I may be slow, but I climb high,
Out of my shell, into the sky.
Take a picture with the tower
That symbolized a family’s power.
At first we thought the riddle was referring to a turtle, but Professor Felluga told us that was wrong on the train. The only other slow animal with a shell that we could think of was a snail. Once we all had reliable internet connection on San Servolo, we met to try to solve the riddle. I started by looking up famous families and towers in Venice, which got me nowhere. There are too many famous families with towers in the city to narrow it down. Sam googled “snails in Venice” and immediately found Scala Contarini del Bovolo, a tower with a spiral staircase named after a snail belonging to the Contarini family.
The next day we met up to go find the tower. The tower is located on San Marco, where we had already spent a lot of time, so we were pretty familiar with the area at first. As we got closer to the tower, things started to get more unfamiliar and we started to encounter standing water. We didn’t really plan for the Acqua Alta when we set out, so we didn’t have waterproof shoes or plastic shoe covers. We tried taking close to ten different routes to get to the tower, but none of them were elevated enough to be dry once we got close to the canal.
Locals kept trying to sell us plastic shoe covers. It was obvious that we were tourists trying to get through the Acqua Alta, but we didn’t want to spend the money on shoe covers if we could wait until the tide went down and then visit the tower. We decided to wander around for a few hours, get lunch, and then come back when the tide was lower.
We wandered around San Marco for a while, and we found a really neat church, a theater, and what I think was a courthouse. Then we moved on to Academia. From Academia, we took a vaporetto east of San Marco to the part of Venice that Napoleon changed to make it more French. We ate lunch there and explored the parks. It was nice to see some trees and wander around. We found a statue with a moat around it and turtles living in the moat. Then we found a playground, so we stopped and played there for a while.
Eventually we started to wind our way back toward the tower. When we finally got there, the tower was closed because it was reserved for an event. We didn’t get a chance to ask the locals setting up for the event about the tower because as soon as we got there, another tour group followed in behind us. The three of us weren’t enough to disrupt the workers, but a large group of elderly tourists was. Once the other group of tourists came in, the courtyard was suddenly very crowded and very loud. They had a tour guide who was trying to tell them the history of the tower, and while the crew was trying to set up something around the fence, the tour group was constantly in the way. The people setting up seemed a little irritated by the number of tourists, so we didn’t feel very comfortable asking them questions about the event that was happening or about the tower. We took a quick selfie and left as soon as we realized we wouldn’t be able to get in to see the tower.
I didn’t realize it, but our group was probably exactly like that other tour group the whole week. We were probably always in someone’s way whenever we were all together, even when we were trying our best to stay out of the way. And we were definitely loud. A group of thirty is too large to blend in and not disrupt other people. Although locals are used to tourists, a large group is probably still pretty overwhelming. When large tour groups come through Purdue and take up the entire sidewalk, I get kind of irritated even though I know that the students touring are potential Boilermakers. I understand why the locals setting up the event were frustrated with the tourists.
The tower itself was really pretty. It’s made out of light pink stone with white columns and arches running all the way up the staircase. The tower is compared to a snail because the arches that go all the way up the staircase look like a snail’s shell. One perk of seeing it when we did is that there were flowers winding up the tower for the event that was happening later that night, so the tower looked really nice from a distance. I wish we could have gone in and seen the view from the top, but we weren’t prepared for the Acqua Alta and we didn’t know it would close early that day. It was still really cool to see the Scala Contarini del Bovolo, and I’m really glad this was our scavenger hunt assignment.
No comments:
Post a Comment