Venice! Where everything is pretty...even the things that aren't.

Well, I'm back. From Venice. One of the most glorious cities in the world. This is why I adore Venice: I pretty much love everything having to do with boats, old cities, things made of stone that are over five hundred years old, masks, hand-made artisan crafts, and fresh Italian food. Fortunately for me, Venice is built on islands and public transportation is by boat, it is extremely old and gorgeous in every way, and masks and pretty things are in grand abundance. I will attempt to do justice to the whirlwind three days that Lee & I spent there. I will fail, but I will attempt...and at least there will be pictures!

Saturday

We left on Saturday afternoon, planning to catch the Aircoach & instead being taken by cab, after a cabbie pulled up to the stop & said, "You want to go to the airport for the same price as the coach? Hop in." Turns out he was going to the airport anyway, so he drives along the aircoach route & steals passengers, which I think is hilarious. Also, he reminded me very strongly of Sanjay from Slings and Arrows, which was even funnier. We did the whole airport rigamarole, but we got to board our aircraft by walking across & climbing stairs!



I know, it's silly for me to get excited about that but it feels so fabulously old-fashioned, like I ought to be wearing a hat and gloves to get on board the aircraft. There were some beautiful views out the airplane window as well:






We landed in Venice, and took bus to Piazzale Roma (a transportation depot, the last place cars can go in Venice) & then a vaporetto (water taxi) to our hostel. The vaporettos are wonderful, old clunky flat boats with a covered seating area. They stutter along the canals making noises that sound like they will just give up at any moment, and they pull up to the docks with a huge listing clunk. I love them.

Sunday

We woke up early on Sunday to avoid the tourist rush across to the main islands. I stumbled blearily out of bed, spent a long time in the bathroom arranging my towel so I could reach it but it wouldn't get showered on, and then spotted a window in the corner. I stumbled over to it, looked outside, and woke up instantly:



Yeah, so, we're in Venice. No doubts! We got breakfast at the hostel, and took the boat across to Piazza San Marco, where we spent a little time just taking photos and being touristy:



Basilica di San Marco. Gorgeous golden mosaics...



The clock tower, with the ubiquitous St Mark's Lion up there.


Then we went to the Doge's Palace (Palazzo de Doge). Sadly no photos were allowed inside; I would have loved to show you some of those rooms. They were gorgeous, all blue and gold ceilings, and Renaissance paintings everywhere, carved marble fireplaces. Hidden behind a doorway to a staircase that went nowhere we were allowed, we found a fresco by Titian of St Christopher carrying Christ across the Venetian Lagoon. My favorite room by far was the Shield Room, in which there are no shields but the current Doge's coat of arms. But the walls are all painted in maps of the 16th century, and there are two enormous globes--I mean enormous, maybe three feet in diameter--one of the earth, one of heaven. All old, and brown, and beautiful.

I did, however, take plenty pictures of the courtyard....





The stairway on which the Doge was invested. That's Mars on the left and Neptune on the right.



The view from the top...


After the Palazzo, we headed for el Teatro Fenice (the Phoenix Theater), via a church where we caught the second half of mass, a cafe where we grabbed some lunch, a gelateria, and various other mazes and amazing places of Venice:



The church where we went to hear mass, or rather, stumbled upon mass being held. We'd planned to find one somewhere, but this was the best we got....which really wasn't bad. It was lovely in Italian, and the church was beautiful.



And this is the sign posted in the entryway of the above church, which I adore. In case you can't read it, it says "You are in a Church. You are not allowed to behave indecently."



We sat by a canal to eat lunch...yum.


And el Teatro! It was beautiful...and ironic. This theater, and the company that built it, has survived and rebuilt from several fires, each time renovating the theater to look as close to the orginal designs as possible. Except for when Venice surrendered to Napoleon, & they took out several small boxes in the middle to make a royal box (which is riduclously sumptuous, all red velvet and mirrors and gold).

So, we weren't actually allowed to take pictures inside El Teatro, & in the auditorium and seats there were very attentive guards; but in the other rooms no one was around, so I stole a couple photos just to show you how amazing the entire place was:



One of the rooms the audience would mingle in during intermissions. I mean. Wow.




That carpet is rose colored (the photo's a little dark), like the seats in the auditorium. Everything was golden and cream and rose & pastel blue. Beautiful.



And this is the outside.


Just past the Fenice is a beautiful little courtyard. That small building in the back is a hotel, & is, I've decided, where I'll stay the next time I go to Venice. (When I am rich, apparently, and can afford it...)



I could spend so long here...

And the rest of this I'm doing as one great lump, because there's no set pattern to any of this... Here are pictures of masks, of bridges, of buildings, of why Venice is strikingly and disgustingly picturesque:



I took rather a lot of photos of bridges...there are over 200 bridges in Venice, and I feel like I photographed most of them. This was one of my favorites, though.



After the theater, we wandered a little further & found a great little cafe selling pizza rolls (tomato, fresh mozzarella & rocket leaves rolled up in dough & grilled in a panini press...the best lunch ever), and we ate second lunch while wandering toward somewhere. This stall was selling masks, etc, near the cafe:



So I had to take a photo of the sign. I didn't touch the masks, though!



Lee, in the pair of cool sunglasses we found at a stall near the Ponte Accademia. You know they're cool, because they say so on the tag. No other sunglasses are cool like these ones are cool. Remember that.

& this is just a taste of the incredible window displays that the mask shops had:



More to come, I promise you.

And these are some photos of our favorite mask shop, just around the corner from the Campo dei Frari, which we were looking for when we stumbled on this place. It's gorgeous, full of beautiful displays (as they all are, really). But this one was really lovely; & there was a girl working there who was so super-friendly, who kept going into the back & coming out with other masks & saying "try this one...oh, it fits your face shape!" or "this one for the color of your eyes!" She was so nice. We talked to her while she worked, gilding a mask with gold leaf, about how she got into this job (she wants to design costumes for theater & film, maybe opera houses in Europe, & practical experience is the best way to get jobs). I don't know her name. But I really liked her.



This is one of the Carnevale costumes. The larger mask shops also sold & rented costumes of all kinds. I would give my left leg to go to Venice during Carnevale...except that I'd need it for dancing.



Lee, in one of the gorgeous metal masks we found. So pretty. So, so expensive.



A somewhat overexposed (but artistically so!) photo of a mask in black velvet. It was the kind of velvet that had various other tones in it, so depending on where you were standing it looked tinted with gold or brown or red. Mmmm.




Another costume.


After we tore ourselves away from the mask shop, we walked the few short steps to Basilica Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, an enormous church, all brick and stone, housing a lot of art, mostly in the form of elaborate tombs.









The outside of the church....it was huge! It reminded me a lot of Spanish cathedrals...

We went back toward the grand canal, & found a trattoria on a small canal over a little bridge (....which I realize in Venice means nothing), where we came in just a little before opening time. We hung out at a table while the owner chatted with various people who were in there, and set up, we assumed, playlists on his computer. The playlists were amazing...I know at one point there was a cover of "Light My Fire" followed by a cover (I think so, because I didn't hear any singing) of "Nights in White Satin" by the Moody Blues. Several other songs were just as fabulous. And speaking of fabulous, did I mention the food?





Insalata mista & spaghetti pomodoro...simple, plain, expected maybe. But oh, so good.

During our wanderings near the Ponte Accedemia, we ran into a young man in a red cloak holding a sign that said OPERA, so we stopped to see what was going on. He was selling tickets to a variety of events, at a discount; so we bought tickets to a string quartet concert at a church, which we went to after dinner. It was lovely...felt very civilized. They played Vivaldi, Handel, Pachebel's canon, some Mozart...& there was a mezzosoprano singer for some of the pieces. So sophisticated.


So that was Day One of Venice. But I got back to Dublin today, have spent a lot of the day doing laundry & uploading pictures, & I am tired. A lot of my clothes are still wet, I have to pack again because we're going to London tomorrow...& we have to catch a bus at five am. It's 10:25pm right now. So y'all are going to have to wait for more Venice. I will probably do a ridiculous round of Venice & London posts when I get back, after I see my parents!

& now I really do have to pack. And sleep. Love all. Ciao.

& he gave me such a looook!

I feel like Eddie Izzard. I have called our Venice hostel twice now, & each time a man answers with "Pronto, 'ostel Venizia" (at least I think that's what he said), & I ask--just to check!-- "do you speak English?"
To which he replies with a resigned, "yee-ees."

Excuse me...can you count to three?


In other...no, in the same news, Lee & I leave for Venice tomorrow! Expect a post with loads of photos & maybe not much explanations beyond names and squeeing. I'll be back Wednesday, so I'll try to post some pictures then; early Thursday morning all the theater kids leave for London, so there's going to be lots of traveling this week. Hooray!

Gaiety Theater, and more of the green.

So I feel as though I haven't done a big photo + me blathering about Ireland post for a while. Probably because I haven't. I also haven't been taking a lot of photos. We finally have all our classes, have integrated with the Gaiety kids, and are on what is generally assumed to be our normal schedule (but really, with IES, "regular schedule" is a joke). But I never posted the pictures I took of the Gaiety Theatre, which is beautiful; and I took a few more of St Stephen's, so you can see how autumn looks. What, no one else is interested in the colours of leaves and how many are left?

Classes are going well, too. As usual. General updaty-ness:
Movement gets better and better every single class; that Dance (it needs a capital letter) becomes more and more second nature, and we're playing around with it now; plus we're doing contact improv which is the coolest thing ever.
In acting we have one more class, then presentation of monologues, before break. And after break we have a new teacher. No more Amanda. I am severely upset by this. Severely. Does she know how much we all adore her? Because we do...
Voice continues to be voice exercises + poetry circle with Cathal, which is fine by me. Huzzah for Yeats.
Devising...is weird as always. I'm fond of our piece (which we really ought to practice). Anything making fun of Waiting for Godot is okay by me.

And integration with the Gaiety kids is awesome. It's wonderful to meet other students, most of them Irish but not all, and it's actually really wonderful to have boys around, because it brings a completely different dynamic to the group. I didn't realize how boy-heavy SU's drama department is until I'm in a group with twelve girls and one boy (poor Peter has to be the entire boy side of drama at the moment). There are plenty of Gaiety girls as well, though, some of whom I've talked to a little, who are all lovely. This is their first year as well, so we're all a little tentative, but it looks to be really good. (Which means nothing...but I'm tired, and I can't come up with anything better to say.)

Right. On to photos...



These are the stairs leading up to the circle seats. Everything is all red velvet and dark wood. Mmm.



The upper lobby...



And the chandelier in the lobby...



The safety curtain, a feature of older theaters like these.



The side of the theater.



And the front, with a glimpse of the set for Lon Day's Journey into Night.



A look down into the stalls.




You should know by now my fondness for taking photos of doorways and passages and things.



The trees are losing leaves!



They are all on the ground instead.



And sunlight...beautiful sunlight.


On an entirely different note, here's one last photo. In case you're not up on current Irish affairs, there is a great furor going on at the moment over the building of a motorway pretty much right through, or at least right by, the Hill of Tara. As you can imagine a lot of people (myself included) are not exactly chuffed about the idea of building a road through an ancient historical site, with lots of significance, spiritually and otherwise, not to mention probably a lot of as-yet-unfound archaeological artifacts. So there have been protests. And this was one, in Grafton street, today:




...and it's time for sleeping I think...

That's DAME Helen, to you.

I MET HELEN MIRREN. HELEN MIRREN!

Cozy, Lee, Meghan and I got up early this morning and went to the Hughes & Hughes bookstore in St Stephen's Green Shopping Centre to get in line--in the queue, I should say--to meet Helen Mirren. (HELEN MIRREN.) We held each other's places in line while we all went to buy the book (none of us but Cozy had really planned on buying it before this morning, but--it's Helen Mirren. And a good book). We were among the first in line and we were only getting more excited as the bookstore started to open and people were setting things up.... The line had stretched far back behind us by this point.

And then with no warning, there she was. Just calmly walking out along the line of adoring fans, saying, "I just wanted to come out and say hello to you all."

Did I mention that I love her voice?

She disappeared into the bookstore after a little while. By this point there were a bunch of gawpers standing about the entrance, probably intrigued by the many large news cameras and the enormous queue. Then she came out again, though you could hardly tell with all the newspeople and their cameras surrounding the little signing table, you couldn't actually see her. The few people in front of us went through, and then Cozy (of whom I never got a good picture because some random person was in the way the whole time. Bah).

And then I went up to the table, and she took my book and looked at the postit, and said, "Are you Kenna?" in that beautiful voice. And I said I was, and as she was signing she said, "you must have got up very early," and I burbled "oh, no no, it was worth it!" (Or probably something closer to "nunun...worthit," really.)

I did manage to get some better pictures afterward, though none of them are particularly good. But what do I care? I MET HELEN MIRREN!





Waiting in line before the store opened. Probably about nine-thirty, I'm guessing.



Look! It's Helen Mirren! ....no, really. She's behind all those newspeople and cameras. I swear she is.



And there she is, just barely caught under the arm of another photographer. Her smile is so pretty.



And here's a closeup, an actual Helen Mirren photo, although it isn't all that good sadly.



And back at home, here's my new book...



...with the signature. EEEEEE.

...and that's pretty much all I have to say.

A medley of photos!

This weekend was my explore Dublin, poke about in museums weekend. So far it's been going well. Friday I made it my goal to get to the Dublin Theater Festival box office in Temple Bar, which I did, there and back in about four hours. Had I been walking there direct it would probably have taken me an hour and a half total, but I meandered, and I walked through St Stephen's Green, and the arcades and architecturally gorgeous shopping centres between here and there, and took many photos. Saturday I spent wandering the National Gallery, seeing things I didn't see the first time, and then going to Ivanov. Today I'm going to the National Museum of Archeology* and then to see Hibiki. Hot damn, but do I feel cultured.



This is the bridge near my apartment.



And this is St Stephen's Green, my new favorite park:









And this is Trinity, from the tour Lee and I took.



And our favorite musicians on Grafton street, this amazing quintet. I have a video, too (see below):



And this is St Stephen's Green shopping centre, which was built in the Victorian era (can you tell?) and is the prettiest mall I have ever seen. I am also inordinately fond of this photo.



And coming back through the green--you can see things changing colour for fall.







And this is the video of the Grafton street quintet that we like so much, playing La Traviata. It's short, just about forty seconds. Ignore the fact that it changes to side view halfway through, please...this is me learning my camera's capabilities. And being a little stupid. Oh well.







* I would just like to register my continued annoyance that the Dead Zoo is closed. I mean. What? It's for repairs, okay, but it's been closed since July. If I miss it....rrrargh.

MUSIC!

All week, Brianna had been talking about a traditional music pub crawl happening on Friday. Irish music? I'm in! says I, having been vaguely trying to find some ever since I got here. Anyone else want to come? Anyone...? Strangely enough, no one else was interested. It ended up being just Brianna, Peter, Kenzie and me. And GOD did everyone else MISS OUT.

It was FANTASTIC. I cannot use enough capital letters to tell you how amazing it was. There were just two musicians, Eugene (banjo) and Antony (guitar, bohdran, voice), two pubs, and about three hours of music, talk and alcohol. Could it be better? I think not. The dynamic between the two was hilarious; Antony was a showman, cracking jokes, and Eugene would be all quiet until he'd suddenly bust out with something hilarious. Or they'd both go on about history of music, of instruments--all of it fascinating. When playing Eugene would close his eyes and go all meditative while his fingers went crazy on the strings, while at the same time Antony's next to him, essentially rocking out on whatever instrument he was on. They played reels and jigs and hornpipes and other tunes, and taught us how to sing Johnny Jump Up, and generally had a great time. So did we. (Kenzie developed an enourmous crush on Eugene. I thought Antony looked a little like a pirate. Or possibly Sim.)

At one point Eugene was talking about his musical background, and how when he switched from guitar to banjo at 16 he needed to find a new idol (as Jimi Hendrix did not play the banjo). He found one in Bela Fleck (our whole table went "Yeeeah!"); and he then proceeded to play a bluegrass reel that he'd stolen off Bela Fleck when he'd come to Dublin in concert. And it was incredible.

My feet were tapping the whole time, completely inadvertently, I wouldn't have known how to stop them. I want to dance again, relearn all my steps. Especially hardshoe, I like making noise. I wonder if Eugene and Antony want someone to dance. I wonder if they could tell me where ceilis are held.

This is a video I nabbed right at the end; it's a low-light, hard-to-see-anything, I've-had-better-sound-quality-from-ducks kind of video, but it's two and a half minutes of AWESOME. Seriously. Just watch it.