Week 9

Week 8

This week I am writing my own article about a teenager's experience in Venice Italy.

A Young Teenager in Venice

I went to Italy to stay in Venice for a week. As I travelled between the islands via the vaporetto I was able to experience firsthand, a side of Italy that I had never known was there.

Kate Jackson 

As a teenager, I've never possessed a great desire to go to such a historical city as Venice, and my family usually opt to holiday in resorts. Not long after I flew into Venice Marco Polo Airport the heavens opened and lashings of rain flooded the pavements, and as far as I could see, Venice wasn't exactly the white sand beach I was used to. However, about 20 minutes later I was cruising up the Venetian Lagoon towards the Lido, leaning out of a vaporetto as I multi-tasked not dropping my iPhone into the water and snapping photos of brightly painted buildings, their pastel coloured fronts reflecting on the water. A scene of such beauty was not at all what I had expected. For the rest of the journey, I took to keeling on my seat, right at the bow of the boat, snapping photos out of the window.

Our hotel sported an extraordinary multi-coloured mosaic facade, which the porter told us, had been created in 1913 and is the largest in the continent. The hotel overlooked the Gran Viale Santa Maria Elisabetta and was a few minutes’ walk from the dock. As the hotel is an exclusive early 19th century residence, it has its original furnishings, which were created more than a century ago by an Italian designer. With its antique style and modern comforts; it offered a historic residence with a one-of-a-kind atmosphere.

We took the vaporetto to San Zaccaria, and went to the Piazza San Marco. We sat out in the sun, drinking coffee and enjoying the live music at the famous Caffè Florian, a coffee house established in 1720, making it one of the oldest in the world. We then toured one of the main landmarks of Venice, the Palazzo Ducale; a palace built in Venetian Gothic style that housed the many Doges of Venice and political bodies of state for centuries. I have studied periods of history in school that match those surrounding the history of the palace and I found it very interesting. Another building that we toured on the Piazza San Marco was the Basilica di San Marco. I had been learning about the renaissance in school and the descriptions my teacher had given in class of churches from that period were brought to life through the basilica’s magnificent design and gold ground mosaics. We sailed up the Canal Grande to Rialto and the Pointe di Rialto, a beautiful bridge home to many shops and restaurants. One day it was very stormy and we took the vaporetto to Murano Colonna and toured one of the Murano Glass factories before window shopping the rainbow of glassware. Probably the most magnificent building I came across in Venice was Chiesa di San Maria della Salute, a church located in the Dorsoduro sestiere. The dome of the Salute has become an emblem of the city and the exterior is richly decorated by statues of the four evangelists. Whist visiting the Salute, I viewed the final painting by the famous Italian painter Tintoretto, The Last Supper.

The many historic sites that I saw were very much a big part of my holiday, but I think that the trip would not have been complete if I hadn’t found the answer to the question that had pried away at the back of my mind before; why would a teenager want to visit Venice? When I did find the answer, it felt like it had been staring me in the face since my first boat ride. We were travelling back to the Lido one evening, the air had a humid tinge to it and as the sun cast its warm, orangey glow across the lagoon and the water’s surface seemed to shimmer in a way I had only thought possible in children’s fairy-tales, a few gondolas bobbed about in the water, the gondoliers, dark silhouettes against the glow. My mind’s eye captured the scene the way a camera does and in that moment I realised why a teenager would want to visit the City of Water; to witness a simple moment of that overpowering beauty themselves.