Northwestern University Athletics
2010 Italian Tour Player Blog
9/4/2010 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Sept. 4, 2010
Hi Wildcat Nation,
After spending two amazing days in Florence, the Northwestern Basketball caravan moved to Venice. Florence was absolutely amazing and I will definitely go back to visit it again one day. The statue of David, Michelangelo and Family Medici made a huge impression on me.
Friday morning we woke up little bit earlier because we had a four-hour bus ride from Florence to Venice. We eventually arrived and our bus driver dropped us of at the docks and we took little boat taxis to get to Venice. It took us 15 minutes to get to St. Marco's Square. Even thought I visited Venice couple of times before, I'm always very excited to go back. I always get impressed and wonder how people built the town from the stretch, in the middle of the lagoon, more then 1,000 years ago.
Not many of you know this fact, but my home country was part of Venetian Republic for more then 500 years and Croatians played an important role in building this magnificent city. There is very interesting legend that has been related to this history fact. Since my home country has been part of the Venetian Republic, a lot of Croatian people were forced to go and help to build the city and some people were assigned to cut the Croatian forests and transfer oak and pine tree to Venice. Venetians were taking huge advantage of Croatian people, and the country as well. The Croatian king at that time cursed Venetians by saying that city is going to sink one day. Not that I believe in curses, but to my children's children, Venice might be nothing more then a legend. The city is sinking at and alarming rate of about more then 2 inches a decade. Interesting story!
Even though I loved Florence, Venice was the highlight of our Italian trip for me. After a full year, I got to see my family! My mom, uncle, aunt and my grandparents decided to make a six-hour trip and come to see me and my fellow Wildcats in Venice. I was looking forward to this day so I spent a wonderful afternoon with my family. The highlight of our Venice tour was a family gondola ride. This was by far the best way to get to know Venice little bit better and see some parts that can't be seen by walking around. After the gondola ride, I went to the lunch with my family. My afternoon went by so fast it felt like I was with my family for 15 minutes. The big clock on St. Marco Square was showing almost 7 p.m. and it was time to go back and meet my team again. Before I knew it, as Andrea Bocelli says it was "Time To Say Goodbye" to my family. I had a lot of fun.
After seeing Venice we took a boat taxi to get us back to the docks where our bus driver was waiting for us to get us to our hotel. When we checked in we went out for team dinner. Venice left such a great impression on all of us that we just couldn't stop talking about it. We had a lot of fun!
Thanks for your support and contributions,
