Day 113 Leaving Italy

Back in Rome, we got a room at a cool hotel overlooking the expensive designer boutiques by the Spanish steps. The names read like a Vogue magazine: Yves St. Laurent, Prada, Georgio Armani, and so on. The prices read like misprints: jacket $3600, pants $1200, belt $390, and so on.

Our last night in Rome, we did our favorite things. Drinking water out of the fountain at the Spanish steps, eating gelato at Trevi fountain, and just admiring the ancient city flooded with modernity. The gelato we had was notable. We both had honey flavor, which was spectacularly tasty, and I also had armangnac flavor which was nothing short of phenomenally delicious. (Armangnac is a like cognac, but from a different region). It was a great end to our gelato quest. The only problem is that the bar has been raised so high, I am sure our future will be full of disappointing gelato consumption.

We had an early flight and had to pack the night before. One whole suitcase was not enough to hold everything we bought. It was my first ominous clue as to how much I spent. We ended up having three bags to check and three to carry on the plane. Oh wow, we bought a lot of stuff. For me, leaving wasn’t a big deal since I will be returning for a more extended exploration. For Eric, he was torn as most people are at the end of a vacation; longing to get home to the comforts of his own bed and reluctant to part with the thrill of the new and different.

And then we went back to Portland.

Day 112 Pisa Italy

It felt a little sad leaving Venice. The dramatic beauty of the canals, architecture, and charming winding streets exert a pull on the uncharted, romantic depths of the brain. Turning our backs on the city and entering the train station was not something we longed for, and we lingered on the steps outside, watching the parade of people and boats along the Grand Canal, and feeding the pigeons the last crumbly bits of our lunch.

The train to Pisa was uneventful except for one stop where a young woman, dressed shabbily and toting a sign in Italian, stopped by our seats, pointing at her very large “pregnant” belly. I would not have minded parting with some small change if she actually looked pregnant. She aggressively pointed at her sign and then Eric and then me, yet her skinny little face looked not the least bit preggers. When she puddled spit on her lips, threatening to spew it on me, I waved her away, saying, “Vai! Vai!” Thankfully, she gave up to harass someone else.

Pisa is a small town with little other than the tower and basilica so we only stayed one night. I was happy to see prices, except at the tower, were less than anywhere we had been. The tower was expensive at $45 and worth every penny. We didn’t really get an appreciation for how much it was leaning until we climbed the narrow spiral stairs to the top. The nearly window less stairs are deceiving to the senses because without a point of reference, you cannot tell which way they are leaning, so you end up falling against the walls as you ascend. To add to the fun, the steps are so worn by millions of tourist footsteps, they have 3 inch curved indents, making it hazardous to not watch your step. I had envisioned lovely marble floors on each level and was thus surprised to discover the center of the tower is an unadorned shaft. It is only a bell tower. A near fatally leaning, heavily touristed, rightfully famous, bell tower. That was cool, now back to Rome.

Day 110 The Labyrinth of Venice

We again faced the question of what to do on Christmas day. Well, some of the day. After eating and then shopping at the strangely large number of open shops, we head over to feed the pidgeons at Piazza San Marco, Eric's absolute favorite activity. For only one euro you get a packet of enough dried corn for about 3-5 minutes of bird feeding frenzy, depending on your distribution technique. The birds are accustomed to people and have no qualms about landing on your head, shoulders, or outstreched arms. When there is a bird sitting on your shoulder, looking you in the eye from four inches away, and Hitchcock's movie, The Birds, doesn't run through your mind, you are either too young or crazy. It didn't bother me to have them land on me, but staring at a sharp little black beak that close to my face bothered me.

Eric loved being buried in birds. He wanted to stay there all day, feeding money to the birds. We ending up stopping there everday and spent more than I want to remember. Oh well, that is the cost of fun.

In the evening, I thought of something fun to do. There are about 3,000 streets and alleyways in Venice, many too small to map, and hundreds of little bridges. What better to explore the city by running at full speed through the narrow, underlit stone streets, taking turns at random, with the intention of getting lost? We ran at a breakneck pace down incredibly narrow alleyways, twisted and turned, and crossed countless bridges, hit deadends at canals and doorways, ran back, jumped off or over anything possible, and ran some more. It was a fun way to get a massive dose of the beautiful nightime city of Venice. We got lost and took the first vaporetto we saw, and ended up right back at the Rialto bridge. Running with Eric through the city was one of my favorite experiences in Italy.