Borrowing Broadband

Finalmente. Cucina Casalinga. Seriously. All Kinds of Yum.

So. Something funny happened here in Italy. A lack of internet-ness. I am paying $500 per night so Karen can have a room with a view, but I refuse to pay $9 an hour for internet. That's just robbery!

So, anyhoo, right now Karen and I are chillin like villains in Campo Santa Margherita, "borrowing" somebody's broadband. Not sure how many beers we've had (I'm thinking three apiece), but we've earned it after walking around the back streets of Venice for the last four hours. We estimated about fifteen miles. If you do the math - and you should - that's only one beer for every five miles.

Anyhoo, due to my lack of free internet (until now - and I apologize to whomever I am stealing, er, borrowing from at the moment) we have a slight bloggy backlog, which means I'm about to copy and paste the following text for your enjoyment. Enjoy!

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Reading La Gazzetta dello Sport on the Train to Venice

Sunday, October 25, 2009 – On the train to Venice right now. It's a little weird to come to Italy and then be surrounded by Americans. Apparently they have relegated us to the only-English-speaking car. Bummer. Anyhoo, Florence is but a memory. We finished off our stay with a cappuccino in the hotel bar. They were playing a Queen montage in the background. Nothing says “hey, you, wake up” like that Bicycle Race song.

And now I can't get it out of my head.

Anyhoo. Gotta go. Free juice cart is here. And sweet and salty snacks. More to come.

Monday, October 26, 2009 – Okay, so I planned on connecting to the internet and telling you all about our Venice adventures. But alas, I don't have an internet connection here in our $500 per night hotel. Actually, I do. But at $9 per hour, I have to put my foot down somewhere, right?

So, anyway, Venice. It's exactly what I remember. Crowded. Reminds me of Disneyland-meets-Vegas except with lots of cigarette smoke. Oddly enough, yesterday was the Venice Marathon. I say oddly because I was here three years ago on the same day as the Venice Marathon. Anyway, to make things even more interesting, not only is it crowded here, there are also an extra five thousand neurotic runner types limping through the twisting and turning alleys of Venice today. I'm allowed to call runners neurotic because I used to be one.

A runner, I mean.

I'm still neurotic.

Anyway, last year when I came to Venice I decided to pay out the nose for a room with a view of the Grand Canal. It's Venice. You're going to pay a lot no matter where you sleep. So I figured, I might as well pay a lot, a lot (which is slightly more than a lot) and have a view. The hotel totally came through and gave me a room with a terrace overlooking the water. It was amazing.

Of course, when Karen saw the pictures of this room, she said, “I want to stay there! I want to stay in that room!”

Not wanting to disappoint, I booked a reservation and begged and pleaded in Italian and told them how we would love, love, love them forever and ever if they gave us the same room. Never thought it would happen. And, actually, it didn't. But we did get the room right next door. Also with a terrace. And this year it comes with a funky odor. Karen and I can't quite put our finger on it. It's almost like if you left out a jar of dill pickles and they started rotting.

Or sauerkraut.

But the view is great. I will try to remember this when I see the $1000 charge on my credit card.

Oh, speaking of money, we have discovered that Karen has now spent as many euros on Italian beer and wine as she has using the public toilets. Water closets, they call them here. We also discovered that she has a bladder the size of a garbanzo bean. So if you ever have any questions about what to expect in a public restroom in Italy, you know who to ask. Karen has had the pleasure of tinkling in nearly all of them.

We also learned something else yesterday. I am allergic to crowds. It's not just that I don't like crowds. I literally break out in hives and start itching. It happened in Florence, and we thought it was just, I dunno, bed bugs or something. Notsomuch. We got off the train yesterday, ran smack dab into a wall of tourists outside the train station, and I started itching. Just like that. Then we wandered around the quiet neighborhoods, and I was fine. Next we decided to venture to Piazza San Marco, and my skin was crawling again.

Seriously, weirdest thing.

Anyway, to avoid Monday morning hives, we set the alarm and got up early this morning, making the same trip down to St. Mark's Square but with nobody on the street except Venetians going to work and kids going to school. Today our plan is to stay as far away from San Marco as possible, getting lost in some of the other neighborhoods. I've got a couple of friends that live here, and I keep calling, but they must know I'm in town, because their phone is always “unreachable”. We're kind of getting tired of eating in restaurants, and were hoping they'd invite us over for dinner tonight.

Hello, if you ever read this! Invite us for dinner tonight!

Sigh.

Actually, we had our best meal yet in a dinky little trattoria last night. Way off the beaten path in a quiet neighborhood. Loved it. And it had almost all Italians there, so we were pretty sure we'd found a gem. Best pasta I've had in a while.

Almost as good as my homemade Pasta Roni.

Kidding.

Okay, half kidding.

Also, we had a hilarious dinner conversation over spaghetti and penne, but I don't know if I can do it justice by re-writing it in the blog. It might have been one of those “you had to be there” moments. Not sure how the conversation went from “oh my, this pasta is good” to the movie “Alive” (about the airplane that crashes in the Andes where they have to eat each other to survive). Anyway, out of the blue, in total seriousness, I told Karen, “You should eat my butt first.”

And with complete sincerity she answered, “You don't think I should eat your thighs?”

To which I responded, still very serious, “No, you should eat my butt. It's plump.”

“Okay,” she said, and took another sip of wine.

Anyhoo, that's the latest and greatest from this corner of the world. Karen is taking a 9:30am nap right now, and I think I'll just keep sitting out here on the terrace far, far away from the crowds that make me itch.

Life is Rough - 9:30am Nap in Venice

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Okay, back to real time now. Still sitting here in Campo Santa Margherita. Karen and I just realized that our "free" (borrowed) internet is costing us $7.50 per beer. We've had....well, anyway. It's all about principles, right?

So today has been another interesting day in Venezia. We took the olfactory tour. What I mean is that it is really easy to get lost in Venice. Luckily, it's more or less an island thingy, so you can't get too lost. And also, you can sort of smell your way back home.

We were lost in the Jewish ghetto but knew we were close to the main path when we smelled the mothballs coming from the wedding dress shop. We'd definitely been by there before. Also, the bridge that smelled like piss? A telltale sign that we were on the right track. About 300 meters (yes, we're all up with the euro measurements now) from our hotel we started to smell the rotting sauerkraut of our room. We were home!

We've also discovered that we are the only non-smokers on this entire continent.

Seriously.

People, it's gonna kill ya! I'm just sayin.

On a happy note, while we're sitting here breathing in the second-hand smoke, we're extremely happy campers, just sitting on the side of a bustling piazza, drinking our expensive beer and letting our feet rest before the long trek home.

I think we should be okay if we take a left at the pigeon poop stank near that bridge thingy....

PS: We managed to update the photo collection while borrowing this precious "free" internet. You can view photo evidence of our latest and greatest moments HERE.