Super Mondo Big Post

I realize that it’s been a full week since I left for Venice and I have yet to tell you about it – so here’s a quick catch up!

8 of us took the train from Orvieto to Venice, which took about 5 hours.  It was a pretty chill ride, except for the last hour where about 50 middle school aged Italian kids got on after a field trip.  These kids were hilarious, we watched them get up and terrorize the teachers, play spin the bottle (water bottle – not a wine bottle J ) and listened to them all sing Hot n Cold by Katy Perry in unison.  I think that was my favorite part.  Once we got to Venice we had a few minutes to wait until our hotel sent a van to get us.  The first impression of Venice was unpleasant, as it seems to be with all major cities.  There are countless homeless people huddled up in rags in the middle of the sidewalk, many of them with a few dogs on twine leashes for some reason, who beg shamelessly. Or worse – they say nothing and just lie across your path in a smelly heap of hodge-podge fabrics and misery. There are also many large, loud, black men who shamelessly approach and berate you to buy their cheap, generic souvenirs and do-dads. 

After navigating these torrid masses we got into the hotel van for a quick 20 minute drive to our surprisingly nice hotel.  It turns out that the missing “S” is a big deal (hotel- not hostel.  That’s where I’m going with this, I’m just not sure if I’m coherent).  We were split between 2 rooms with 4 beds in each, clean private bathrooms (big deal!) and separate keys so we could leave our belongings.  They even made an attempt at American style breakfast in the morning – cold scrambled eggs, cooked hotdogs in ketchup (yep. Breakfast.) cereal with yogurt and an assortment of cold cooked veggies.  We stuck to demolishing the crepe plate and overusing the coffeemaker.  Then it was a half hour bus ride onto the actual island.

There was something I didn’t know – Venice is actually an island.  The city just kind of spills onto the mainland by way of a bridge – kind of like driving onto Long Island, or out to the end of the Outer Banks.  Once on the island, you are within a block of water at all times.  This sounds lovely, but as dear old Wikipedia informed us, there is no septic system on the island and all their crap gets dumped into the lovely “romantic” little canals.  You can tell right away.  Its worse is some places than others, and the nicer areas near the coastline definitely smell much better.  The rest of the day was spent meandering around the city.  We split up for a while and all just took the city at our own pace.  The one thing that we did do together was take a Gondola ride.  I have to admit, I really didn’t want to.  Its so obviously a tourist trap, overpriced, and I would much rather walk.  I told the gondolier this, but my absence would jack the price up another 5 euro for each of my companions so I decided I may as well get in the tippy, slow little boat instead of being the oddball out.  It was decently fun, and we got some cool pictures.  We actually had 2 boats because the max passenger number is 6. 

Boat #1: Kelsey, Tori, Lindsay, Emily

Our whole group with the gondoliers. 

After a dinner of pizza and white wine we returned to the hotel to watch The Italian Job – because every time we passed a stream/boat/bridge/piazza/pigeon someone would yell “THIS IS JUST LIKE IN THE ITALIAN JOB!!!!” and Tori had it with her.

The next morning we split up; Caitlin and Emily went into Venice for the day and then returned to Orvieto, and the other 6 of us hopped a train to Verona. It only took about 2 hours to get there and from the moment we stepped off the train Verona was one of my favorite cities.  In my opinion it was a big city that felt like a town, there were little parks with trees and fountains, the ruins of a coliseum, and lots of piazzas with loud music where locals hang out and dance at night.  We had been commenting on how we hadn’t seen any people our own age in our travels thus far, everyone seems to be in their thirties at least, and all the students are in Verona!! It was crazy.  Verona is famous for being the city of Romeo and Juliet (which actually isn’t true, but that’s another story) but I would just call it a city about love in general. 

One of our first stops (on the Rick Steves’ guided walking tour – courtesy of Kelsey of course) was this little wine shop run by a lovely Italian man who does not have a word of English in his vocabulary. 

Wine bottles of every age and value are stacked floor to ceiling in one room.  Some gather thick layers of dust, and others are obviously in consistent use.  Even the fireplace is filled with rows and piles of old bottles of varying shapes, sizes and prices.  The room next to it has the same floor to ceiling shelving system filled with every other imaginable kind of liquor.  A table down the middle is undistinguishable below various bottles. He was absolutely delighted to have 6 young women in his shop and showed us around, gave us free samples of wine, and tried to tell us about the legend of the well of love.  After we each bought our glass of wine and settled onto the long, dark, wooden benches lining the length of the store he pulled out a leaflet with the story in Italian and English which Lindsay read to us.  Here’s the short version: Boy sees girl, boy falls in love with girl, Girl snubs boy, Girl secretly falls in love with boy, Boy calls girl cold hearted, girl tells boy that if he wants something cold he’ll jump in the well, boy jumps in well, girl feels bad and jumps in well, both die. The end. And for some reason this well is a symbol of love…

Our next big stop was Juliet’s house (which looks NOTHING like the film Letters to Juliet, just so you know).  I thought it was kind of neat that people write their names on the walls as a kind of plea for their love, or to find a love, or as shameless exhibition that they have a beau. You get the idea.  Naturally we all partook in this tradition

The other superstition is that if you touch Juliet’s breast she will bless you, and it took us a good fifteen minutes to push through the masses of Italian students and asian tourists to get to her statue.

We walked around for the rest of the day, saw beautiful fountains, piazzas, counted how many times kat and Lindsay got hit on (lots), and ate dinner at a little family restaurant off the main road.  The wife of the little wine store man is a firey, feisty little black woman from Ohio and she recommended it to us, but what I am slowly learning is that no matter where I go or what I eat, it is NEVER as good as what Enya feeds us every day in Orvieto.  Even her pizza can’t be beat.  The woman is a saint.  Then we wandered until our 11:30 pm train.  The main streets were like any other city :Prada, Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, and all their designer friends made an appearance, as well and various people wearing their labels. 

Eventually we rolled into Orvieto at 5:45 am on Sunday morning, hiked up the cliff since the funicolare was closed and the bus wasn’t running yet (Sundays are awful days to travel here), and fell into bed at 6:30 in the morning.  It was definitely worth it, Venice and especially Verona were lovely cities and I’m very glad I got to see them.