Part of me feels pretty bad for going to my brother’s dream town. At the same time (Kevin, if you’re reading this), there really isn’t anything stopping him from going, so that’s up to him 🙂
Arriving at Venice gave me a completely different feeling. Touristy, indeed, however the lack of mopeds and three-wheeled cars made it so much nicer. Plus, you could actually see something that represented a horizon. Oh, and I think there were a few green things. By the way, if I ever die, I decided I want my obituary to lie and say that I was killed by a scooter in Florence.
The hostel that we went to was pretty decent. We unloaded our stuff and headed out to get lost in the city and see some sites. Emily was in kind of a rush to see things because she was only staying for one day, where I had decided I would stay for two and was a bit more relaxed. I think this may have caused a bit of tension because we were fighting to work at different paces. I was reminded of Unkle Dik always saying how “She’s always in such a hurry… jeesh”.
Northern Italy is interesting in that it is both a relaxed yet tense culture. Sure, there are cafe’s around, but people don’t sit in them and relax. They don’t have time to sit, so they stand, grab a drink, say 30 words, and run out to go to somewhere else equally unproductive. Part of me thinks maybe it is just bad social management. A Brittish woman I ended up talking to who is living in Venice told me that on her way from the airport, the family who picked them up stopped at 5 houses on the way home just to say hello to them for a few minutes. Naturally, she prefers having friends over for an evening and enjoying a cuppa tea. I’m with the English on this one.
When we returned to our rooms after a nice day wandering all over Venice and seeing some sites – Churches…. oh, and of course THE David. David is big, I mean really tall. Photos don’t show that because you never see an actual person next to the statue. His hands looks malproportioned to me, but then reading the text about it, it said something like “never before has such perfection in the ratios of appendages been so perfect”. Shows what I know about art and form.
When we got back to the room, there were several other people there including 2 Aussies and a guy from Alaska. We ended up chatting for some time, then headed out to go to some bars. Things in Venice close early, but a few bars remained open.
The drink of choice: 1€ glasses of wine on draft. Yes, wine on draft, right next to all of the beer. Not that bad, considering the price and that I’ve had much worse wines in the States which pour from a bottle. I had 4 glasses, and I was good. 4€ is not a bad price to pay for that.
On that note, everything in Italy seems pretty expensive… that is, except for alcohol. I’m not quite sure how they pull that off.
The next day, I ended up hanging out a bit with one of the guys from the dorm room until he had to head out by train. I just wandered around, grabbed some food and tried to get unlost in Venice. Because there really are only walkways and not roads, things tend to be not labeled and navigating is rather difficult. The canals make things interesting, but certainly not easier. At this point, the canals are mostly just for touristy gondolas. Walking with Emily, we were approached several times by eager gondoliers. Not for 80 Euro we’re not.
I left Venice at 9pm for Slovenia, with scheduled arrival at 2:30am. Train ride includes noisy snoring snacking old man and smelly talkative Romanian at no extra charge. So much for shut-eye on the night train.
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