Venice Day 2

So Saturday I woke up at 6 am and headed for Burano, an island off the coast of Venice that's quite small, but very scenic. Here's why:

Really neat, and fun to walk around in. The boats start running at 5, so I got there early enough that I beat the locals up and had the place to myself other than cats. I left there, and took the boat around the lagoon to reach the other side of Venice and went to St. George Major:

It's a church across the bay with a clock tower (and an elevator to the top instead of stairs!) that gives you some pretty good views of Venice. From there, I took the boat back across the bay, and started my real run around Venice.

Jesus: Surprise, I'm going to build my church on this guy! Peter: Really Jesus? All I want to do is catch fish. Come on man

Aeneas following the Cumean sibyl out of the underworld, as described (or as described if you were high) in the Aeneid

Now I did several museums in Venice. Some were good, some were not, I went with those that were recommended on several different websites. I'm about to rage against modern art. If you're a proponent of modern art, leave now. Seriously. You've been warned. Cause modern art sucks. I saw a lot of crap that the modern museums panned off as art. It's not. Like I've said before, if it can be done in less than half an hour, if it can be produced via the paint program on Dells from the 1990s, if you can't think of a title because you literally covered your cat in paint and threw it at the canvas and are now trying to call it art, it's not art. The stuff is crap and should be burned. All of it. I went to one museum, that had a chair on a table, and it was art. There was a giant rock on a smashed pane of glass, and it was art. There was a speaker playing random sounds, and it was art. No no no no no. Honestly. I went to the museum that is on the edge of the peninsula of Venice, a modern art gallery full of terrible trash, and I figured out that it would have an upper level facing outward into the bay, with a great view. I climbed four flights of stairs and was greeted with this:

They blocked a great view with blue lighting and grills over the windows. If I come to power, there's going to be a lot of "artists" who's work will be destroyed, their tools sold and their livelihoods removed as far away as possible from any artistic venues. In modern museums, you can't take photographs, whereas in the Vatican museums you can. Ever thought about why that is? The modern museums people are worried the works can be duplicated, that's how simplistic the art is. We at the Vatican museums aren't worried about the Sistine chapel being duplicated. Rant over...for now. I left the museums seen and went exploring around the city, before going to mass at 6:45 at St. Marks. Here's some of the random things I saw:

Yes those are VHS tapes and yes that's Pokemon in the top left corner

Hey I know him!

There were just random shrines that would pop up in alley ways. This one is dedicated to Mary

I'm guessing an American works here. Wendy's hasn't come to Europe yet

Bridge of Sighs, more on this tomorrow

Another familiar logo

This weekend was the celebration of the Redentore, or Redemier a celebration to commemorate survival of a plague in the 1500s. The church of the Redentore is across the bay, so the locals build a pontoon bridge to span the bay and lead to the Redentore. They then celebrate, fill the water with even more boats, and set off fireworks. Take a look:

Blue and Gold forever

After the fireworks was when things start to get scary. The alleyways through Venice are tiny, with some I had to scrunch to fit in, and most not big enough that two people could walk shoulder to shoulder. They twist and turn in all shorts of directions, creating a maze. Now add a thousand people to the maze. Now make sure those 1000 are either high, drunk or a combination of the two, and jack up their adrenaline from the thrill of fireworks. Now turn off the lights, add uneven footing, throw in some bridges and water to fall into, shake twice to get the snow globe effect, and then watch them go. Welcome to Venice at midnight on a Saturday. I was a little nervous about getting back to the room, but I lived to tell the tale. Fortunately everyone seemed to be relatively joyful in spirit, leading to fewer fights breaking out, but if it had come to that, I didn't know my way out, so I was a little anxious.

In other relevant news, I crossed another thing off that random list of random 10 things to do in Rome. It's called Via Margutta, and is just a street to find and walk down, where nature is more visibly present:

This fellow came walking down the street, so it can't be that bad of a place.

If this post hasn't put you off, nothing will. See you all tomorrow for the conclusion of Venice.