Gondola Ride

Goodmorning Venice!! Our time in Venice was pretty relaxed, a great way to wind down. As payback for shopping for Jody in Barcelona, and since I was out of clean clothes (I had planned on doing some in Rome but didn’t get around to it) we stopped in a few shops until I found a new shirt to wear. We spent most of the morning walking through Venice, through a small park, down random tiny alleys that open up to giant squares with a church in the middle. Truly amazing. Even more amazing was what we found…let me back up a second, Jody and I were talking (as we often have on this trip) about how her favorite shop in the universe is Fendi, that if she could, she’d buy the store…anyway, not 5 minutes later we stumbled on…you guessed it, a Fendi store. Reluctently I stepped foot inside with Jody and shuttered at the price of what they were selling. We only stayed inside for a few moments but it definitely made Jody’s day. At one point, we were walking past a dog and I reached down to pet it…and ended up getting an Italian dog kiss…wet….slobbery…lick up my forearm. Stopped in a small resturant for some Italian food and got on the subject of religion. I won’t get into the details of our conversation but it was really good to hash over things that I’ve been questioning for the last few years.
As the day wore on, more vendors showed up along the tourist strip which lead to another quick Jody shopping story. The first few guys that approached us we continued by until Jody couldn’t resist any longer…we stopped just to see what they had and Jody quickly spotted one she liked (it was a Parada). He told us she could have it at half price, a really good deal…65 euro. With widened eyes, I looked at Jody who immediately played it cool by replying with “Well, I could get the same purse for $40 back home, but thanks”. We started to walk away which began the bartering. At one point, I started to pull Jody away after the guy wouldn’t go for less than 35 euro hoping to make him go lower. In the end, Jody got her purse for 20 euro…pretty awesome deal!

What happens when you’re walking for a long time and have had a few bottles of water? A bathroom is needed. In Venice, the have WCs (water closets) all over the place…trick is they aren’t free. In order to get through the turn-style, you have to feed the machine 1.50 euro…that’s an expensive break! Little did I know that in order to get out, there is a giant red button on the backside of the turn-style that releases the arm so really all I had to do was reach around and push that to save that money…oh well right? Funny thing though, there is a separate machine where you can, I kid you not, you can buy a a card with 10 passes into these WCs. Save money! Buy in bulk!

Alright, so remember in one of my first posts for this trip I mentioned that Jody has a phobia of pigeons? If you missed that one, she does and it has been interesting for her in Europe because they are EVERYWHERE. Well, today we walked into a large square in front of a church where there were hundreds if not thousands of pigeons on the ground and they showed no fear of humans. So unafraid of humans in fact that there were quite a few people who had them on their arms and shoulders…Jody started having flashbacks, close to a heart attack im sure (ahaha I’m such a bad liar) so we moved quickly through the square avoiding pigeons at all costs!Finally it was time, the ever anticipated gondola ride! Our first gondoleer we found gave us his price but we didn’t have enough cash so we headed to the nearest ATM he directed us to only to find that it was completely out of money…30min later we found another one and although we felt bad for not heading back to the first guy, the sun was starting to set which was when we wanted to go. We carefully hoped on the gondola and off we went. Occasionally our gondolier would talk to us about different buildings, who lived where ect. We weren’t able to stop anywhere but we did get to see where Motzart once lived. Picture this, if you will…passing through one of the most romantic cities in the world (next to Paris), swiftly moving along the waterways on a gondola ride (possibly one of the most romantic things to do in one of the most romantic cities in the world…again, next to Paris), when you see a gondola filled with five college aged guys…
Once again, we were too tired to find a resturant for dinner so we ordered some pizza and picked up some good wine. The best part about the take-away was the box…on it were the words “Pizz-away” which seems perfectly innocent until you really think about it…I know its not exactly appropriate but who puts “piss-away” on their box? Ok, tangent done. That was about all we did today, just took some time to enjoy ourselves and Venice.

PS early in the morning I hummed “When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that’s amore” which I successfully got stuck in Jody’s head for the remainder of the day. Needless to say she wasn’t too happy.