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?

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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.

Tuesday June 21, 2011

Venice, Italy; Ravenna, Italy

Up at o'dark thirty. Suzanne had read that one of the best experiences you can have in Venice is to get up at dawn, so we decided to give it a go. It was true. San Marco Piazza was deserted whereas the first day you could barely move for the throngs of people and long, long lines. We wandered the piazza taking pictures in the marvelous light. Then we walked through the streets and along the canals, just enjoying the beauty and quietude.

We had on our agenda to find this weird twisty house. It was supposed to be very hard to find, and it was. It was the kind of thing where you are walking down little alleys and tiny streets and bingo, (pffffft!) there it is. It was in the back of a tiny alleyway (where they were having a PPP. See yesterday's post.) We met a beautiful tiger cat there. In Venice, they LOVE cats. Cats were depicted on the famous masks, and we found beautiful cards with cats in fancy dress.

An ass.e by any other name...

We wandered over to the Rialto Bridge and decided to stop into a coffee shop (called "Mr. Sandwich," I swear) to have a cup of espresso and cappuccino. The case was full of the most delicious looking sandwiches, and Furio was behind the counter. We ordered two different huge sandwiches which were the best food we had had in Venice.

Jane called dibs on Furio.

Went back to the hotel for a second breakfast (espresso and cappuccino, and we put the pre-packaged croissants in our bag for emergencies.) We packed up and both used the bidet for the first time.

Went to the stationers but our friend was not there. Suzanne bought Jane a Pinocchio and cricket print. We walked over to the Rialto market where we purchased dates for us and sun-dried tomatoes for Mark. Soon after we decided we were ready to split Venice.

We went back to the hotel for our bags, walked to the Vaporetto station and took the Vaporetto to Trondetto. The Vaporetto ride was marvelous - nearly the length of the Grand Canal and as it was early in the morning we saw all of Venice coming alive - boats filled with raffia-wrapped jugs of wine, a boat loaded with linen for hotels/restaurants...even an ambulance boat and a police boat. And always, the incredible architecture...slightly seedy in a romantic way, and the indescribable color of the water and the air. And despite the rumors, Venice is not dirty or smelly. The water and the streets were clean. Our only real complaints were the food (we say stick to pizza and sandwiches) and the crowds.

 Left Venice at 3 pm. Picked up and paid for the car, but when we left it was making a weird noise and the engine light was on. We told Brigitta to take us to the nearest Audi dealer. Meanwhile, we were sweating bullets both because of the heat and the fear of being stranded with a broken car! Plus the ice that had been in the cooler was long gone and we needed to get ice pronto, in what we would find was an ice-challenged country. The first Audi dealer listed didn't exist. The second one was closed for siesta or something.

Cool car at car park where we picked up our car.

We decided to go fill up on gas and see if we could get ice. We stopped at a gas station and Suzanne went in. There was a great bar/cafe, serving drinks and snacks. Suzanne asked if they had ice and the man behind the counter said, "Gelato?" No, ice. Cubes. In a bag. He pulled out cubes but he didn't have any to sell. He sent us to a large grocery store. We went straight to the courtesy counter. When we told the employee what we wanted, she picked up the phone and called the fish department and GAVE us a big bag of ice!

Nice ice people!

When we got back in the car, we discovered that the engine light was off and all was fine! Another Vacation Miracle (there were many more to come.)

Headed toward Ravenna (1.5 hrs away.) Went through another 5 tunnels, bringing the total to 54.

Arrived in Ravenna and located our hotel (Hotel Argentario.) Very nice front desk clerk, decent room, ELEVATORS! Dumped our stuff and then drove over to a nearby park and had our first genuine picnic of the 2011 Schwesterfest. We sat on our new picnic blanket on the grass and had cheese (goat cheese enrobed with nuts, eppoisses, fresh mozzarella, provolone), olives, ravioli, fruit and beer.

Checked into our hotel:

Bidet, mate!

 After cleaning up, we walked into town and saw Dante's tomb and other local monuments. We passed a large yard with ruins at the bottom of it. It was full of cats. Near Dante's tomb and the monastery there was an open area with a fenced area next to it. In the fenced area were young people in weird animal costumes doing weird animal things. It was weird. Did we say it was weird? There is a video in case you don't believe us. We walked up and down the main pedestrian area and did some window shopping. We especially like looking at the shoes - there is a trend of Gladiator-style shoes which we are not fond of. We made fun of a lot of shoes.

We finally decided to have dinner and chose a restaurant with outdoor seating where we could observe people. We ordered what is supposed to be a local specialty, "piadina." It's a sort of tortilla filled with sausage or herbs (this one was not great,) a mixed salad (also not great,) and a "Moscow Mule" (GREAT.)

Failblog: 24 Ore?

Wound our way back to the hotel taking pictures of the grand towers against the midnight-blue sky, and went to sleep.

Distance from Venice to Ravenna: 204K