I’ve updated the syllabus, assignments, and itinerary pages on the site, so if you’re contemplating joining us in Spring 2013, please take a look!
Yesterday we took a very long day trip to the islands, starting at Murano and then going to Burano and Torcello. Many of the students chose to pay the 5 euro to see a glassblowing demonstration on Murano, as well as do the usual shopping and the not-so-usual, but expected, “making of art.”
We ate lunch at beautiful Burano and then broke apart to pursue individual artistic pursuits. A number of the students gravitated to a park to enjoy the greenery — a rare site in Venice — and some shady respite from the 80-degree weather.
Then we were off to the final stop, Torcello, which we talked about in class as the first Venetian settlement and oldest Venetian church. Several students sketched the church before heading out to look around this green, rural island. The photo here shows some of them sitting on Ponte di Diavolo, or the bridge of the devil, which can be found on the walkway between the vaporetto stop and the church.
This morning we all got up early to paint San Giorgio Maggiore from the Molo (next to Piazza San Marco) in the gorgeously clear dawn sunlight. After that, everyone was free until 11, when we agreed to meet up at the Frari Church. Several of our students raced in to attend Mass at the Frari, while the others split up to hunt down groceries for tonight’s home-cooked Sunday dinner or to do a little more painting. Here are our painters, sitting by the edge of the canal gazing at the Frari as they work.
All of the painting has attracted a lot of tourist attention! It’s surprising how fascinated people are by the sight of somebody painting and sketching. I imagine some of this class are going to find photos of themselves online someday, in a complete stranger’s Venice photo-blog….
Unfortunately, masses at the Frari didn’t get out until 1, instead of 11, as we’d thought, so we weren’t able to go in (except those who’d attended Mass). We’ll get there later, though.
We arrived in Venice and have settled down in our fabulous palazzo; it’s about 11:30 p.m. and all the students are settling in, taking showers, and getting ready to get up bright and early to visit Saint Mark’s square tomorrow morning.
In this first photo, all the students (except MaryBeth, who left with Prof. Spehar-Fahey on an earlier flight) are at LAX, waiting around for our flight. The SwissAir flight went very well, and we arrived in Zurich a bit early.
Switzerland seems like a lovely country! We all wished we could stay a day and tour, but unfortunately we were out of there two hours later for a quick hop over the Alps — what a stunning view from the airplane window! — and our arrival in Venice’s airport.
In the second photo, the students are waiting outside the Alilaguna water-bus stop; it was a long wait through sunset for the next bus, and we ended up getting into Venice after dark. Terry and MaryBeth met us at the Sant Angelo stop and guided us to our palazzo, where we ate the apples, cheese, and meats they’d bought that day as our late dinner.
It’s beautiful here, and I can’t wait to show the students the city in daylight tomorrow!
Ciao, tutti! Study Abroad has made reservations for us in Florence — we’ll be staying at the Hotel Lombardi, about 15 minutes from the Uffizi and the cathedral, according to its website.
Barring last-minute changes, the room division will be 5 twins, 1 triple (gentlemen, that’s probably yours….) and two singles (professorial dibs!). And best of all, it says it has wi-fi…!
And in case you’ve forgotten, we’ve rented the three floors of the gorgeous-looking Palazzo degli Angeli for the duration of our stay in Venice. Remember that it’s not a hotel but a bunch of apartments, so you won’t get maid and restaurant service while were in Venice.
Our next step will be to reserve the plane tickets and start buying museum and train tickets….
On Campus Poster
You may not register for ART/COMM 285: Imagining Venice without an instructor’s approval. If you haven’t picked up an application form from Study Abroad already, be certain to do it now: fill it in and get a faculty member’s recommendation sent back to the office by Nov. 29.
Terry and I will be choosing about 14 to 16 students from the applicant pool.
If you’d like more information about the trip before you make a decision, please come see us at the Imagining Venice information session in the Nelson Room (behind the Study Abroad office, on the parking-lot side of the building). We’ll be there tomorrow — Tuesday — 11/9 at 4:30 p.m. to answer questions. Much of the information we expect to go over is already here on the website, but this will be a chance to ask anything we haven’t covered already. 
If your parents are local and want to drop by to ask questions, that’s fine with us, as well!
Terry scouted out backpacks for us and recommended I buy the same one she did, this Eagle Creek Voyage Travel Pack 65L, which has a detachable daypack. So here’s my new backpack, with my laptop and iPad next to it for size comparison. Students — can you get yourself down to something about this size when you go to Venice with us? If this seems too small, you might try an 80L pack. It won’t be carry-on sized, but I’m not sure this one will count for international flights, anyway. Put a backpack on your Christmas wish list or email this blog post to your parents….!
What about a duffel bag? When I went to India and Japan with students, I packed everything into a duffel. However, I’m not getting any younger, and carrying all that weight on one shoulder, or even on my back with the strap across my chest, is too much. Time to get that weight settled comfortably around my hips, instead, like a proper hiker. If you can handle a duffel, go for it, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.
What about a suitcase? We’re recommending backpacks because of the unique nature of Venice — it’s a city paved in cobblestone with lots of stair-step bridges over the canals. If you try to roll a suitcase, you’ll just break its wheels, and you’ll have to lift it over the bridges and into the train to Florence, anyway. Trust us; a backpack will be far more convenient, and if some of you decide to keep traveling through Italy or Europe after Florence, you’ll definitely want a pack you can run in as you catch trains and buses.
65L, though? Yeah, pack light and layered; buy travel clothing that remains relatively wrinkle-free and dries overnight. (I gave my Tilley‘s wish list to my family for Christmas! Who thought I’d ever ask for underwear?) Remember, (a) you can buy shampoo and toothpaste and so forth in Italy, so you don’t need to carry big tubes with you; (b) you’ll probably want to buy clothes and shoes in Italy, if fashion’s your thing; and (c) you can either mail home souvenirs or buy another duffel there if you decide you need one.
That said, I’m going to do a practice pack or two before my 30-day return warranty wears out. I was hoping to bring my MacBook Pro as well as my iPad, but I’m not sure this pack leaves me enough room for all the computers and wires I’d be packing along with clothes and art supplies. If I left the laptop behind, though, I’d need a plug-in keyboard for the iPad, because I’m a writer and detest its little touch-pad… Hmm. Yes, definitely a practice pack or two to see how well this works!
I walked into our brand-new Swenson Center for the Social & Behavioral Sciences here at California Lutheran and saw our travel seminar poster standing in the lobby! Yay! It feels great to see this trip slowly coming to life.
This fall we’ll be recruiting students for the course, and in spring we start the actual coursework. If you are thinking about going on the seminar, keep in mind that we’re looking for very responsible, mature students. We want students who will get up and out of the palazzo on time for early-morning painting sessions, who can be trusted to do their “homework” (journaling, art, museum hunts) during the day when they’re left on their own, and who will show up sober and ready to participate in our evening discussions and/or excursions. So come introduce yourself to us sometime this semester, and think about which professors or university staff members will vouch for your reliability when you apply for the class!
Terry and I met for several hours yesterday to go over the Venice itinerary day by day, checking museum and church hours; going over plane, train and vaporetto schedules; and trying to reach a happy balance between requiring students to complete their assignments each day and permitting them sufficient free time to do whatever shopping or exploring they’d like to do on their own. I think it’ll work out pretty well, although getting everyone up for a dawn painting session at Saint Mark’s square may be a challenge!
One of biggest changes we’ll be making at this point is turning the trip to Vicenza into a day trip instead of an overnight trip. We want to visit Palladio’s buildings there, including his famous Villa Almerico-Capra, “La Rotunda.” However, La Rotunda is only open on Wednesdays, and the day our visit had fallen on under the old schedule would have been a Thursday. Moreover, Terry discovered that getting from Vicenza to Florence is something of a public transportation pain in the neck, compared to getting from Venice to Florence.
So, we’ve shifted the Vicenza trip back a day and we’ll plan to return to Venice that night. I think that’ll work out much better for us in the long run. We’ve also made a number of other changes, including plugging in real dates. We’ll post a revised-but-still-tentative itinerary later this month, after we’ve given it another look-through.
Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons.
The Room with a View
I have already walked from the backdoor of “Angeli” to the Accademia bridge and then to the Rialto bridge and then on to La Fenice theater and home again on the City of Venice virtual tour on the Resources page. I was procrastinating when I should have been grading. My apologies to all my students waiting for their grades! I have until Friday at 2:00 pm to complete that task! The virtual tour is pretty cool but I think something is missing. Maybe we need “smello-vision.” No, I think there will be a tremendous amount of learning and just plain adrenalin rush that comes with the shared experience of traveling and looking for images either to paint or photograph or to incorporate into writing. The “Angeli” is located just off Campo Sant’ Angelo, which believe it or not, is the scene of one of the paintings in the Ken Howard video that has been recently added to the CLU library collection. It is called “Visions of Venice in Watercolor.” So when you have a moment and want to see where we are going to stay for ten days, check out the place.
Here is the abstract for “The Renaissance of the Pilgrimage”
Imagining Venice
A pilgrimage to Venice, “La Serenissima,” was obligatory for those making the Grand Tour since the seventeenth century, especially for artists. From Turner to Stieglitz, artists set up their easels or cameras at specific sites in the city to transform these views into resplendent visions. My dream to recreate such a visit took flight with a chance encounter with a professor of Communication, and the collaboration has resulted in a course for students at the university to learn about and reflect on the history, art, architecture and performing arts of the city, the techniques of watercolor, and on Venice as a symbol that permeates Western culture (even Venice, California, and Las Vegas!). A post-semester trip in May, 2011 will include a stay in a palazzo to allow students to walk in the footsteps of the masters to create a personal record of their pilgrimage. This presentation will review the process by which this course has evolved and the outcomes expected when students encounter the masterpieces of some of the artists of the past who were influenced by Venice, and when they endeavor to put their own experience with the city to paper and to contemporary visual media.
Terry Spehar-Fahey, San Giorgio Maggiore, WC, 2010
