We began this auspicious trip by waking up at butt in the morning, in order to make it to school by 8 a.m. (at which time, I might mention, the sun had only just risen). We celebrated the beginning of the trip with a glass of wine, which was not at all inappropriate because it was frizzante wine, which is a breakfast wine (probably not, I just made this up. maybe it's true)…so this was totally sensible. Hopped on the bus that USAC had chartered for us, a gleaming example of Italian auto manufacturing, by which I mostly mean the bus had TWO doors—a regular one up front and then one in the middle for the back half of the bus. Good thinking, Italy. We then embarked on the six-hour ride, stopping briefly at a gas station to get lunch. Now, I know that gas stations in America sell hot food; they sell hot dogs and plastic cheese nachos and, well, that’s about it. This particular gas station had both a coffee bar and a sandwich shop. Of course, an Italian sandwich shop is rather different from your regular Port of Subs. The ingredients are all completely fresh, the sandwiches are pre-made (none of this picky American business—you eat what’s on the sandwich already or you don’t eat at all), and then they grill the one you pick. I had a bagel (now pronounced baaah-ghel), the first that I have encountered since arriving in Italy. And so I had a sesame seed baaah-ghel sandwich with prosciutto, cream cheese and assorted greens. DELICIOUS. All these adventures in new-old food had exhausted me obviously, so I napped for a while until the program leaders (Alyssa, Daniele and Eliana, for future reference) decided to put on a movie, Something’s Gotta Give. Most of the time, the movie was drowned out by all the guys on the bus complaining about old people sex scenes and girls aww-ing every time someone fell in love. THANK GOD Italians love subtitles as much as I do. They are a people after my own heart, that’s for sure. And, uh, I can’t believe I just wrote 400 words on the bus ride…so I’m going to move PAST the incredibly long trek we had to make from the bus to the hotel once it arrived in Venice, and I won’t even mention the fact that one of the guys in the program got attacked with shaving cream on the walk to the hotel because that is just the Italian way during Carnevale. So now that I’ve NOT mentioned these things, I can tell you about my hotel room.
I shared the room with four other girls, split between two bedrooms, and we each got our own beds, thank God (side note: I never know if I should type thank God or thank god, but I suppose that’s a discussion for another day). The only really notable part of the room, actually, was the bathroom. The toilet area was singularly interesting, I think. In the little bathroom, the toilet was situated as per usual (you know, on the ground), but then the walls surrounding the room had bench seating, as if inviting spectators during urination. It’s possible that I’m not explaining this very well, so I’ll put a photo (YES, this post has photos!) at the end of this. We then all left the hotel and went on a walking tour, led by an absolute gem of a woman named Maria, who mostly spent the entire time relating every sight in Venice back to her two sons and how awesome they are. We then went to dinner at a restaurant where I decided to splurge (the first of many such occasions on this trip) on a dinner known as the “tourist menu,” which is apparently very common in such a touristy town as Venice. Basically, for a flat fee of fifteen euros, I got two courses, a side dish and two glasses of wine. I’d like to note at this time that fifteen euros never seems so bad when you agree to pay it, because the number fifteen attached to such a large meal seems very reasonable, but it becomes less so when you realize that you just spent 21 dollars on dinner. Anyway, it was very delicious, but I probably wouldn’t do it again, because I don’t want to be a poor for the rest of my life on account of this trip. After dinner, we went back to the hotel and socialized with many USACers, before departing for Campo Santa Margherita, a relatively large piazza where they were having a concert/dance party in celebration of Carnevale. It was quite good fun, aside from being mildly harassed by a creepy Italian man. We caroused for a while more in the square before wandering home (and I do mean wandering, I can’t begin to explain how easy it is to get confused in Venezia, a city in which there are eight million side streets that all look exactly the same). Stumbled into bed, at which point I found out that my bed, instead of having a headboard, was backed up against the radiator. I slept quite warmly.
The next morning, had to wake up at butt a.m. again to catch the continental breakfast at the hotel. Then got ready for the day and went out shopping, where I procured myself a mask and a leather bracelet and uh…nothing else. This was the point in the trip where I had fooled myself into thinking that I wasn’t going to spend very much. Yeah, OK, Kathleen. We stopped for lunch in a small family restaurant, which was a gigantic blessing not so much because I was hungry but because my feet hurt so damn much and I finally got to sit down. Had pasta carbonara (delicious) and scored some free cookies for dessert (I know, how thrifty of me). Then walked around for another million hours. Actually, when I said before that I bought two things and nothing else, I lied. I bought CONFETTI, which was easily the best investment of my life. Given the festive atmosphere of the city, the custom is to throw confetti at anyone who looks even a little bit fun, especially children. So I occupied myself most of the day throwing bits of paper at people and getting them thrown back at me. After lunch, we wandered into Piazza San Marco (the biggest in Venice, where all the famous stuff is), where there was a parade going on. Before we reached the parade area, we ran into a group of old people who seemed to be having as much fun with confetti as we were. Very quickly, we were engaged in a confetti-throwing war, of which I was of course the first casualty. I blame it on my impetuous nature. In any event, I had a lot of confetti thrown in my mouth, which incapacitated me for a while as I tried not to die. Nevertheless, I quite enjoyed it, and I wish all old people were that much fun. Then watched the parade, which was cool, I guess, nothing too special. Wandered around a bit more before deciding to go back to the hotel to nap for a while, which was HARDLY A SUCCESS. The route we thought would be most efficient to get back was apparently blocked (which is outrageous, by the way, on one of Venice’s busiest days of the year), so we took random streets, encountering many human traffic jams, for AT LEAST an hour (maybe more?) before making it back to the hotel. At this point, I was very grateful for my nap, and got up only because the prospect of dinner was presented to me. Good dinner, slightly marred by the pervy waiter who tried to kiss Micki and who spent much time hitting on the hottest girls at the table. By the end of dinner, we were the absolute last people left in the restaurant, so the owners were trying to get us to leave. They asked if we wanted to meet some real Italians in Venice, which was of course a yes, and we were introduced to an Italian about our age, who took all ten of us back to his apartment to hang out with him and his roommate, a nice guy named Chef Tony who spoke zero English, the result of which being that the burden of conversing with him fell solely upon me, the only one of us who knew enough Italian to make fractured small talk. We also learned how to roll our own cigarettes, some of us in theory rather than in practice (and by some of us, I mean me, since I don’t actually smoke, nor did I actually roll a cigarette). Upon leaving their place, we tried to walk home. We tried a lot. Instead, we ended up on the complete opposite side of the city, literally at water’s edge. We asked some boatmen for directions home, but they told us it was TOO FAR TO WALK, that is how far we were. They told us to turn left and go straight forever basically, but when we made the first left it was quite literally a dead end…so we decided to take the next left, which, as it turned out was into WATER. I’m still not actually sure how we got back to the hotel, except by ignoring every direction the boatmen gave us and mostly just walking blindly. Two hours later (it seemed), we arrived back to the hotel, outside whose doors we were promptly accosted by an Italian man, who felt the need to let us know which among us was the most beautiful (Micki) and proclaim her Miss Venice 2010. Cool. We escaped him, got back to our rooms, and basically collapsed into a very deep sleep.
The next morning, had another quick breakfast and did some quick shopping (postcards, souvenirs, etc., completely flouting my plan of not spending any more money) before hopping on the bus to drive to Verona. Arrived, took many group photos and saw some very expensive shops where I obviously bought nothing, and then came to Romeo and Juliet’s balcony, one of the main attractions of Verona. Took photos with a statue of Juliet, groping her breast as is the custom (supposedly if you rub her right boob, you will have good luck in love….as Juliet so obviously did). Then admired what I suppose I can call the Wall of Love, a passageway that leads to the statue where people write love notes and stick them to the wall. Literally thousands of love notes, which was a very impressive sight, many photos were taken. Then it was time for lunch. We had learned on the bus that the culinary specialty of Verona is horse, so of course it was my singular goal to eat horse and be able to tell everyone what an adventure it was. We found a place that served it, so we had cavallo alla pastissada (or something like that), which was some sort of horsey stew served with polenta. It was actually pretty good, tasted a lot like roast beef, although I actually felt strangely guilty while I was eating it. I don’t even like animals that much, and I never feel any guilt eating any other meat, but this was weird. I’m glad I ate it though. Anyway, hopped back on the bus, endured Analyze That for the ride home, took a little nap, and arrived back in Torino at about 8 p.m. I arrived back to lots of homework, which was awesome. And now I am done. I really have no way to end this post gracefully, since I have nothing left to say. Also, I should never pre-type one of these into Word ever again, because now I know that I just wrote a 2000-word post. Your lives are all 2000 words richer now; I am very sorry. Okay, photos now. Ciao! xo
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