Venice

We’re on the train from Venice to Milan, and Jayne just ate about a freaking pound of gorgonzola. Based on past experience this will make for an interesting day.

But to catch up….

In case you hadn’t noticed, we’ll have fewer blog entries from here on out. When we were doing the C-C hike, it was really easy to get into a routine, hike, arrive, shower, eat, blog, sleep. So blog/day. But now there’s more going on. More traveling, surprising - but less internet access, more wild and crazy nights as we hit the Euro dance clubs, yea baby!

After the hike we had a few days in London. We walked thru Boroughs market, it was fantastic. Wide variety of products including many different meats. And a lot of the natural organic and wild products came from the Lakes district where we had just been. Great looking meat pies, seafood, breads, cheese, veggies, etc. There was an awesome prosciutto shop; they had whole legs from hip to hoof (still on) displayed and being cut from. It was like an anatomy display! I had just gotten sick from prosciutto so I couldn’t partake but I really wanted to. It’s a must stop for all London trips. We visited the Imperial War Museum. This also was fantastic. They had this incredible exhibit on the Holocaust. Very powerful, you need about 1-2 hours just to see this exhibit.

And we met up with Mimi, who’s spending the semester in London. We were all so excited to see each other. Mimi seemed especially excited as we were loaning her cash since she had lost her debit card (hmm, I wonder how that happened). We went to a high-end Indian/English fusion restaurant, the Cinnamon Club. We walk in, there are all these posh, stuffy Londoners there, Mimi had a sweatshirt on, we had backpacks, and April had a fleece on. They inquired if we needed to use the coat check room. We said no, but they gave us a look. We looked back. They let us in. The food was brilliant! Mimi had the lamb, I had the quail, and April can’t remember what she ate. Sad. The food was spicy and I was trying to stay away from meat but couldn’t resist.

Ok so we head out to Gatwick for the flight to Venice, we’re super excited to meet up with Dan and Jayne, we get to the airport and discover there’s a one-day handlers strike in Venice so our flight has been diverted to Verona. After which they’ll bus us (2 hrs) to the Venice airport. What a pain. But that’s life, bend with the wind.

We were supposed to arrive at 4:00. Instead we finally get to the Venice airport at 7:00. We try to catch a water bus to our hotel stop, but there’s not the right one for 2 more hours, so we lug our stuff to the road bus area, jump on a bus and finally get to Venice at about 8:00 at night. It’s dark, it’s mobbed, we can’t see shit, and we have no idea where to go. April had directions to our hotel only from the airport water bus/stop. April wants to head off walking in the dark cause she sees a new bridge; why that would be appropriate I have no idea. Anyway we stumble over to some lights/people and find a line/booth for something, we’re not quite sure what though. We get to the counter and ask where we go to buy tickets for the water bus and lo and behold this is the right booth. Skillz! We buy tickets for water bus 52 and get off at the Guglia stop, walk 200 meters down a dark and unpopulated area and sure enough there’s our B+B. April yells up to the second floor window (as she made sure to reserve the front room) and sure enough Dan yells back; they had arrived earlier and waited for us for dinner, nice! It was a great night, we had all been traveling, we were all finally there, Venice is magical and very different from anything else in the whole world. We just went to a nearby restaurant; quite average food for Italy. But we didn’t care. We were all exhausted so we hit the sack. D and J had snagged the good bed (rightly so since they had traveled longer and been there first) , we got the foldout couch, the foot area of the couch sagged, so while I lay there trying to sleep with my feet sticking straight out into the air a few inches above the mattress, I determined the new room/bed selection algorithm for the two couples. We would alternate the choice of rooms or beds, but you didn’t have to use your chit, unless you really wanted to. So D+J got the first choice, now we owned first choice at the next hotel (if necessary). But so far all the subsequent rooms have been identical, and we haven’t shared a room, so I still have that chit in my pocket. It’s a comforting feeling!

Venice. We had a great 2 days here. It’s very small, you can walk around the whole island in a couple of days. They have water bus routes that go thru all the large canals. But the roads/paths/alleys are incredibly intricate. You can walk down all sorts of dead ends. It might end at a wall, or the water, or just loop back to where you started. We wanted to walk to a vegetable/fish market, and we started out but weren’t making any progress so I had to take over the formal role as the Navigator. This turned out to be a significant choice, as you’ll see when we got up to the Dolomites.

So now that we had a Navigator, we subsequently made great time walking thru Venice. After a few hours of walking success, April and Dan seemed to think they could just follow the signs pointing to the major squares. Not a bad plan for general direction, but clearly not good enough for pinpoint directions/shopping.

We sat in San Marco’s square for awhile, had coffee/snacks and just watched the people. At first we sat in the restaurant with blue chairs but they had a band playing and it would have cost 6 Euros each just to sit there (in addition to the coffee order). So we moved 20 yards to the yellow chairs, and of course paid an arm and a leg for coffee/sweets but we could still hear the music for free!

During the walking day we noticed there was going to be a string ensemble concert behind the church. We had a little discussion about whether we should attend the concert or go eat. I was pushing that a nice dinner would be more time/place appropriate since you can listen to a concert anywhere. The other three pushed for the concert. Normally I would have been thrilled to pursue a 1 vs 3 argument but since I’m starting to mature slightly more as a result of meditation, I let it go. Just so you know the food hadn’t been great in Venice either which probably contributed to my out-of-character acquiesce.

Anyway we attended the concert and it was fantastic! It wasn’t really a concert; there were only about 30 people attending, it was in a small beautiful room attached to a church, acoustics were nice, we were in the front row, wonderful intimacy. There were two violins, a cello, and a harpsichord. They played a ~6 pieces from composers who lived around 1650-1700 in that area. So it turned out to be VERY time and place appropriate. The setting, the pieces, the instruments, the audience. Magical.

The only problem was we all kept falling asleep. And since we were in the front row there was the impending danger of falling forward right at the musicians. Jayne and I like to listen with our eyes closed so our heads kept bobbing, then we’d wake up. And Dan claimed to have fallen asleep with his eyes open as he dreamed of geese flying overhead in NH, which by the way would have been really weird if he fell forward with his eyes open. But fear not, we all kept our seats, and the concert ended wonderfully with a beautiful rendition of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. Of course Dan cried a few times during the concert. I wonder if that happened while he was dreaming of those geese?

Ok so that’s about it for Venice. Great little city to visit (but not live there). Very unique. Very crowded. Very expensive. Average food. Mardi Gras was invented here. They still celebrate it and it looks like a wild and crazy time. Everyone gets dressed up and masked so the baroness might end up dancing with the fish monger. At least for one night everyone gets to be someone else. Certainly one of the world’s great parties.

That being said it’s also a weird place. There are very few real people there. And they’re all old. And it’d probably suck to live there cause it’s all tourists. And there aren’t that many real amenities like food stores, pharmacies, local meeting places, parks. The houses are all old/crumbling and will almost certainly lose the battle with global warming (more flooding). There are 60,000 living there (1/2 of what it was 30 years ago), the population is aging, they’re losing 1000 people/year. Maybe Disney will buy it. It can be just like Epcot