Blog September 29 (Michaelmas) -- Another Long Night in Venice

Blog September 29 (Michaelmas):

(Guest posting by Jose)

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Another long night.

You wake up. You’re drenched in a cold sweat. For a week you’ve been having the same nightmare. He’s everywhere, behind every corner. Sometimes he watches from a distance but mostly he chases. You try to go back to sleep but the images are still stuck in your head. The mosquitos don’t help either, just hovering and buzzing around your head, waiting for you to slip away into darkness. Around four, you fall into a restless sleep filled with images of alleyways and train stations and the feeling of being watched.

You wake up late, but there’s still half an hour to make it to the café before they stop serving until lunch. Every day you go to the same place, but every day you get lost and only seem to stumble upon it by accident. For all you know it could be a different place every day. Everything looks the same in Venice but different at the same time.

Today it takes longer than usual to find the café. Every path you chose seems to be a dead end. You finally get there but they’re out of croissants so you settle for a panino and a coffee. You eat and leave.

You resist the idea of going back to the hotel. Another day cooped up would make you insane, so you decide to walk. You have no idea where you’re going so you just follow the crowd. Are they tourists, or are they locals on their way to work?

You hope for the second but deep down you know they’re not. You end up by the canal and decide to hop on a vaporetto. The fresh air might help, and you know he won’t be there.

Or will he?

You get on and sit down near the back. You want a good view of everybody who comes on. Time passes and nothing happens but you still can’t enjoy the view: you can’t shake the feeling that he’s on the boat, maybe even right behind you. This isn’t working so you get off and head for Saint Macro’s. It’s a short walk and you only get lost once. The line is long and doesn’t seem to be moving. You’re feeling better though, with all the people around you. How can he find you in a crowd? You look just like everybody else.

And that’s when you notice him. He winks at you and begins to walk over. Your stomach clenches. He’s too close to run. He’s in front of you now. He sticks his hand out and says “Hi, I’m Rick Steves.”

You wake up. You’re drenched in cold sweat . . . .

(For those who might not know, Rick Steves is the author of numerous well-known blue-and-yellow-bound travel books. He is Len’s quick-trip bible.)

 

Restaurants in Venice

Not very many people know this, but there is only one restaurant in Venice. All the restaurants you see are connected at the back and sides by tunnels and passageways to one big kitchen. They are all run by the same people. The menus are written in different typefaces and styles of handwriting, the prices are a little different, the waiters take turns at different restaurants from day to day – but they are all one big restaurant.  The same with the gift shops.

More photos

More photos.

 

1. In front of the hotel Dianne and I stayed at in 2008.

2. Inside the Salute

3. A window near our albergo

4. Someone trying out for an Italian sunglasses advertisement

5. Our calle

6. One of the disreputable types who hang out around our albergo. The management can’t get rid of them.

7. One of the inside doors of our albergo

8. The reception area of our albergo

 

A sleepless night

Matt & I were both kept awake all night by mosquitos and by scratching at our previous bites.

 

A LA FARMACIA: Ho bisogno del lozione per i miei pruriginosi mori di zanzare.

 

(And when are they going to publish the real malaria statistics for Venice?)

 

From our Italian phrasebook:

Non mi dispiace guardare ma preferisco non partecipare.

I don’t mind watching, but I’d rather not join in.

 

Key to photos:

1. In the Peggy Guggenheim Collection sculpture garden

2. On the gallery up on San Marco

3. The Bridge of Sighs

4. Piazetta San Marco

5. After San Marco

6. Florian’s from a vaporetto

7. The dodge’s palace

8. With real estate as expensive as it is on the Grand Canal, some can still afford to have just a garden.

First night in Venice - and other musings

You can click on any pictures in this blog and make them bigger. Also, if you mouse-hover over them you might see the titles I’ve given some of them. The photo quality in the first few posts is pretty awful (I hadn’t learned to resize properly), but now it’s OK.

 

We were both in bed by 21.30 tonight. I was so tired I didn’t even set the alarm.   J

Now it’s 3.05 and I’m wide awake. Mosquitos woke me up. They were in Torino and in Arles as well. Huge bites.

 

We left Torino fairly early this (that is, Sunday) morning, but it took us 45 minutes to get onto the superhighway to Venice. Drove for an hour and then we both had an hour’s nap at a pit stop (see photo). Then three more hours of driving at 118 km/hr. I was the slowest thing on the road. (Talk about existential terror!)

 

A few catch-up photos. We travelled from Annecy in France to Torino with Tom, a friend of Matt’s who is living in Europe for a while. He biked, we carred.

 

As for the Alps – we deliberately avoided the tunnels and took what I think is one of the highest passes over the mountains, not through them. This was the Colle Gran San Bernardo (no dogs). Apparently there is also a piccolo GSB too. We saw a lot of cyclists!

 

We spent Sunday night in Torino (no Shroud). Crazy. A party atmosphere. They have streetcars. There was a wine and cheese party going on in one of them. The hotel had a great elevator and a great entrance way: I felt I was in an old movie. As does our Venice hotel (the entrance and the calle).

 

I have finally, after three weeks, gotten into this travel thing. My blisters are all gone. The first two weeks were an agony, and I didn’t have the sense to do anything about them. I dreaded walking, which was, generically, just about all we did. Anyway, got them fixed in Paris and all is fine. I have now got all my things organized. I can remember which pouch contains which things; I pack frequently-used things near the top; I’ve thrown out tons of floor-plans and potted histories; I wish I hadn’t packed so much (the dying wail of many travellers).

 

The first thing we do when we check into a room is re-charge the camera and the computer and Matt’s iPod. Weird. When Dianne and I came to Italy in 2005, I had to borrow Andrew’s camera. I didn’t have one of my own. Oh: and get the Wi-Fi password.

 

We have to take a traghetto to get to the hotel breakfast tomorrow! How great is that? If these sound like insomniac musings, they are. Good night.

 

[LATER]

 

Cold and rainy in Venice today. As I write this, thunder. We went to the Guggenheim this morning. Walked around a lot. Got lost. Saw Ezra Pound’s house (by accident). The Salute is always closed when I get there.