neko's thinkbox

Wow. Took me a while to post this. Yeah, I’m back from Venice, in fact I was already back 2 weeks ago. I was busy sorting out the 900 pictures I shot / working / doing anything productive / playing Neverwinter Nights like a madman / procrastinating as always. PHEW. Now that I’m reaching a state of complete boredom and utter jealousy because Ruki got quite the huge exposure here (I’m joking, he really deserves it, unlike me), I finally find some time and motivation to come back to my blog.

I have now a great opportunity to share this absolutely wonderful experience that was my trip to Venice. I will reiterate it so often you’ll scream HAZUKASHII SERIFU KINSHI after every second line. Although… it might not be of any interest now that there are (at least) two people who covered their ARIA-inspired pilgrimage to Venice already. But I want my own share of popularity and UNIQUENESS as well so here goes. (Is this too much pseudo-bitterness for you? Aww.) Took me almost a day to do it all (especially the image links and their alt/description texts were a pain in the neck)…

I am already cluttering it up with walls of text. You gotta be used to it by now on this blog I guess :P
Anyway I guess I’ll do some kind of travel log or so, and try to recall the most memorable moments of my trip. I’ve only had three full days to explore Venice – indeed I was away from the 10th to the 14th, but I arrived on Thursday evening and departed Monday morning… Sucks, really. Anyway, I think I’ll do three posts, one for each day (excluding arrival and departure). Godspeed.

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Notice 3: Though I doubt anyone will be this gullible, THIS IS NOT A NEW ARIA SERIES. This is just a spoof on my part to be ORIGINAL. Got it?

Navigation Day 0: Thursday, June 10th

Nothing much happened on that day. I spent 10 hours on the road from my home to the hotel in Venice, it was a pretty long journey. It was already 9 PM when I arrived so I didn’t get to see much of Venice yet. Throughout the day, I drowned myself in ARIA music, especially the many Drama CD’s. Wish I had a laptop, to rewatch the anime…
I arrived at the Lido with the Vaporetto, and on my way to the hotel, I encountered this great friend of mine from IRC, muz. [He’s also known as MuZ0NaZ on animepaper. As you can see he’s a great waller and, of course, also an ARIA fan. When I told in IRC that I was going to Venice, he immediately booked his flight as well… But I digress.]

After introductions and stuff, we headed to the hotel (he incidentally booked a room in the same hotel), where I showed off some of my ARIA manga, the three Artbooks Alpha, Stella and Cielo, the Gekkan Undines and, of course, my Hisui towel. I can’t travel anywhere without it! Sadly, my camera couldn’t compete with his: my old Sony CyberShot 4.1mpx against his DSLR, some Canon EOS-something… Meh.
Since it was late, we just decided to go to the main street in Lido to buy some water for the night. We learnt that potable water has quite a price in those small stores: at least 2 Euros for a bottle of 1.5L. Take it or leave it. Still better than the rather awful tap water at the hotel.
It was a tiresome journey so we just went to our rooms to find some sleep. It was a rather hot night, but fortunately I had a fan in my room to cool me off. I think muz didn’t have one, poor guy.

Navigation Day 1: Friday, June 11th

Our starting point was San Zaccaria. We wanted to reach the Piazza San Marco (SMS, or St. Mark’s Square) first, then the Rialto Bridge… but I could not place the Bridge of Sighs anywhere on the map. I realized that I actually had no clue whatsoever where all the places I saw in ARIA were.

However, as we walked through this huge city, I was able to make sense out of this city I knew from an anime. Like, the Bridge of Sighs is just behind the Piazza San Marco (which makes sense, because it’s next to the Palace of the Doges).

It’s a really wonderful feeling. You arrive there, thinking that you know the city and its monuments yet you know nothing at all. The Bridge of Sighs, San Marco Square, the Rialto Bridge, etc etc everything, I saw them so often in ARIA, yet they’re so much more beautiful in real life. As if I had seen them for the first time. They were not fictional anymore, they were real. It was a great moment of emotion for me.

We had our itinerary fixed for the day but, as you can figure out from looking at the map, we immediately strayed off our path. After the two main “attractions”, we kept walking all across the city in a pretty random fashion. It truly is a maze, but absolutely not frustrating at all.

Sure, the map, as well as the many signs throughout the city streets helped us orient ourselves to the main places of Venice: The Piazzale Roma/Train Station, the Rialto Bridge and the Piazza San Marco. But to be honest, it was actually fun straying around, encountering the same narrow streets and passages all over, yet always discovering new places and buildings, and seeing everything from a different perspective.

We were so “entranced” in getting to see everything at once that we omitted getting food at noon – instead, we went to the Burger King close to the Rialto Bridge at 4 PM (and only because I noticed I was starving). Oh and the ice cream, the gelato, it absolutely DELICIOUS. I ate at least two every day :D

The Bovolo palace (Ruki recommended to see it) was close by, so we went there afterwards – but, as for Ruki, it was closed for us as well. Darn, looks pretty from the outside…

I could write so much more about the many places we saw, but I guess I’ll just let the pictures speak for themselves. (I selected the best pictures to post in this blog entry – there are hundreds (!!) more in this album here)

So we walk along the Canale di Cannareggio, and from afar we hear loud laughs and screams. A bunch of crazy guys walked past us laughing like crazy, especially that one crossdressing guy… I suspect a wedding-eve party, lol.

Had I gone one week later, I’d have witnessed this year’s Redentore festival. Tough luck. Really wanted to see the fireworks…

Ruki had told me that he had seen the building of the Himeya Company, and one of my goals was to find it as well. I had been searching and searching that day but I just couldn’t remember what it looked like… Not even in the three artbooks neither in the manga did I find any acceptable image of it… only one very small panel with the top of the building…… Anyway, when I shot this picture above, I sensed some kind of familiarity, but I’m not sure about it at all. I haven’t checked either, nor do I have the courage to do so now. Is this the Himeya Company? (I bet not T_T)

Instead of riding a gondola, we decided to cross the river by Traghetto. 50 Eurocent a ride, for a 50 meters of riding the wild calm waters of the Canale Grande between Campo Sofia and the Campo Pescana (Fish Market), I can imagine it’s pretty cheap compared to the gondolas… then again, the actual price of a gondola ride is still unknown to me yet. But it was fun, reminded me of that one ARIA episode with Atora, Ayumi and… (takes out his Gekkan Undine Vol. 6) Anzu!

In the evening we went up the Campanile. The Campanile is approx. 100 meters tall, but you can only go up to 60 meters.

Sadly, unlike in the anime, you are just allowed use the elevator… Oh wait, now that I remember, in Episode 5.5 of Origination Akatsuki was refused the stairway as well… Either way, you have a totally gorgeous and breathtaking view of Venice from up there.

I made quite a lot of photos, and especially the sunset photos are my absolute favorites.

It was such a beautiful dream-like sunset, and I just couldn’t stop remembering all of those similar utopian landscapes and sceneries of ARIA – yes, real life does have such moments as well… sometimes. Awesome.
Oh and I forgot to mention, it was exactly 8 PM when we were up there, I could tell without my watch because the main bell started tolling. No warnings, nothing. It caught us by surprise and… yes it obviously IS pretty loud indeed. Standing underneath it is just… deafening. Literally. Everyone standing up there covered their ears (except me, because I’m so hardcore fk yeah) (Too bad I didn’t have the brilliant idea to record a video of it…)

After sunset, we spent another half hour in front of the Piazza San Marco shooting photos (mostly muz though, I already had shot so many pics of St Mark’s Square…)

…then we returned to the Lido to the hotel. Oh wait, we first went to buy another couple of bottles of water for the night. And I went to a restaurant at 10:30 PM to eat a pizza, I hadn’t eaten anything in the evening yet. Muz went back to the hotel because he was tired.

Conclusion of the first day:

This first day of my Venice pilgrimage exceeded all of my expectations. There were of course the few obvious drawbacks that you would not see in ARIA: hundreds of thousands of tourists, beggars, smugglers, and, of course, the gondoliers, which looked more like prisoners rather than… elegant and beautiful undines. You really wouldn’t expect adolescent girls rowing those gondolas by themselves… At least I didn’t see any. Not even a single woman, for that matter.

It’s pretty funny, actually. I didn’t even think of boarding a gondola, because I imagined the price would be pretty high – even though during my entire trip, I didn’t hear one single price; only “20% off!” “half price, please come!” and the likes. Many gondoliers were begging for people to get on their gondolas… I tell ya, if it had been Akari, Aika, Alice, bah any other Undine, I wouldn’t have hesitated one second. I swear! …but yeah. Perhaps in the afterlife or so…

I was really fond of walking around and seeing that beautiful city of my dreams. The smell, despite some warnings from some friends about a lingering gutter smell (especially in a hot period of the year), was very acceptable – there are many places which are worse, and Venice, for being a somewhat coastal region, was pretty agreeable. – HOWEVER. There was one negative point after all, but that was my mistake: I had been wearing some uber crappy sandals all day long, and we sure walked over 10 miles that day. It was a real ordeal. Even now I can’t describe the pain I was feeling because of my feet that night, they were sorer than sore. Especially my right foot felt like a single huge blister. I almost thought it was bleeding. I hoped I would be able to walk properly the next day in my normal shoes.

And muz was pretty much sunburnt on both arms. Poor guy.

ARIA The Pilgrimage ~Venezia~ continues.Navigation Day Two, with an extensive Murano and Burano discovery trip, following up in (insert random#) days. Also, videos! (…perhaps.) Otanoshimi~….

So yeah, you can find more pictures of the first day here. You will notice that I shot many pictures that almost look the same – but as I said above, they are all different to me because I saw the places and buildings every single time from a different perspective, giving me another incentive to capture those moments in a photo. Let this be at least an acceptable excuse for my lacking photographic skills and gear -_-

Also, did I mention that I almost decided to study there at the university Ca’ Foscari? An Italian IRC friend of mine, ShiNN84 (also an awesome waller) says its Japanese faculty is one of the best in Italy. Would be cool, studying something relevant to my interests in a city relevant to my interests. Dang, that’s awesome.

And I am still looking for writers who might fill this blog with some posts while I don’t.