Jenni & Joe
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Venice, Italy
Monday, November 26
Farewell,Tuscany. It's time to go to Venice. Sylwia turns the kitchen over to Jenni for a quick breakfast of scrambled eggs and ham, and then we say our long, sad good-byes. We will miss San Miniato,Tuscany and this beautiful Bed and Breakfast called Marrucola. We just barely make the 8:20 AM train to Florence, and then we change trains for a three-hour trip to Venice.

And we arrive to a sight unlike any other in the world: a city on water! Venice is actually a series of islands linked together with bridges. Public transportation here is via vaporettos; waterbuses that glide through the canals and stop at docks, like bus stops. After we arrive at our vaparetto stop, we find our hotel with the guidance of a kind older gentleman who had seen us struggling with our map. Our hotel (picture on the left) is hidden in the heart of the twisty, winding streets of San Marco, the main island of Venice, right next to a famous landmark: the circular staircase called "La Scala." We dump our backpacks and promptly fall asleep for a couple of hours.

We rouse ourselves shortly before sunset and wend our way to Piazza de San Marco (St. Mark's Square) and watch the pigeons attack people for seeds in the most stunning of backdrops. We find dinner at a restaurant down an impossible alley and hungrily feast on zucchini and onion soup, green beans, and mushrooms. It's only 4:30, which is practically lunchtime for Italians, but tonight, for us, it's dinner.

There's supposed to be an Internet café a few campos (piazzas) over, so after dinner we bundle up tightly and head that way as best we can through the narrow pathways. It's REALLY cold outside, maybe just above freezing with the wind chill factor. When we found the café, we were grateful for the warmth but unfortunately couldn't stay too long since the prices were sky-high! Either it's a monopoly or it's super-expensive to get a fast connection out into Venice from the mainland. Either way, it's hard to stomach $7.50 an hour for Internet access. After checking e-mail, we head back out into the cold in search of our hotel. Armed with a terrible map and dioriented by the twisty streets, we find it about an hour later. Back in the room, we are grateful for the bottle of wine Ezio gave us from San Miniato - it warms us up faster than the radiator!

Tuesday, November 27
We are bone tired, so we slowly ease our way into sightseeing. We just wander through the streets and get lost, one of Joe's favorite activities. We find out that it's not the maps that are useless, it's the curved, unnamed streets that are throwing us off. Joe decides to use the map only as a beginning reference; finding points A and B and then finding his way by compass. This works a little better than trying to follow along the map. We eat lunch at a local joint, with lots of chaotic, loud customers. We share two dishes: risotto (rice) and some kind of thick pasta.
After lunch, we meet Sarah, a woman Joe met on the Internet Web site called Virtual Tourist. Joe and Sarah have been communicating via computer for about a year, just chatting about traveling and our impending trip to Venice. Sarah takes us to a local bar where we catch up and get an insider's view on Venice. Afterwards, she shows us an Internet place with better prices and we check our e-mail while Sarah goes off to study.

We later make a list of the things we want to accomplish in Venice. Dinner is barhopping, sampling the simple food fare: toasted sandwiches with cheese, ham and zucchini, and small glasses of wine. We get lost and have fun doing it. Venice is beautiful at night with lights on the canals, the gondoliers and the statues.

Wednesday, November 28
Jenni is up early and heads to the islands of Murano and Burano via vaporetto in the Venetian Lagoon, while Joe sleeps in. Murano is famous for its glassmaking, and this industry was long-ago banished onto the island from Venice since the authorities were so concerned that the glassblowers might burn the city down. Burano is famous for its lacemaking, and there are types of lace that cost $200 or more for a small, coaster-sized sample! Elderly ladies still make a good living at making the fine lace, but the famous lace school has been shut down for years for lack of pupils. Joe later collects newspapers and magazines and parks at a great café with stupendous views overlooking St. Mark's Square. We meet up at 3:30 in St. Mark's to watch the pigeons and have our picture taken by a professional photographer who has a better camera and a wide angle lens. A few minutes before sunset, we hop on a gondola for a 45-minute ride through the peaceful canals of Venice.

For dinner we went to the same place as the first night and had their mushroom soup, cornmeal with melted cheese, and a fabulous cheese plate.

Thursday, November 29
We wake up relatively early and catch the train to the nearby town of Vicenza, where Joe spent three years as a kid when his father was stationed at the Army base here. We shop at the local market, grab lunch at a joint called Paradise Pizza - Jenni ate a Margherita pizza (tomatoes and cheese) and Joe ordered a pepperoni pizza, and was looking forward to the tasty sausage. But he was surprised to find out "pepperoni" pizza in Italy means a pizza with bell peppers.

After lunch we find our way to the Vicenza soccer team store for a shirt for Joe, then spend about an hour taking pictures in the foggy soft light next to a riverbank. The golden trees are sprinkling leaves down like a fountain and we revel in the sheer beauty of the moment (one of those moments when we realize that we are lucky to be alive and healthy and glowing with appreciation for life ... so we'd better take pictures!)

The sunset brings on cold weather, so we hole up in an Internet cafe to research our trip into Spain, and went crazy from listening to the shouts of the pre-teen boys playing computer war games a little too vigorously. We pass on the opportunity to visit the Army base, figuring it might seem suspicious in these trying times of increased security. Besides, we didn't want to pay for the taxi ride. On the train home to Venice, we are both a little drowsy, and welcome the arrival to our hotel bed. But first we stopped off for a cheese plate to accompany our second bottle of San Miniato Chianti vino.

Friday, November 30
Today is a slow day. We are both still very tired of sightseeing, but we walk around and enjoy the scenery. Since Joe accidentally lost all of the pictures he took the first two days, he has to shoot a brand new batch. (He pushed the wrong button on the computer somehow.) We climb the bell tower at sunset, which made for some lovely panoramic views of Venice and the surrounding islands. We later meet Sarah for dinner at a great local restaurant where people share big picnic tables and conversations. Sarah speaks excellent English, but on the rare occasion she needs help with a word, she turns to the other couple at the table for some guidance. We had a long dinner and a very nice seafood dinner with some excellent sweet wine. Bust most delicious was our wide-ranging conversation with Sarah. She is gently probing; asking us questions on every subject from the death penalty, to presidential politics to love. We feel lucky to build a new friendship, which we will cherish for life. We wish Sarah all the best!





Saturday, December 1
Jenni is up early again as Joe sleeps in. (Starting to sound familiar?) Jenni went to the Doge's Palace for the "Secret Tour" of the inner sanctums of the palace, and Joe checks out of the hotel. Jenni is an hour later than we thought, so we missed each other at the hotel and accidentally met up at the restaurant we'd been to several times. After lunch, we tour the inside of the St. Mark's Basilica, get a quick bite to eat and head out for some souvenir shopping in the giant market near the most beautiful bridge that spans the Grand Canal - the Rialto Bridge.

In our last few hours in Venice, we hookup with our friend Pauline Chiou's boyfriend, Fabio, and meet him at 4:30 in St. Mark's Square. We enjoy a delicious conversation and dinner of pizza and wine. (See Journal). Afterwards, we kiss Fabio goodbye and hope to see him again very soon. Maybe we'll see him next month in Houston when he's visiting Pauline.

After dinner, we have a couple of hours to kill before our train leaves. We hit an Internet café for some research on Nice, then post our Web pages on Rome. We catch our overnight train at 10:45 PM to begin a 48-hour journey to Seville, Spain by way of Nice, France. We're about to experience the longest train ride in our entire European experience.