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.

Verona, Italy (9/09 to 9/11)

Now we are on a train from Verona to Venizia (Venice), and as I peek over to Alyssa for some potential words of wisdom on Verona, I notice that her jaw is relaxed and her eyes have come to a standstill, but what would traveling be if I couldn’t count on her, like clockwork, to drift away as soon as we are in motion. I guess I’m alone on this one. Nonetheless, my mind is flooded with fantastic memories of Verona.

On the left is the Arena, a Roman amphitheatre completed around 30AD! 

We arrived at the Verona Porta Nuova train station around 1:00 pm, and we immediately had to change our mindset away from German and into Italian mode, a language that neither of us is familiar. Luckily, some people spoke Spanish or at least can relate to it to Italian (this was very useful to me, but offended a few old school Italian Nationalists)—also, a few others spoke broken English. We spoke Spanish to a woman and she helped us find the right bus that would take us to Piazza Erbe, where our B&B was located; and sure enough, the Italian transportation system requires no magic in order to open their doors. We got off and were immediately awed by the history that was all around us.

The famous balcony of Juliet's house from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet

A typical balcony in Verona. Almost every building in the city has a gorgeous balcony. Most are lined with flowers, but I really liked this picture that Alyssa took. 

After going up and down the street a few times, we found our home for the next few days with our host, Giessele. She spoke fluent Italian, excellent Spanish, and pretty good English, but when I told her that we speak a little Spanish, she almost exclusively spoke Spanish to us with a few Italian words when she couldn’t think of how to say something in Spanish. Somehow, we managed just fine.

After we threw our bags off our backs, we rushed out of the B&B and explored Verona in all of its beauty. Our first stop was at a gelaterria to get a scoop of their world famous authentic Italian gelato to which we chose chocolate hazelnut and mint chocolate chip, and shared each. Then we realized that we hadn’t eaten lunch yet, so we tried a slice of their world famous authentic pizza pizza—both are world famous for a reason.

Torre dei Lamberti in famous Piazza delle Erbe, a plaza that has been used as a marketplace and for its social atmosphere since the time of the Romans.

We dove into a great dinner of green salad, pasta primavera, and pizza smothered in an unlikely assortment of vegetables (which tasted a lot better than I am describing), and then we went back to our room around 10:00 pm, and passed out from exhaustion—this is becoming a common theme to our evenings. Yet we also keep the theme of continuous early morning rises. That day, we ate breakfast and lunch at a local Italian produce market in order to save a little money, but mainly because we needed to detoxify our poor little overburdened bodies, unbeknownst to the infusion of European junk-food that has been finding its way into our guts for the past few days. We also went without a knowledgeable tour guide so that we could further our savings. We survived just fine on our own, and saw some beautiful sights, but we both regret not being able to connect our sights with historical facts; I’m sure a little invested time in researching the history of Verona should get us caught up just fine.

A view of Verona from Torre dei Lamberti

A nice flower (someone please tell me what kind it is) in Giardini Guisti. This Italian Renaissance garden was planted in 1580. It is absoutely enormous and has row upon row of Cypress trees—we spent about three hours there.

A single Cypress between two rows of Cypresses

Alyssa made friends! These kids were playing in a fountain and when we walked near them, the oldest handed Alyssa a turtle from the fountain!!

Piazza delle Erbe on a still, crisp evening

That night, we asked around for some live music, which to them must mean super-model runway show because after following their directions, that’s exactly what we found. There it was, a giant Italian fashion show in the middle of Piazza Bra at 10 o’clock at night, equipped with countless promiscuous Italian models surrounded by a crowd of smirking perverted Italian men. I am still wondering if this is a typical Friday night for Verona.

Live music???

I couldn’t help but think about my grandma when we found 85% dark chocolate in a supermarket—I had never seen it that high before. So we just had to buy it, and we just had to try some immediately, and we just had to devour it. 

In just a few minutes we will be in Venice! This is the part of the trip that I am looking forward to most… And look who it is finally, Alyssa with smiling lips and bright eyes. She needs a hug, but I will report back to El Blog ASAP.