Saturday June 18, 2011

Suzanne got to sleep with my Jane´s boy, who knew she needed tiger mojo.

 

Had smoothies, boiled eggs, toast and CHEESE for brekkies, with espresso made in our new camping espresso maker as a dry run.

Went to Gundelfingen town center to get some Euros and looked at some lovely clothes in a dress shop.

Drove to Freiburg to the farmers market which is held by the derelict church and under the overpass with the weird statue. Bought fresh pasta, eggs, olives. Went to the electronics store and fell in love with a helpful brown guy. We were on the hunt for something that would allow us to play Suzanne's iPod in Jane's car, as Suzanne had uploaded a few Rick Steves podcasts about Ljubljana, Split, Venice and Ravenna. We purchased and adapter but could not get it to work and had to return it.

At the farmer's market

"Brownie", the cutie muffin who tried to help us with that purchase.

Driving back to Gundelfingen Suzanne saw a stork standing in a field!

Drove to Aldi where we had to show some upstart that we were older and had more insurance. Picked up a few things there, and then walked to Edeka and tried two kinds of Gruyere - young and old. As with women, older is better. By then we were starving so we bought a rotwurst with the saltiest onions ever, and tasted smoothies and cookies in the store.

Came back to Jane's and packed the car with our pampin' gear (Karen, when she was small, called it "pampin."), but not before testing the tent.

Got our towels and bathing suits and headed for the mineral bath. In the outdoor pool there were all kinds of couples making out, so we were going around saying, "Mind if we swim wif' yo dates?" The mineral bath had changed - the "Rrrrrrrrrrricola" area is outside instead of inside now (this is where you go from one water jet to another, each one progressing up your body from your ankles to your neck. The signal to move to the next one is a bell that is the tone of the Ricola commercial.) Even the whirlpool had changed - there were three, "hot," "hotter" and "you must be a lobster."

We had dinner at the mineral bad restaurant - cream of mushroom soup, salad, schnitzel, fries, carrots, broccoli, cauliflower and wine schorles (like a wine spritzer.)

Back at Jane's we exchanged presents and had champagne. Watched the Full Monty and then went to bed - we planned to leave at o'dark thirty to head for Venice in the morning.

Friday June 24, 2011

Strobrec, Croatia; Split, Croatia.

After breakfast and cleaning up, we drove to the Ina for ice, where we got yelled at for "doing it wrong." (Parking.) Back at camp we rearranged the cooler, and then walked to the bus stop. On the way to the bus stop we looked, but couldn't find where the massive fire we had seen the night before had been. We bottle-capped all the way to the bus stop, a long, hot walk.

Took the bus into Split. As soon as we got off we went into a bakery and bought a burek, which we had read about, and some kind of cheesy strudel. Then we walked up to the entrance to Diocletian's Palace where we passed through a flea market. Inside the palace there were lots of people hawking tablecloths. We walked around and made some purchases - lavender in a sachet for Mom, fig and orange jam for Ray and Jan, sour cherry jam for Ronnie.

There was a tower, so we had to climb it. There was a funny young man selling tickets - he had a stick and he kept calling himself "Sir John." He was happy to tell us it was his saint's name day - St. Ivan - and he gave us cookies. In the meantime, he would not let anyone enter the church who had too much skin exposed. On our way climbing the tower we saw a sunglasses lens on the stairs, so we picked it up to see if we could find the owner. We figured they were crying out of one eye. The views from the tower were spectacular - the harbor where our ferry had docked, the mountains behind. And swallows, always the swallows chirping and circling and cleaning the air of mosquitoes. When we got to the bottom of the tower we could see the actual sunglasses with the missing lens sitting at the bottom of the enclosure...so that was it for the lens, we tossed it in so they could spend eternity together.

We moved on to Jupiter's Temple, where there were 3 young man selling tickets. They began to banter with us. One of them was having a birthday, so cookies were offered again. One of the three had on a Bart Simpson t-shirt, so we started calling him Bart. We decided to get pictures with them, so Bart took a picture of the two of us with the two other guys. Then one of those guys took a picture of us with Bart. Just before he snapped the picture he said to Bart, who was in the middle of us, "menage a trois." This made Bart to a spit-take - he just doubled over in laughter. The picture is great. Jupiter's Temple was interesting, very small, with a cool carved marble ceiling.

From there we went down a small street and into a souvenir shop to buy some postcards. A man visiting the shopkeeper told us that the stone used for Diocletian's Palace is the same stone that was used for the White House. Jane said, "GET OUT!" and he said, "No! I will stay with you!" He said that the same stone is still quarried 10 kilometers south.


We stopped and sat just outside the palace walls where there is "statua del mago ". Around us there was the constant soft high-pitched whistle of the swallows.

We walked through another market, where we purchased a cantaloupe and two figs. We stopped at the bakery where we had bought our burek and bought a loaf of bread.

We took the bus back to camp, and this time Suzanne spied what she thought might be a shortcut back to camp, through a little path. As we were walking the path we noticed that the towering trees on either side of us were fig trees. We managed to get some figs but they were already a little bit too dried up.

At camp we changed into our bathing suits, grabbed the "Billy Joel" (bottle of red for Suzanne, bottle of white for Jane,) our chairs, books, towels and wineglasses. We put our chairs in front of a nice RV trailer. The owners, Belgians, were at their table with their own wine bottle and glasses in front of of their RV, and we toasted them. The woman was setting up a camera with a timer to take a picture of the two of them. Suzanne offered to take the picture, but they said no, they were trying out the timer feature. A few minutes later the woman came down to the beach to show us the picture she took with the timer. She was pretty pleased with herself! Then she offered to take pictures of us. She was very sweet. They became known as "Our Belgians."

We took a dip in the water, and had to wade WAY out just to be in water up to our waists. Came back to knee deep and sat. The water was warm, but there was a layer of cold water on the top. The bottom was rocky and clear, clear green.

Back at the campsite we had some new tenters moving in - a group of Hungarian MAJOR hotties - real Stop, Drop and Roll material. We got into a conversation with one of them (the Head Hottie) and he had been born in the U.S. He immediately wanted to know if we had ever been to Fire Island. Suzanne thought this was a big clue as to their, uh, interests. They set up three tents and took off, presumably to a bar or club.

[ dinner? ]

We went to bed and during the night Suzanne woke up because it sounded like rain. It wasn't rain, it was leaves dropping on the tent. The wind was wild! Our chairs had blown over and our clothes had blown off the clothesline. Suzanne got up to save the chairs and tie down some stuff and immediately noticed that 2 of the 3 tents put up by the Hungarians were GONE, and they weren't back yet. They were in for quite a surprise. They got in in the wee hours and were pretty drunk and very surprised. In the morning we found one was in his tent and the other 2 had slept in the car.

Later we found out that the wind was known as a "Bora" wind.

Monday June 20, 2011

Venice, Murano and San Michele, Italy

Our hotel room, Citta di Milano

Notice the great view!

Up at 8 am, got dressed and went down to the Complimentary Watered-down Breakfast: cocoa puffs, corn flakes, rolls, pre-packed croissants and melba toast, cheese wedges in foil (like Laughing Cow but not as good), jam. We brought our own eggs and yogurt. The espresso and cappucino were fabulous, however.

Bought € 4 worth of beer for the bottle caps.

Jane saw a t-shirt with a little girl holding her skirt up and it said "Cosa c'e'da guardara?" After a while we found someone to translate for us: "How do it look?"

All over Venice we see groups of African men selling knock-off hand-bags. Suzanne dubs them "The Nigerian Purse Scam."

We stopped in a mask shop to find a gift for Karen. The artist as there and we had a lovely conversation. At one point she tried to use the old saw, "The grass is always greener on the other side," and it came out, "The green carpet is always better..." We found a really pretty cat mask in her store and purchased it for Karen. It was so much nicer than the others we'd seen around Venice, and we were glad to be meeting the artist as well.

Near our hotel was a lovely stationery shop, with cards, prints, etc. We were browsing in there and got into a conversation with the very friendly and chatty store owner. Suzanne had read that there was a law that all dogs in Venice must be muzzled and leashed, yet we had not seen a single muzzled dog (and we had see LOTS of dogs...) and most were unleashed. Suzanne asked the store owner, who then gave us a hilarious lesson in Italian laws and politics. Most of it went just like this: "Let me ask you something: (insert question here), followed immediately by, "I'm going to tell you." And he did. And the answer boiled down to, "In Italy we have great laws. We just don't obey them." He was charming and when Jane went to take is picture with Suzanne, he said, "May I kiss you?" Woof!

Walking around we heard a woman refer to the gondoliers as "gondolier guys." That's what we called them after that. The gondoliers were everywhere - some of them in truly traditional garb, including the hat, others dressed down a little bit. It was kind of cool to see a "gondolier guy," dressed in the traditional costume, in a gondolier identical to those used for centuries, and talking on a cell phone.

One thing we noticed, which we had encountered in Prague, was the for men, the whole world is their bathroom. We frequently saw what we came to call "Praha Piss Parties," or "Praha Piss Puddles." Oooooweeee, what's up wit' dat? What's up wit' dat?

           [ pictures omitted ]

We wanted to take the Vaporetto over to San Michele, the cemetery island of Venice. From the Vaporetto stop, we could see the island. It took only a few minutes to get there, and we got off and began wandering the cemetery. Igor Stravinsky is buried there, along with other notables. Ordinary Venetians can be buried there for 10 years, then their bones are removed and taken to an ossuary elsewhere. The cemetery is lovely and slightly creepy - completely walled, the entire island is nothing but cemetery. We looked for some of the more famous graves, including Igor Stravinsky. There was one grave that had old ballet slippers placed on it. We took lots of pictures which will be uploaded to FindaGrave.com.

We reboarded theVaporetto and went to Murano Island. This is where all the glass beadmaking takes place, but it really wasn't all that interesting to us. Suzanne sees more beautiful hand-crafted beads from the likes of Jeri Warhaftig every day. There was a cool Chihuly-like sculpture in front of which we had our pictures taken. We boarded again for a very long ride around the main island back to San Marco Piazza (we had had to walk across the width of the island from San Marco in order to board the Vaporetto to San Michele in the first place.

 

The Vaporetto was really crowded, so we moved to the back. There was a young woman with her son and husband. She got up and gave Suzanne her seat. We rode on the Vaporetto for at least another half hour, and there was lots of water traffic. The water was even a little choppy. This was a ride not through the Grand Canal, but around the outside of the main island, with stops at every outer island. At one stop, the woman and her family got up to get off the boat. The young woman moved to the front of the boat, but her young (maybe 10 or 11 years old) stayed toward the back. When the boat stopped, Suzanne ran up to the boy, gave him the bracelet off of her wrist and indicated that he was to give it to his mother. We watched as they disembarked, the boy handed the bracelet to his mother and her head whipped around to find us on the boat. The smile and surprise on her face was priceless.

Nice lady who gave up her seat, looking back at us. :)

We got off at San Marco Piazza and took another walk through the streets, trying to decide where to dine. We finally settled on a place with several dinners to choose from at 10E. We had starters of black spaghetti (spaghetti with squid ink) and lasagne, and main courses of liver Venetian-style and veal scalopini. They starters were better than the main food. Liver Venetian-style was a local specialty that Suzanne was wanting to try, but she proclaimed that liver from any diner in New Jersey is far superior, and Jane said she had better scalopini at the racetrack.

We decided we needed more wine and some dessert, so we walked around until we found a restaurant near the hotel, on a small street where we could just order our wine and dessert. We had already had wine, so this was really what they call "adding fuel to the fire." Our waiter, who was age appropriate, was delightfully flirty. When we ordered dessert he said, "There are 450 bridges in Venice, and if you cross them all, you can eat dessert." We ordered dessert, and started drinking. (The Billy Joel special - white for Jane, red for Suzanne, a litre each.) While we were waiting, we busted a young waiter standing in the doorway and just OGLING some girls walking by. He was really embarrassed! The 3 of us had a good laugh, though, once he stopped blushing. We had already discovered that young Italian men were equal-opportunity flirters. You could be dining outside at a restaurant, catch the eye of a young man walking past, and he would WINK. It was heaven, shear heaven. That was about the time we named ourselves the "Coo Coo Cougar Sisters."

The dessert came, and before we remembered to take pictures of it, it was GONE. So we took pictures of our clean plates. Jane said, "Nothing like a half litre of wine to put a smile on your face, huh Marshall?" Then we staggered, uh, walked back to the hotel and went to sleep.