VENICE
First of all, this is how I feel about Venice:
In a word: SMITTEN.
Now that you have that little summary, here are the details.
After arriving on the train (March 11) and being confused at the map for a while, we finally found our hotel. We didn't realize that "streets" on the map translated into hidden, three-foot-wide alleyways, but that's how it is on a magical island with no cars. After checking in and dropping off our luggage, we set out to explore. Our only set plan for the day was to find our way to St. Mark's Square and to eat good food.
We walked all the way across Venice and found a scrumptious little sandwich place called Bar Verde. We ate lunch and a long-awaited canoli on a bench by the water. Then we entered St. Mark's Square and took some silly pictures. The top of the Campanile reminded me of a Christmas tree, so here I am putting the star on top.
St. Mark's is the square with a million pigeons, where everyone tries to get pictures touching them. It is disgusting. These pigeons have no fear. I almost accidentally stepped on them a few times, and had to duck more that once so they wouldn't fly directly into my face. Sick.
While we were standing in the square trying to decide what to do next, we looked around at our museum options and realized that we were both a little burnt out. More than a little burnt out. In fact, when we decided not to see any museums that day, and to just wander instead, we were both filled with such giddy relief that we kind of threw the rest of our plans out the window.
I mean, just look at all our museum stubs from the previous five days. That much high quality art and history crammed into a few days was total sensory overload. It was exhausting! (In the best way, of course.)
"Wandering" might not sound that great at first, but when this is what you see in every direction, it's a pretty amazing activity.
Day 9
We woke up late, had breakfast at our charming little hotel, and went out to buy vaporetti tickets. We rode down the Grand Canal listening to an audio tour explaining all kinds of wonderful things about the beautiful buildings. I wish we could have seen Venice in its prime. It was the Vegas of Europe. As beautiful as it is now, I can't hardly imagine what it was like a few hundred years ago!
After the tour we found the Church of San Zaccaria, where we saw some art and the final resting place of John the Baptist's father. Later, we toured Frari Church, which features works by Donatello and Titian.
This was also the day that we discovered Venice's best gelato. One scoop strawberry, one scoop lemon, on a cone, from La Boutique del Gelato. I can only imagine how much more delicious is would be on a hot summer day!
How is it possible that I have not a single picture of us eating gelato? Especially when we had it twice a day? I must have enjoying it too much to think about anything else.
Here, I made Matt stand in front of some pretty apartments while eating his real Italian pizza. We were right outside a tiny museum that had a free exhibit on Vivaldi. That's the great thing about wandering. See something you might like to do? Go ahead! There's no schedule, just time.
The downside to wandering is sometimes you get lost. At night. Where no tourists go, and no one else is around to ask for directions back to your hotel. When you really really really have to pee and you're walking in circles because you can't think straight. That was an adventure. We eventually walked up to a place where we saw cars and roads (which we hadn't seen in a couple days), and were a little afraid we had wandered right off the island! But no, it was just the bus station, where people catch rides across the bridge to the mainland. Phew!
Before I finish with Venice, I need to write a little about the language. Italian spoken by Italians is so so so beautiful! If I could only speak Italian...I'm sure I could get anything I want out of anyone. My words wouldn't even matter, just the sound of the accent would be enough!
It was fun trying to translate the menus and receipts and artwork explanations into English. Matt's Portuguese helped a lot, along with some over-the-phone Italian grammar lessons from his sister Michelle. Add that to the bit I learned before our trip, and we got by alright.
I had never been immersed in another culture and language until this trip. (Well...as immersed as you can be in tourist cities.) There's something really exciting and romantic about it. Matt was the only person who sounded normal and familiar to me. Yes, there were plenty of American tourists, but the people we talked to were Italians -- hoteliers, restaurant servers, security guards, ticket agents -- all of whom spoke broken English (if any) with thick accents. That, combined with all the languages we heard from other foreign tourists, added to the magic. The magic of my husband and me being in our own little world surrounded by strangers.
On the other non-romantic hand, there was cigarette smoke everywhere. Like ev-er-y-where. I won't be surprised if I eventually die of lung cancer just from the ten days I spent walking the streets of Italy.
Also, since we're being unromantic, I noticed that Europe (meaning Frankfurt and Italy) has the weirdest collection of toilets I've ever experienced. I sat on a different kind of toilet every single day! What is with that? You'd think there was a competition to see who could make the weirdest shaped receptacle for human waste, with the flusher in the most hidden, obscure place possible. Like it was an art form. Or a strange game among janitors. Rectangles, ovals, circles, tall backs, no backs, seats, no seats (yuck), little flush/big flush options. What are they working on over there? Are the toilets just to distract us from something bigger? Only time will tell. I know, I should've taken toilet pictures.
Anyway...
Day 10
This was our last day. It's sad even to think about!
First thing, we caught a vaporetti out to the little island of Murano, where the glass-blowing factories are. Venice has a few islands in its lagoon -- one known for its lace, one for glass, one for its very old church, and one serves as a cemetery. We went to Murano hoping to see some glass-blowing demonstrations, but we went at the wrong time of day. So we ended up browsing the cute little glass shops and thinking about everything our boys would break if they were there. We left with a pair of earrings and that's all.
After the ride back, we entered St. Mark's Basilica. We had an audio tour for this one and it was incredible to learn about. The inside walls, ceilings, and floors are covered with gold mosaics and colored marble. It contains 4,750 square yards of Byzantine mosaics. The floor rolls like waves because its foundation has been warped over time from the water underneath. Over the body of St. Mark stands an altarpiece (Pala d'Oro) of the most vibrant gold, decorated in religious scenes and studded with hundreds of valuable stones like emeralds, pearls, sapphires, rubies, topaz. It was unbelievable! I think pictures were not allowed inside, so here are some from the outside porch.
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| The floor |
After seeing the Basilica, we listened to another audio tour about St. Mark's Square while we stood and watched people try to take pictures with pigeons on their arms.
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| Those are my new glass earrings. |
This is the Doge's (Duke's) Palace, which is connects to the Basilica. We didn't go inside, but it was very pink and beautiful.
I was really impressed with the clock tower in the square (Torre dell'Orologio). I like how the face has all twenty-four hours on it. That's also one of the world's first "digital" clocks up there, with its numbers flipping every five minutes.
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| 3:00 in Roman Numerals |
We decided to ride the water bus back up the Grand Canal and stop at the famous Rialto bridge and walk around. The bridge is bigger than most, with shops in the middle and pretty white arches.
We saw many many gondolas with their striped gondoliers (none of whom looked like Fabio, by the way), but didn't feel like forking out the cash for our own ride. Just having them around for ambiance was enough. We even got to see a big guy standing up in the boat singing opera for his customers! Which was cool, but I think it would've cost about 150 Euro. Crazy.
I couldn't resist taking this picture, for memory's sake. Every single building had laundry strung up somewhere. It just added more color and character and Italian-ness to the streets. I loved it!
After getting more gelato and Matt haggling for a bag of squishy splat ball souvenirs, we weren't hungry for dinner until late. There was a kebab place right by our hotel, so we ate those again and decided we should have been going there every day. A delicious way to end the trip!
Day 11
On March 14th, we woke up at 4:00 am to catch the bus to the Venice airport and start our trip home. I watched Tower Heist on the airplane, listened to a beautiful recording of Les Miserables, read more of The Agony and the Ecstasy, and did a bunch of my nerdy little word puzzle games. Sounds kind of boring, but it was actually nice to be able to sit for a whole day instead of walking for hours and hours. My feet were tired. It was also my last chance to relax before returning to full-time motherhood. (Which I was actually really excited about, by the way. Vacations have a way of helping me appreciate my normal life.)
What better way to end a post about the beautiful country of Italy than with a cell phone picture of a real frankfurter in the Frankfurt Germany airport?
I know a better way...a cell phone picture of me gagging over a real frankfurter at the Frankfurt airport.
On that trip home, I cannot describe the excitement and anticipation we both felt to get home and see our boys. It really started to get intense when we walked off the last plane, waited to get through customs, waited for the shuttle to our car, endured the long 2.5 hour drive home, not even stopping for food because we didn't want to miss the boys, just in case they were staying up past bedtime to wait for us. It was silly, but we didn't want to waste a single minute!
That night, this is what we found waiting for us on our garage door. Not Josh -- he was asleep already. But he made these precious welcome home signs that just about made me cry.
The next morning, when the boys woke up and all four of us were snuggling together in Josh's little bed, I felt complete. I felt a level happiness that could not be achieved anywhere or with anyone else. And that's really saying something, considering I just came from the best vacation of my life with the man I love more than anyone in this world.
What I'm trying to say is, even seeing all the amazing things we saw in Italy, being in those beautiful cities that I've dreamed of visiting for years, and being together 24/7 with my soul mate for the longest continuous stretch of time since we've known each other, there's actually something even better. The feeling I had when I came home and held my whole family in my arms after a long absence topped every experience from the last ten days. Honestly. There is nothing better. It gave me a good dose of perspective, of what my job is in life and why it's more important than anything else I could be doing right now.
It's good to know that I would not be happy spending time away from them. It's good to get a reminder of how much I love them, as hard as my job is sometimes. It's good to know that I love my husband enough that I don't get the least bit sick of him after spending eleven days together, rarely being more than an arm's length apart.
Everyone, you should go to Italy. It's good for the soul. Maybe not so good for your lungs or your belly pooch or your bank account, but good for everything else.
April 22 -- Watched an episode of Sherlock Holmes. There's a pretty good BBC series out there, starring Benedict Cumberbatch (yes, that's a real name). It's supposedly more true to the original stories, but set in modern times. We really like it so far.
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