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.