Venice, Italy (Sept. 11th to end of 13th)

In St. Mark's Square. We were dancing to a quartet consisting of an accordianist, violinist, bassist,  and pianist; and we asked a guy to take a picture of us dancing, but he told us to kiss, and you never disobey the cameraman. 

I don’t need to write a extensive entry for you to know that Venice is absolutely incredible and that there is no other place like it. In a city where cars are absent, you have but two options for transportation:

1.     

      1. You take advantage of the water, a grand canal that carves through the center of the city, and you ride on a waterbus, water taxi, or one of the ever so Venetian gondolas.

2.    

      2. You saunter gently along thin paths of pavement centered between some of the finest displays of architecture in the history of man.

I’m not sure if I ever actually adjusted to the idea that my body and mind inhabited Venice for three days; a more accurate description would be to say that I floated around in utter fantasy as one does when he is vividly dreaming. Here were some of the things that I documented during my dreams:

Lovers on a Gondola ride down the Grand Canal

 

Sadly, this building is completely and utterly ordinary in Venice

View from our hostel room.


 

A view of Venice from the clocktower in St. Mark's Square

One of the many sights to see while going down The Grand Canal

On the back patio at the Guggenheim Museum, which faces the Grand Canal

Don't look too closely. You could be poked.

One tale I’ll tell:

Before I left for Europe, I decided that I would spend a large sum of money on one thing, and that was to go to Teatro La Fenice to see the famous opera, La Traviata.  I decided not to buy tickets before we came to Venice because there was a 15% fee for purchasing tickets online, so we instead chose to venture to the theatre a day before the show to seek a pair of severely discounted last minute tickets. But the front desk madam informed us that ticket prices were either 10 Euro for audio only seats (no view of the opera), 50 Euro each for limited visibility seats, or 150 Euro each for full visibility floor seats—the rest had sold out; so basically I had no other choice but to cough up 100 Euro and barely see the opera. But there’s a twist to this story, there’s always a twist, life is twisty. Madame Opera Desk Woman leaned over to us and spoke under her breathe that if we returned tomorrow, thirty minutes before the start of the opera, hopefully the prices would be a little lower. Since I am my father’s son, I decided to take the cheap way out and wait until the following day. The next day, we dressed ourselves in on our suitcase best and marched over yonder to the theatre for a once in a lifetime experience. We pranced up the steps leading to the ticket desk and waited our turn. There were only two types of tickets left, Audio Only or the two floor seats that were 150 Euro each. SHIT! Ahh, but this story is like a Churro™, it’s so damn twisty.  The floor seats were now half price because they were the only two left, and it was so last minute. So a couple of college students (one severely underdressed and under-groomed) sat amongst suit-wearing, accomplished Italians. Needless to say, the opera was unbelievable, and it’s true that you don’t need to speak Italian to understand an opera because there is so much emotion conveyed in their voices and body gestures.

Not the best quality, but this gives you an idea of how extravagant it looks inside the theatre. 

View from our seats. 

By the way, Alyssa performed her own little twist, but instead of surprising me with cool stuff like opera tickets, she vomited, spewed, and ralphed in three great places (St. Mark’s Square, The Guggenheim Museum, and a pretty alleyway next to the Guggenheim museum). Even more odd is that she managed to go unseen by any and all humans (except me) on all three accounts, and even more peculiar is that once we arrived in Barcelona, she was totally fine. For almost two days, she upchucked anything that she put into her body. Then after fasting for a day, she felt completely fine, was right back in action, and oh so hungry. I’ll stop my twisting for now.

A building along the Grand Canal, quite the façade.