Our last day in Venice was, in my opinion, the best one. Why is it always the last day that seems to be the best? Regardless, it was a great day, which started off with us going to the Punta della Dogana.
Punta Della Dogana is a building on one of the points of the island that has been around for centuries. I was occupied and not occupied for years, until the Francois Pinault Foundation acquired it had Tadao Ando renovate the space to house contemporary art. Only the inside was really changed, with the exterior being kept more original than the contemporary style the interior was transformed into.
Before we went in I got to snap a few picture of the awesome view this building has. The point may have given it an irregular shape, but I think the scenery makes up for it.
And I took some shots from the interior as well.
Being the typical architect, I asked Rachel to stand next to the "hidden" door for scale. Typical Italian hobbit door.
I call this room the "Indiana Jones Room" because of all of the crystal skulls...get it?
Fine, I'm not funny. But I'm keeping the name!
So the conclusion of the visit to Punta della Dogana is that the weird contemporary art work distracted me a lot from seeing Tadao Ando's design, but from what I remember it was pretty decent. But really, some of the art in there was just too weird.
So after we were done in there it was free time until we had to catch a train back to Florence. Rachel and I took this time to "lost" in the city (that's how the tour guide from the first day put it.)
Right when we started to "lost" we saw these guys pulling a Miss Congeniality and playing songs on water cups.
We honestly walked around an entire half of the map of Venice. It was exhausting but also wonderful.
One of the places we found was this "ghetto". Barbed wire and all it seemed a little sketchy, but most of this city can since it's entirely pedestrian and there are a lot of tiny alleyways. So I don't know the story of this place, but this is a good example of how much we "lost".
We even found a really empty church, entered on a whim, and found this beautiful little cloister.
We had basically walked from one side of the city to the other, and we could see the ocean! Well, it leads out to the open ocean.
From there it was basically the end of our trip, and thus the end of our reading cities trips. They were amazing in both a learning and tourist setting. Our teacher and chaperone we the greatest people ever to have on these trips, and I'm going to miss them so much (and seeing as I'm writing this post weeks late I can say that I already miss them). So a few of us got to take pictures with them.
It was great, they were great, these pictures are equally great.
Ciao to Reading Cities!
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