11-6

Day 14 (Venice - Day 2)

I've taken more pictures in Venice than anywhere else, even London (maybe not the skulls, though).  And today it caught up with me, because my phone was full when I tried to take a picture of the Bridge of Sighs.  I took a moment to delete all the pictures in my Instagram folder (76 pics), but at the end of the day, when the sun was setting, I'd filled it again.

"Hey, Hicks, man, you look just like I feel."

The day started early when my back woke me up right before four, complaining about the upper compartment from the night before.  I finally got up and went to the bathroom, which was a gorgeous, opulent place nicer than my first two apartments (heck, I'd wager it was nicer than anyone's first apartment--it had a shower/bath, a sink, a toilet and a bidet, a closet, and a window big enough you could fit a Christmas tree through it, that looked out on the Venice rooftops and the stars.

This was my vantage point.  Beggars can't be choosers.

Out the window, I could see the big church dome on the other side of the canal, a few seagulls, and a couple of stars (one of them fell while I sat).  I took two Excedrin and waited for the pain to subside, and chatted with my cousin and Big Anklevich via text.

Soon, Jeff and Emily were up (and playing their DuoLingo games), and they nicely let me sleep as they got ready for their day.

This was a little bit more relaxed than yesterday, with room to look at things and take them in, rather than just bounce from sight to sight, not really digesting anything.

We happened to be walking by the big church when the sun was just coming up behind it, creating a pretty spectacular photo opportunity, even for my camera.

During the night, the water levels had risen greatly, and a lot of Venice had water on it.

For example, this is the restaurant where we ate the night before.

Even though we were told that it wasn't even the flooding season, we discovered that the main plaza and many of the alleyways had been flooded.  Anticipating this, the city had laid out portable platforms that the tourists could walk across, avoiding the water.  Or, if they were more adventurous, there were vendors selling colorful plastic garbage bags and elastics, to put over your feet and legs, so you could splash through the floodwaters like a little kid.  It was impressive to see several hundred people crossing above the six or seven inches of water in front of the main church and palace, in front of restaurants, and houses. 

I saw lots of little fish in the water and plenty of seagulls and pigeons on the land, but no rats, stray cats, singing birds, or water tarantulas.  I'm just saying.

The one thing you always see in movies about Venice is the striped-shirted gondoliers and their boats on the canal.  We saw one or two, but while we were walking around, eating gelatos, one of them was standing around, looking for business.  He approached us (speaking English), offering to give us a ride around town, and when we were hesitant, he offered to give us a guided tour for no additional charge (which he usually charged twenty Euro extra for).  Of course, since he was piloting the boat anyway, I wonder how different the two options would've been.  

He led us through the super-narrow alleyways to the place where the road simply dropped off into the water, where his gondola was waiting.  Emily and I climbed in, and helped Jeff down inside, but a false move and any one of us would've gone in the water (I wonder how many tourists fall every week--there's no way it's less than one a day).  

The water levels had risen so much that there were almost no boats on the water, and indeed, when we went under a bridge, the driver had to duck down low so as not to bump or scrape his head on the underside of the bridges.  Other, taller boats were stuck in mooring until the tide went down.

So, it's everybody's dream to go on a romantic gondola ride through the Venice canals.  And our pilot was certainly a hustler for our business, moving fast and effortlessly through the narrow and often-crowed canals (that pic above, you can see there's barely room for two gondolas to pass by one another).  I'm not going to throw him under the (water)bus, but look at these photos of our ride, and see if you notice anything particularly unusual or disappointing:

Yep, the dude was on his cellphone, probably complaining about us the whole time.

We ate at a restaurant where Jeff suggested we get some pizza, because surely people would ask me if I ate any pizza in Italy (his leg was bothering him so much we just went to the first restaurant we found, for the chance to sit down).  The pizza was not good, but as usual, I ate everything I was given, trying to be one of the good tourists, instead of the guy who asks for ketchup everywhere we went (Jeff loathes ketchup the way I loathe . . . well, stomach cancer, I suppose, but I would not have turned down a bottle at any one of the places we went).

Because I apparently have infinite time, I combined two of Emily's pictures when we had lunch.

We were taken on a water taxi to the island of Murano to see the glass-blowing factory by a dude who spoke good English and told us three times we had "no obligation to buy."  

There was a guy--a master, apparently--who took a blob of molten glass out of the oven with a stick and proceeded to mold it before our eyes into a horse rearing on its back legs.  

It was really impressive, but the guy does it over and over and over for the various tours, and I asked our tour guide if it's still thrilling for him to watch, and he said no.

I had seen the cemetery from the boat the day before, and wanted to go there.  It looked so amazing from the water, and I suppose it was kind of unusual and interesting (there was, for example, one section of the grounds where only nuns had been buried, and another a little way off, where only priests hung out*).  But the place was somber and quiet, and there was a big list of restrictions posted at its entrance, including no music, no photography, no drinking, no walking on the grass, no picnics, and no taking off your shirt (I didn't make that up, though I believe it said nothing about pants), which ensured that there were only a handful of tourists on the whole island.

Both Emily and I damned our souls by snapping a photo or two (including this one of a cool statue of a man and the Grim Reaper on it), but since we had seen the ossuary under Paris, this really could not compare.

The thing is, after going through the ossuary in the catacombs, where you were allowed to photograph piles of the literal dead, a prohibition on photography of headstones or crypts or trees seemed pretty ridiculous.

I got it into my head to buy a painting, and there are several artists who set up stands, all in a row, on a street in Venice.  Some are pretty friendly, trying to schmooze you into buying from them, and the one I thought was the best was pretty stand-offish (which, honestly, lost him the sale, since I went to every other artist after, looking for one that was as good, so I could buy from them, and ultimately found one where the guy was friendly, and I thought, "This will do.").

The night before, Emily and I had rushed to find a vantage point where we could take a picture of the sunset, but we missed it.  Today was very different.  In fact, for a full hour, leading up to the sunset and long after, the sky was almost breathtakingly beautiful, unlike anything I'd ever seen, except for where Lando Calrissian is administrator.  I took pictures till my phone was once again filled up, but my vantage point wasn't the best, so I stopped trying. 

Seagull.

The sunset was much, much more impressive than the one the day before (it had been cloudy, I suppose, though I have no idea why some sunsets are better than others).  We got on a water bus to take us back to the stop in front of the train station, and the sky got spectacularly red, with the color reflected in the waters of the canal below it.  By this point, my phone had filled up and I couldn't take any more pictures, but take my word for it, Stevie Wonder would've been impressed.

I got this one by sticking Emily's phone out the window, surprising the world I didn't drop it.

Eventually, we got to the station, went inside, and waited first for seats to open up, and then for our train back to Germany.

*This was clear because, as seems to be the custom in Italy, every headstone for the last thirty years had a photograph of the deceased as part of it.  We put one on my grandmother's stone here in the States, so it must be an option everywhere.