Tuesday, August 26, 2008

To Arrive in Venice

My journey started with a car ride to the airport, 30 minutes give or take. Upon entering Lester B. Pearson Airport, I boarded an airplane and flew to Venice. Landing in Marco Polo Airport, I was met by Walter Harris and Armand LaChance who took me to meet the other participants, we sat on chairs for 2 hours, give or take, until we rode a bus to get to Venice proper. A beautiful ride from the airport to the island resulted in boarding a vaporetto which took us to the other side of the island, the stop being Celestia. From there, the 7 girls (myself included) and Armand walked on our feet to our house.

Car, airplane, chair, bus, vaporetto, feet. Phew. Walter greeted everyone by saying that this is, “like a reality tv show. Remember America’s Next Top Model, well you’re all going to be in twin beds, with 3 or 4 to a room, randomly assigned.” Hopefully there won’t be any cat-fights, everyone seems friendly off the bat, if a little jet-lagged. I have so far met, in order of meeting, Aaron-David, Courtney, Margot, Katrina, Micah, José, Helen, Hannah, Ariela. We are representing Canada, the States, and Spain.

Our house looks like this:

Well actually, that’s the gate to our courtyard. And this is the courtyard:

Our front door is actually this:

And this is the common area:

Quite nice don’t you think? We eat breakfast together then commute via vaporetto to the Lido, where the festival takes place.

I’m quite lively right now, partially from excitement and partially from homeopathic meds, which allowed me to have no jet lag at all, even though I only got about 1 hour’s worth of sleep and another 2-3 hours of resting.

Temperature today is gorgeous, not to hot or humid, the canals don’t stink (well, the big ones don’t), it’s sunny, and it’s Sunday, so there are very few people about which is nice for exploring.

p.s. Blogger won't allow me to upload photos. But you get the picture.

2 comments:

Judy said...

yeah for no-jet-lag!
I'll have to look up the name of your vaporetto stop to see where your villa is. I like the reality show analogy!

Rachael Glassman said...

Vaporetto stop = Celestia
House is on Fondamenta del Cristo