; the cruise ship in progress; one of the massive cranes at the port; the MOSE-not much to see, that's a boat with a crane in the middle there, but under the water is a row of twenty gates that stretch from the bit of land you can see at the left side of the picture to the bit of land you can see at the right side of the picture; us with Paolo, from the left that's Natalie, Stephanie, Lizzie, Paolo, Audrey, Shannon, me, Dane, and Elyse.

Hi guys,

Sunday was the Feast of St. Lucia, or St. Lucy, who is the patron saint of eye problems. A feast day is just simply a day specially dedicated to a certain saint. In this case, the feast day of St. Lucia was important because her tomb is in Venice, in the church of San Geremia, which means St. Jeremiah. So for Mass on Sunday, Lizzie, Shannon, Audrey, and I went to San Geremia. The church was much more crowded than San Marco normally is for Mass, I’m not sure whether it was just because of the feast day or because more normal parishioners attend this church. Either way, it was packed and we ended up having to sit in the very front row. It was a little weird at communion, because the pews were set up so that there was a group in front of the altar, one off to the left side of the altar, and one off to the right side of the altar (we were in the front row of the left side) and at first there was only one priest handing out communion. And instead of lining up neatly as people do in American churches, everyone just stood up in no particular order and started forming a crowd around the priest handing out communion. It was a little crazy and we weren’t quite sure what to do, but luckily a second priest came up fairly quickly and started handing out communion, too, which made things a little less hectic. It was like at the McDonalds in Florence, and so many other places, though, because for whatever reason, Italians just don’t know how to form lines. The music for the Mass was awesome, they had two people playing guitars and singing and all the songs were really pretty. After Mass, we joined the line of people in the church and got to go around and touch St. Lucy’s tomb, which was pretty awesome.

After leaving the church, we wandered down Strada Nuova, which is one of the main shopping streets in Venice. We eventually came to this great outdoor sale, almost like a rummage sale or a really, really nice garage sale, going on and we did some looking around and shopping there. There were some cool things, including a lot of antiques, such as these neat opera glasses that Audrey was interested in until she asked the guy what the price was and he told her they were 100 euros, which is about $150 (quite a bit more than she was looking to spend on them) and then some more modern stuff too; for example, I saw DVDs of the original Star Wars trilogy in Italian.

On our way back to the boat stop from this sale, Shannon and I stopped and went into the church of Santa Maria dei Miracoli (which means St. Mary of Miracles), which is a very pretty, quite small church that is almost hidden down a street. The inside was beautiful, though, my second favorite after Saint Anastasia’s church in Verona. The marble on the outside is continued on the inside and so instead of the frescoes or mosaics in many other churches, you can just see the beautiful marble, it’s not even covered up by paintings. The ceiling was also neat because it looked like big, carved wooden blocks with gold around them. I liked the Miracoli because the church was simple but elegant, a rarity in Venice, and in Italy in general.

Monday was really enjoyable. We took a boat tour of the port of Venice and then went out to where the MOSE project is being built. The MOSE project is supposed to keep the acqua altas, the high waters that flood Venice, from happening. It’s really cool how it’s designed: basically, there are these massive metal doors under the water and when the water level is dangerously high, the doors are inflated with air and they rise up to the surface, holding the water back. Then, when the water level drops, the doors are filled up with water and they sink back down again. Unfortunately, because all the good stuff is underwater, there wasn’t much to see when we went out to where they’re building the MOSE, but there were still cranes and things and it was still great to learn about the project. Plus, the water was much choppier out there and since our boat had picked up some speed because we were outside of the city, we were actually airborne over the waves a couple of times, which was awesome.

The port was much more interesting than I’d expected it to be. We got to see where all of the goods get unloaded from the ships that bring them in and saw coal being unloaded from a ship, plus we saw the massive cranes that are used to unload the ships. The port also has the largest silos in Europe, which are used for storing various goods. The best bit, though, was getting to see where they actually build cruise ships, two are being built there right now, our boat went right around them so we could see. One looked pretty much finished, but the other was clearly still in the process of being constructed, there were workers on it who looked like they were welding and doing other jobs. That was exciting to see, especially because apparently the port of Venice is one of the very few places in Europe where cruise ships are constructed. So the boat tour was definitely a good time.

Then, Monday night, we met Paolo, our Italian professor, for drinks and to get our certificates saying that we successfully completed our Italian course. It was very nice to get to chat with Paolo again; we haven’t seen him in a few weeks since we finished Italian class. He told us that he had really enjoyed our class, and that he didn’t tell everyone that, and then, as surprises for us, he gave each of us a special coin that the Dante Alighieri Institute made. The coin is actually based on one that the doge used to have minted and apparently the Dante Alighieri Institute “borrowed” a replica stamp which made doge coins from the Venetian library and, without anyone knowing, made a bunch of these coins and then returned the stamp to the library. So our coins are actually pretty rare, because the Dante Alighieri Institute only made so many of them; it’s a really awesome gift. Drinks with Paolo was a nice way to finish the day.

Oh, I almost forgot to add that there was actually snow in the air yesterday! Yesterday morning, as we were waiting for our boat for the tour to pick us up, it was flurrying just a little bit. Apparently snow in Venice is a really rare thing, so I was excited that we got to see it.

Sunday and Monday were a good way to start off my last week in Venice...just three more days left in Venice, I can’t even believe it, and then early Saturday morning I’ll be leaving to fly home!

Ciao,
Maria