San Marco and the Mall

Saturday, Lizzie, Shannon, Natalie, Dane, and I, caught a bus from Piazzale Roma, to go to the mall, about a fifteen minute ride away. When we got there, it was more like a Wal-Mart or a Biggs, but with about a dozen mall-like stores in there too, including a GameStop, which had all the normal sorts of DVDs and video games you would expect, they were just in Italian. It was nice because it wasn’t set up for tourists, like some parts of Venice are, it was just a normal store where people go to shop for clothes or buy groceries. It was interesting, though, because we had been expecting a mall like that which we are used to going to in the United States and instead it was just a large shopping center, similar to, as I said before, a Wal-Mart, only with a few extra clothing and accessories stores thrown in as well.

Sunday, I went with Lizzie, Dane, and Audrey to Mass at San Marco. The church itself is absolutely gorgeous, I’ve never seen anything like it. The upper walls and ceiling inside are completely covered in mosaics. The parts which are not depicting scenes are covered in gold tiles. And it’s massive, I can’t even imagine how long it must have taken them to do all the mosaics. It’s really spectacular. The Byzantine effects in the church truly, for me anyway, bring to life the combination of East and West that is such a hallmark of this city. For as big as the church is, though, there were only about fifty people or so there for the Mass. Even though the service was in Italian, it was still pretty easy to follow along and know what was happening because Catholic Masses everywhere are virtually the same, plus they had nice little pamphlets on the chairs that had the responses and the songs written out, so it was possible to simply read along. Also, we figured out, from the little we could understand, that there was a visiting priest today, but he was actually either an archbishop or a cardinal, we’re not sure which, it sounded like the priest who introduced him said archbishop, but the man had a red hat like a cardinal’s. Either way, it was very neat. The archbishop/cardinal gave the sermon and it seemed like it was probably very good, he delivered it really well and was quite enthusiastic, I just couldn’t understand more than a few words of it, unfortunately. Overall, though, the Mass was really nice and it was great to be able to experience church in another country.