Day 1

Saturday, March 10, 2018

Today I arrived in Italy. Despite being completely exhausted, I’m so excited to be here. The class arrived this morning and spent the afternoon and evening exploring the city. I took pictures, tried gelato for the first time, and got my first impression of the city and its culture.

Venice was built so long ago that the streets are too narrow for cars, so travel in Venice is done on foot or by boat through the canals. It’s strange to rely on a boat as a mode of transportation. Most cities rely on trains, subways, or cars, so it is interesting to see a city that functions so well without these forms of transportation. The only way to reach Venice from the airport is by boat, and the only way for the class to access the main part of Venice is to take a boat from San Servolo, where we are staying, to San Marco.

Ponte di Rialto

After taking the vaporetto to San Marco, the class went on a walking tour of Venice. We walked past the Doge’s Palace and the Bridge of Sighs. Then the class visited Piazza San Marco, which is the most famous square in Venice, and we saw the Clock Tower and the Basilica. The class also visited Ponte di Rialto, which is a bridge with shops located on it that crosses the Grand Canal. While we were at the Rialto, I realized it was actually the background of my blog. I’ve seen the places we’ve visited in pictures before, so it was a little surreal to see them in person.

Clock Tower

The layout of Venice is really interesting. It was built before city planning existed, so many of the streets are crooked, narrow, and intersect at odd angles. The city is dotted with campi, open paved spaces that have wells in the middle. The campi are all concrete; the city was built before greenspace was considered important. Because I grew up in rural Indiana, seeing so much pavement uninterrupted by greenery is strange.

Gelato with Laura

Although it was more familiar than the layout of the city, the Italian food I had today was different than stereotypical Italian food in America. During the walking tour, I had gelato for the first time. It was better an ice cream, and it definitely lived up to my expectations. After the walking tour was finished, we split up to get dinner. I ate at a restaurant that serves cicchetti, small portions of food, so my dinner consisted of several small snacks instead of a large meal. It wasn’t a sit-down restaurant, so we ate outside off of glass plates around one of the wells in a campo. It was a strange way to eat dinner, but I really enjoyed it.

Based on what I’ve seen my first day, Venice is a city of contradictions. It is an example of a heterotopia, which Foucault writes about in Of Other Spaces. “Places of this kind are outside of all places, even though it may be possible to indicate their location in reality. Because these places are absolutely different from all the sites that they reflect and speak about, I shall call them, by way of contrast to utopias, heterotopias” (Foucault, 24). Venice seems permanent because of its history, but impermanent due to the number of tourists. There are are buildings with grand architecture, but right outside there are vendors selling cheap trinkets. It seems like it is outside of time because of its unconventional transportation and architecture, but most of the boats are powered by motors and the city has modern technology. Anyone with the means to travel can enter Venice, but everyone coming from the airport must enter and leave the city by boat. These contradictions correspond to Foucault’s third, fourth, and fifth principles (Foucault, 25-26).

Campanile di San Marco

Venice is very different than any city I’ve ever visited. Using boats instead of cars is a little strange, but it’s interesting. I love the layout and the architecture of the city, and I really liked the food I had today. I’ve had an amazing first day, and I can’t wait to explore more of this heterotopia.

Sources

Foucault, Michel, and Jay Miskowiec. "Of Other Spaces." Diacritics, vol. 16, no. 1, 1986, pp. 22-27. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/464648.