The following was written yesterday - and is lagged by one day. Due to our lack of internet access, the following was unable to be posted on the date of writing and therefore has been posted on the following, adjacent day. Thank you for your time.
So it’s our last full day in Venice today, and it was time to say our goodbyes to the beautifully ugly dock city that we both loved so very much. We had a tour and gondola trip organised in the afternoon, and because we had experienced quite a lot of what the city had to offer over the past two days, we spent most of our time downloading the latest episode of Skins over an unprotected wifi network and basking in the warm glow of a sunny Venetian day.
We entered a number of shops that lined the dank and narrow alleyways of the gigantic wharf city to see what they had to offer in the way of souvenirs to satisfy the weary Australian traveller. Each one was littered with enough nooks and crannies to put Forest Lake markets to shame. Since it was Carnivale time, most of the stores were lined with glamorous masks to please anyone flirting with the idea of hosting a Masquerade ball party in the near future (and if you are, don’t bother, cause we didn’t buy any masks for anybody – they were far too expensive). Instead of buying anything at the petit stores, we felt it was necessary to make excellent use of the new and innovative system of ‘free entry’ into the store, something that is unfortunately absent from shops at home. Here in Venice, some stores granted you free unlimited viewing access to a range of on-hand stock, without any pressure to make a purchase. Isn’t that just wonderful?
So after we looked around the stores for FREE (because it is so innovative, I thought I’d mention it again...FREE) it was three o’clock and it was time to commence our informative and wonderfully navigated tour. Our first tour guide – Gretchen we shall call her (I don’t know if it was her real name, but Gretchen is a name that, to me, is synonymous with her position on the social hierarchy as ‘sea hag’) – she took us to the gondola stop for the start of the tour. There was no introduction, and because we had some dumb Italians who couldn’t speak any English at all on our tour, she had to speak in both English and Italian. So she was talking to the Italian bumpkins – one of whom looked like Al Pacino – and did not acknowledge any of the English speakers at all. So she just started walking and we naturally followed her.
So we made it to the gondola stop, and we hopped in a gondola with 2 god forsakenly annoying American tourists and their equally annoying baby. I don’t need to tell you that midway through the gondola ride, that god damn baby started crying about some god damn thing (as usual, something miniscule). When it cried for a longer period of time, I turned to Zach and he acknowledged my distress, and he knew that if that baby continued crying, then there would be a “Children Overboard” scandal in Venice...only this one will be real, and there will be only one child going into the river...and it’d be that baby. So the gondola ride was fantastic, and not gay at all like Zach originally mused. We went out through the Grande Canal and then through the small canal thoroughfares – the kind of thoroughfares that – if they were on land instead of water – you’d expect to get mugged and perhaps murdered in a fashion similar to Bruce Wayne’s parents in Gotham City at the beginning of Tim Burton’s Batman movie adaptation. The canal was so small, and most of the time we only just managed to squeeze through certain turns. The drivers are exceptionally skilled and avoided every possible collision with such precision. We sailed past a 5 star hotel that was on the canals, then we sailed all the way back, reaching the security of the gondola stop relatively dry and safely (can’t really speak for the baby though...).
Upon getting off the gondola, we were welcomed with a different tour guide to Gretchen. His name was Alphonse (again, I don’t know what his real name was, but to describe him, he sorta looked like Al Pacino). Anyway, Alphonse was a great help in giving us information about Venice that we DIDN’T NEED TO HEAR. He talked about how the town was built so poorly, that most of the buildings were rotting because of the way they were inadequately built, that towers were falling over and they have built these things to stop them from falling onto houses. He also talked about how they never get any water in summer and they rely on rain water for a lot of their clean water supplies. He also recommended we try a 13 euro sundae, which he excitedly stated “contained real bananas! What a bargain for only 13 euro.” Considering this in Australian dollars, this equates to roughly $26! In summary, this tour guide couldn’t give us a single explanation as to WHY Italians would be so stupid as to live on the water. In fact, he gave us 20 good reasons to NOT LIVE HERE. And I need to know. The Americans didn’t help either, asking irrelevant, stupid questions that were so frustratingly pointless that I won’t repeat them here because I’ll have a heart attack getting so angry about them, but mark my words they were annoying. Then the baby started crying, and I actually threw it in the canal. No kidding – I threw it into the dirty canal water where it died a horrible death by typhoid.
So, we decided to head back to Arsenalle, and have a bite to eat. We both got some nice filling pizza from a shop just around the corner from us, run by a lovely Italian family of Chinese people. Ironically, they worked in a pizza and pasta gig, but when we went in to pay for our meal, their family were sitting at a table and all they were eating was Chinese food. We had a walk, and saw a couple of people who looked strikingly similar to Al Pacino performing some excellent karaoke, before we ventured up to our rooms to get a hearty night sleep for our train trip to Bolonge – the gay capital of Italy.
Yes, I will point out the irony here that Zach said a gondola ride would be “slightly gay” yet he was enthusiastic about our trip to Bolonge... I’ll leave that one for you all to muse over ;).
Arrivederci!
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