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The way back home
We woke up on Friday ready to catch our 10:30am train back to Rome so that we could make our 7pm flight back to JFK. Of course, we went to a bakery first, so we could pick up some pastries for the trip. I finally got a cannoli:
Then we boarded our train and waited for it to depart. And waited. And waited.
An announcement was made that our train was delayed there was an "accident involving a person" on the track somewhere near Bologna, and there was an investigation taking place. We waited some more. They announced that we'd start moving at 11am. 11am came and went. They announced that we'd start moving at noon. Noon came and went.
The ride from Venice to Rome is about 4 hours, and then we'd have to transfer to a 30-minute train from Roma Termini to the airport, and we needed to check in at the airport counter by 6pm, so we sat there doing math, trying to figure out at what point, if any, we should abandon the train. There was a flight from Venice to FCO that was scheduled to get in at 4:30, but I looked up its on-time performance and it was regularly an hour late, and they had an 8kg carry-on limit so we would have had to check our bags, so it seemed risky. I suggested that if the train wasn't moving by 12:30, we should try the flight.
At 12:26, we started moving.
Trenitalia apparently decided that they would compensate us for this delay by providing us with more water and snacks than we could reasonably consume. Jilli provided this photo of the "snack box" they gave us after they had already given us bottles of water, cookies, and chips.
We got to Termini around 4:35, caught the 4:50 train to FCO, got to the ticket counter around 5:40, and by the time we got to the gate, we walked straight onto the plane.
Then it was back to New York, and I went down to South Jersey for the weekend to see Melissa, and then I flew back to Indianapolis and drove home from there and collapsed into bed and slept until 11am.
I'm flying to Seattle in a couple of weeks and I really hope my traveling luck has improved by then.
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Venice, day 3, part 6
After the Doge's Palace, we were pretty wiped out, but the Museo Correr was right there and it was included in our museum pass, so we decided to check it out.
The Museo Correr is, surprise surprise, another palace full of ornately decorated rooms. All of these palaces really started to blend together after a while. The only reason I knew these ceiling photos were from the Museo Correr and not the Doge's Palace was because, in my camera roll, they came after this photo clearly taken from a Museo Correr window.
Bonus bottle glass window:
Our museum pass also included (another?) National Archaeological Museum, which we were planning on passing up, because the one in Florence was so bad, but somehow the Museo Correr contains the National Archaeological Museum and tricked us into having to walk through it in order to get to the rest of the Museo Correr. It did feel less like an abandoned airport, so I guess that's a point in its favor.
Once we'd made our way through the Museo Correr, we picked up some takeout pasta and waited in a crowd to get on a vaporetto back to our hotel room. The first vaporetto to arrive was too crowded, but we made it onto the second. We hung out in the hotel room for a while and then took a walk at sunset to experience Venice at night. It was really beautiful, and it wasn't a hundred degrees, so we probably should have been doing this the whole time.
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Venice, day 3, part 5
After St. Mark's Basilica, we went to the nearby Doge's Palace. The Doge's Palace is where the doge used to live, back when there were doges. What is a doge, you ask? The Palace attempted to impart this information to me, but all I took away was that he was an important Venetian guy who wore a silly hat.
The top floor of the palace was basically just a museum about the various doges of the Venetian empire, and the curators clearly thought that people would be absolutely rapt by the informational placards, because at the end of the exhibit there was an entire room dedicated to the game "Guess the Doge!" where you were given several pictorial hints and you had to, as they say, guess the doge. This was, you may be surprised to hear, the least popular room of the exhibit.
The middle floor of the palace was the standard ornately decorated Italian palace with paintings on every available surface. I took my customary ceiling photos.
Museums in Italy are extremely particular about the order in which you go through the rooms. There are signs with arrows pointing you in the direction you're supposed to go, and signs with X's telling you that you should not go into that room next. These signs are basically legally binding (at least, more so than lane markings are in Italy), because if you try to deviate from the curator-specified path, a guard will frantically stop you and tell you that you are going in the wrong direction. Because if you see this room of weaponry before you see that room of weaponry, it won't make any sense, I guess?
Anyway, we proceeded along the predetermined route. The lower floors were the prison, which was pretty much what you would expect a 15th-century prison to look like (stone cells with iron bars). We opted for the "abbreviated prison route" because we figured the full-length prison route would just be... more stone cells with iron bars. We did get some nice views from some windows. though.
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Venice, day 3, part 4
I met back up with Jilli at the Fondaco, which is an extremely fancy department store. You can tell it's extremely fancy because they only have one of everything on display and their escalators are red instead of normal escalator color.
The reason we went there is that Jilli had managed to snag a timeslot to access their rooftop terrace. These timeslots are in high demand, because the terrace offers a good view of Venice.
It does not, however, offer any shade, so after about 5 minutes in the baking sun, we left, got gelato, and headed to our next stop: St. Mark's Basilica.
St. Mark's Basilica is the biggest attraction in Venice, and the closer we got to it, the denser and more annoying the crowds got. But we donned our modest clothing, found the right line, and got inside.
The interior is covered in golden mosaics. It doesn't quite translate in photos as well as the other cathedrals we've been to, but it was quite beautiful.
There was also a special section where this... ornately gilt altar thing(?) was on display. All of the figures in it are cloissone, and the artistry was impressive. We went to the basilica's museum, which was basically just a bunch of beat-up mosaics that used to be part of the basilica. And then we bid ciao to Catholic churches for rest of the trip, liberating our slutty shoulders and harlot knees.
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Venice, day 3, part 3
After the Museo Fortuny, we parted ways for a bit; Jilli went to another palace that used to be owned by a rich guy, and I went to Ca' Pesaro, the modern art museum.
I actually really liked their collection, especially their new permanent collection donated by Gemma De Angelis Testa, whose taste apparently meshes well with mine. There were a few Ai Weiwei pieces, and I was excited to see this piece by Do Ho Suh, a Korean artist who did "Fallen Star" at UCSD, one of my favorite art installations.
After I'd made my way through the museum, it was lunchtime, so I had a sad pizza in the museum cafe. (They can't all be winners, I guess.) Then it was time to meet back up with Jilli for our next attraction!
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Venice, day 3, part 1
We didn't have anything concrete planned for the morning of our last day in Venice, so we looked at the museums that were included in our Venice museum pass and decided which ones we wanted to go to. We were both interested in the Museo Fortuny, so off we went.
The Museo Fortuny is a museum devoted to Mariano Fortuny, a "Spanish polymath" (according to Google) who mostly did design stuff (textiles, fashion, stage sets) and painting. The top floor is decorated the way he set it up, and it's all very decadent, covered in sumptuous fabrics and objets d'art. (And some taxidermied birds, for some reason?)
The walls were hung with many of his paintings, the style of which I enjoyed. The museum's centerpiece is the "Winter Garden," a room that he painted a giant trompe l'oeil mural around to make it feel like you're in an ancient Greek garden.
There were also exhibits of some of the clothing he designed.
On the ground floor they had a temporary exhibition of art by Giovanni Soccol, a contemporary artist who does these big, impressionistic paintings of Venetian architecture. They were really cool, and possibly my favorite part of the museum (no offense, Mr. Fortuny).
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Venice, day 2, part 2 (Torcello and Burano)
The next stop after Murano was Torcello, an island a bit farther out. Torcello is much less built-up than Murano, which meant it was less crowded, but also meant there weren't as many buildings to provide shade.
The main (and only) attraction on Torcello is a cathedral, which we trudged our way over to under the unrelenting sun. It wasn't nearly as ornate as the cathedrals we've been seeing, but the inside was covered in detailed mosaics. (We weren't allowed to take photos, so you'll just have to take my word for it.) It was pretty, but I'm not sure it was worth contributing 5 euros to the Catholic church to see it. We were overheated and exhausted, so we decided it was time for a lunch break in one of the restaurants along the canal. I got the bolognese, which has apparently become my go-to "I don't trust my stomach but I need to eat in a restaurant" meal.
Then it was on to our final island destination, the nearby Burano. Burano is much more touristy than Torcello, about on the same level as Murano; although it's farther away and doesn't have glass-blowers, the houses are painted a range of bright colors, making it very picturesque.
Whereas Murano is known for its glass, Burano is known for its needle lace. We visited the Lace Museum and learned a bit about how needle lace is made, and saw some very impressive specimens of handmade lace. I was particularly taken by this incredibly detailed tablecloth.
We did some more shopping, and Jilli took this creepshot of some women working on lace (probably not the most common subject of creepshots) while I talked to the shop clerk in the background.
When we were done on Burano we took a long, hot vaporetto ride back to Venice. You'd think that being on a boat on the water with the windows open would be a lovely, breezy affair, but vaporettos somehow manage to be as stuffy as an unventilated subway car. We staggered back to our hotel room (this was the longest we'd been out without a hotel break the whole trip) and I took a nap while Columbo played on the TV.
I wasn't feeling up for a real dinner, so while Jilli went off on her own in search of food, I walked to the nearby supermarket and picked up an instant noodle cup to eat back in the hotel room. Then it was bedtime so we could be rested for our last full day in Italy!
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Venice, day 2, part 1 (Murano)
When you wake up after an evening of food poisoning, what do you want to do? Obviously, get on a crowded boat for an hour-long ride.
I was actually feeling fine, but we decided to start at the closest island, Murano, instead of heading straight for the farthest islands (Torcello and Burano). Plus, Murano was the island we were most excited about, so we wanted to be sure to get there.
Murano is famous for its glass, and we did some shopping as we walked along the canal to get to the Museum of Glass. There are what feels like hundreds of different shops, most of which sell the same exact things in slightly different configurations, although there are also a few artists' shops that sell original work. The museum itself was relatively small (the one in Tacoma is quite a bit bigger) but it was cool to see elaborate glass art that was hundreds of years old.
I especially liked the room full of millefiori canes, many of which were so tiny and so detailed that the museum provided macro photos so you could see what they actually were.
I also liked that the museum included some work by contemporary artists, like this display of an artist's canework that included a pickle and a chicken.
After the museum we got our customary mid-morning gelato, then hopped on a vaporetto (water bus) to get to the islands further out.
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Venice, day (evening) 1
After a brisk 2.5-hour train ride, we arrived in Venice! Venice was theoretically 10 degrees cooler than Rome/Florence, but it was humid enough to make up for the difference.
We hauled our luggage up the steps of the Constitution Bridge and then down the steps of the Constitution Bridge and eventually found our hotel, which was a block off from where Google maps told us it was.
Google maps has some absolutely bizarre glitches when it comes to Venice. And I don't just mean GPS issues, where it has trouble telling where you are. I mean that when you ask for directions from one place to another, it tells you to, for example, walk to the water bus, take it one stop, then walk back to where you started and walk to your destination. Or it tells you to just walk across the canal like Jesus. Here are some choice screenshots.
So we had to rely on our own navigational skills, by which I mean we had to rely on my own navigational skills, which are not, like, fantastic but are still better than Jilli's. (Although I will say that when we emerge from a store, she is much better at remembering which direction we were walking in before we went into the store.)
Anyway, Venice is a lovely, picturesque city, and the sound of the water lapping at the sides of the canals is very soothing.
But it is also very crowded, and particularly very crowded with tourists, and particularly very crowded with tourists who walk very slowly and stop in the middle of pathways and don't rein in their children when they're running around screaming.
We relaxed in our hotel for the hottest hours and then went to dinner a few blocks from our hotel. We ordered Bellinis, because Bellinis originated in Venice.
I had pasta with shrimp and zucchini. It was good, but the shrimp was overcooked.
As the meal ended, I started to feel a little bit off. I attributed it to the Bellini, because I rarely drink, and when I do, I don't drink quickly. When we got back to the hotel room it became apparent that, instead, I had a spot of food poisoning. (I assume it was the sandwich I'd had on the train; should have stuck with hard cheeses.) Jilli was a champ, providing me with her emergency Zofran and not making me feel bad for taking over the bathroom for a couple of hours. Thankfully it passed pretty quickly, and by 11pm I collapsed into bed, took half a Klonopin, and passed out. (And Jilli could finally take a shower.)
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Palazzo Pitti ceilings
And bonus bottle glass window:
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Florence, day (morning) 4
Our train to Venice wasn't scheduled to leave until 12:30, so we had a morning to spend in Florence. We headed to Oltrarno, the neighborhood south of the Arno river, and checked off the final two destinations on our museum pass: Palazzo Pitti and Boboli gardens, which are adjacent to one another. We decided to start in Boboli gardens because the day was only going to get hotter.
The Boboli gardens are very big, very hilly, and very pretty. Lots of statues and fountains and whatnot. The main attraction, though, was the views it afforded of the hillside and the city center.
But it also had this cool monkey fountain.
Sun-roasted and sweaty, we headed indoors, to the Palazzo Pitti.
Italy seems to have no shortage of "baroque palace with hundreds of ornately-decorated rooms filled with art" attractions, and Palazzo Pitti was one of them. (There will, of course, be a separate post of Palazzo Pitti ceiling photos.) The Palazzo Pitti also had a "modern art gallery" but I took a peek into the first room and it seemed to be the same boring old art but from the early 1800s instead of the 1500s. So instead I dragged Jilli to the "costume" section, where they had a temporary exhibit about Germana Marucelli, a designer from the 1960s and 1970s. I wasn't familiar with her, and I enjoyed seeing and reading about her designs.
She was friends with and collaborated with a lot of visual artists, and I liked that the museum exhibited those artists' works alongside the garments they inspired/collaborated on.
After the Palazzo Pitti, we still had some time to kill before our train, so we had a little wander around Oltrarno. In the plaza outside Palazza Pitti, I ran into the artist who I bought some watercolors from the last time I was in Florence, and I showed him a photo of them matted and framed (which I finally did like six months ago). We took one last look at Ponte Vecchio, and picked up some sandwiches to eat on the train. (I got prosciutto, brie, and arugula, and it was delicious and I devoured the entire thing, because it could only be good for me.) (This is foreshadowing.)
Then it was off to Venice!
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I can tell I'm ready to go back home because I've reached the point where I want to hit other tourists.
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Tiramisu (did not taste perceptibly of tiramisu)
Running tally of gelato flavors I have had on this trip:
Espresso (way too strong, caffeine ruined my day)
After-Eight mint (way too minty, like chewing gum. Just a punch in the face by a minty fist)
Pistachio (delicious)
Chocolate (this was more of a sorbet than a gelato but it was delicious and refreshing)
Cannoli/Hazelnut double scoop (amazing)
Lemon basil (also more of a sorbet than a gelato, very refreshing)
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Florence, day 2, part 3
After the amazing mosaic art museum, we decided to cross off the nearby National Archaeological museum, since it was included in our museum pass.
The museum was... weird. It must have been under construction? Or in the process of moving? It felt like we were walking around an abandoned temporary exhibition at an airport. We barely saw any other people, and there wasn't much information about the pieces on display. At one point there was a sign for bathrooms and we had to walk down a dark hallway to get to them. I had to turn on my phone flashlight.
I did like the long hallway full of stone seals, but it was like 85 degrees in the museum so we didn't really feel like taking the time to admire them all. The most exciting part of the museum was probably when we reached a vending machine that was selling bottles of water for 40 cents each. Jilli started shaking out her coin purse and I was pretty sure she'd be leaving the museum absolutely loaded down with as many bottles of water as she could carry. (She actually only got two.)
Anyway, well-stocked on water, we headed to Florence's Jewish Museum and synagogue. The museum wasn't really anything to write home (or blog) about, but the synagogue was absolutely stunning. Every surface was painted beautifully, and although it had the basic architectural structure of a church, it had all these Moorish-inspired details in the decorations.
When we were done boggling at the synagogue, we headed back to the hotel for our customary rest. For dinner we went out for pizza. And that was the end of the day!
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Running tally of gelato flavors I have had on this trip:
Espresso (way too strong, caffeine ruined my day)
After-Eight mint (way too minty, like chewing gum. Just a punch in the face by a minty fist)
Pistachio (delicious)
Chocolate (this was more of a sorbet than a gelato but it was delicious and refreshing)
Cannoli/Hazelnut double scoop (amazing)
Lemon basil (also more of a sorbet than a gelato, very refreshing)
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Florence, day 2, part 2
When we bought our Uffizi tickets, we decided to go for the "Passepartout" museum pass that would also include the Pitti Palace and Boboli Gardens. But it also included two other, much smaller attractions: the National Archaeology Museum, and the Museum of the Opificio delle Pietre Dure (essentially the workshop of precious stone mosaics). After chowing down on some more sandwiches for lunch (you can't throw a rock in Florence without hitting a prosciutto sandwich), we headed to the mosaic museum first.
It was small but so cool. The workshop was first established during the Renaissance, and it was incredible how the artists were able to use the natural color variations in stones to create such dimensionality and detail.
The museum had maybe my favorite thing I've seen this entire trip, which was this bird-themed table top.
Look at the detail on this owl!
On the second floor, they had a display of lots of different types of stone, so you could see the variations in color and pattern that the artists worked with.
There were only a few other people in the museum (probably because everyone else was waiting to get into the cathedral) and the collection was so lovely. Definitely one of my favorite spots in Florence.
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