Sunday June 19, 2011

Gundelfingen, Germany; Swiss Alps; Venice, Italy

Woke up at 5 am when the Gerald alarm went off. Dressed, packed and on the road by 6 am.

Stop 1: Saw a stork.
Stop 2: Bank.
Stop 3: Ice.
Stop 4: Vignetta (this is the pass, like an EasyPass that allows us to travel through Switzerland) and a Diet Coke.
Stop 5: Bathroom and scenic overlook.

Stop 6: Bathroom, breakfast and bottle caps. We had the most amazing breakfast of a rosti (fried potatoes) with an egg on top, muesli and two herbal lemonades. It was expensive (20E) but the best food we were to have for the next 4 days. Found a few bottle caps to send to our cousin Dr. Donn, who collects them. In the gift store we saw t-shirts that said, "Desperate Swisswives" and one with the "Swiss Kamasutra" which was Swiss Army knives in different positions.

Our first Alp sighting was at 8 am.

On the road we got to see the alps, but they weren't nearly as impressive as we had expected! We saw a castle in the distance at Oftringen, and a town called "Wiggertal," which made us laugh.

Stops, continued:
7. Sand Goddardo Sud - pee stop and left a bookcrossing book.
8. Battery change which caused us to get back on the highway in the wrong direction and get in the wrong lane, which we dubbed "The Lane of Shame." We were unable to get off for some time so stopped and chilled for a few minutes and took some pictures.
9. Scenic overlook and lunch with what looked like several sports teams. Noshed on ravioli. It turned out to be a non-scenic underlook. We did meet some Americans from Wisconsin.
10. Agip gas station for CocaCola Zero and a yogurt. (€ 5)

At 12:10 we arrived in Italy. Jane's GPS has a British accent, but when she says the name of a foreign city, it's a different voice, and it's pronounced as it would be by natives. So she would say, in a proper British voice, "Take the A-5 toward VENITZZZZZIA!" We soon became unable to say "Venice."

We passed through 49 tunnels - 42 in Switzerland, 7 in Italy. One was 23 km in length, in Gothard, Switzerland. Tunnels that were open on one side are not in the count. We called them "faux tunnels," which we shortened to "funnels."

Stopped for lunch at a rest stop in Switzerland. Got Rösti, and robbed the bottle cap supply for cousin Donn.

672 Kilometers from Gundelfingen to Venice, and a lot of stops!

We finally rolled onto the highway that leads to Venice. You can't take cars into Venice, but you can park and take the Vaporetto. The first time we tried, the parking lot was full. The second time we ended up with "scary parking," a small underground place where it appeared that they just keep moving the cars around like one of those puzzles where you move the little tiles around. We grabbed our rolling suitcases and left everything else behind, a little reluctantly.

We took the Vaporetto to San Marco Piazza, got off, and soon found our hotel (Hotel Citta di Milano.) The reviews we had read about the hotel seemed like there were two hotels: one that was perfectly acceptable and a fantastic bargain, the other was the worst experience anyone had ever had in the history of hotels. Thankfully, we found the former. The concierge was nice, the room was fine. Fourth floor (no elevator), two windows with views of dirty alleys, no air conditioning, but several beds, TV, a clean bathroom with shower, and a bidet. We were totally fascinated by the bidet. The hotel price included breakfast, and the hotel was just steps from "The World's Drawing Room," as Napoleon called San Marco Piazza. All this for € 95 per night.

We took a stroll along San Marco Piazza and got lost among the many small streets, and Jane was so hungry she could no longer make a decision. We finally settled on Jonny's Restaurant off of the Fondamenta dei Fulani, where we sat outside and dined on tagliatella with artichokes and pizza with gorganzola, zucchini and salami. The pasta was so-so, the pizza was pretty good. Jane had a litre of white wine, Suzanne a litre of red. Two young women sat next to us, and as Suzanne wrote in our trip diary, they wrote in theirs. We watched the passersby and played, "You know how I know you're gay?"

We decided to walk to the car because we kept worrying about it and wanted to get a few things and make sure the car was safe. It was no problem getting there - we crossed a bridge over to the parking area. The car was fine and well watched. We got the DVD player and some other stuff and headed back. What should have been about a 30 minute walk to San Marco Piazza went very wrong. We got hopelessly lost, gong in the completely wrong direction. We even tried the GPS on Jane's phone. The streets were nearly deserted!

We finally made it back to St. Margherita's Square which was full of young people, then meandered back to San Marco Piazza. On the way, in an art gallery, we saw a naked portrait of Marge Simpson. In the Piazza there were at least 3 sets of musicians playing in front of restaurants.

We made it back to the hotel, got in bed and watched 10 minutes of "Holes" before Jane passed out. It was 12:35 am.