from Cinque Terre, we had a pretty ridiculous travel day, including 5 separate train trips and one bus connection. i don't know if too much of it was noteworthy, but here are a couple of the quicker stories (if you don't care for humorous traveling stories, skip to the pictures):
1. while still in Cinque Terre that morning at a train station, a blond american girl walks up to carmen and says "La Spezia??" is a very high-pitched, prolonged, "will-this-italian-person-understand-my-question" sort of way. (La Spezia is a nearby town/train station and she was clearly asking if this was the right train to get there."
carmen replies, "it's ok, i'm american.. i speak english."
the girl, not even giving this any time to sink in, again says, "La Spezia??"
carmen: "i speak english. no, this train is the opposite direction of La Spezia."
girl: "La Spezia??"
girl's friend (flabbergasted): "dude, she's speaking english.. it's the other train!"
girls run off.
2. during our day of travel, we had a one hour stop in Parma (home of cured ham), where we were supposed to take a bus to our next train station (ended up being a 5 minute bus ride). the bus got there at the beginning of the hour, but for some reason, the woman driving would not let people on because it wasn't time yet. (they LOVE to tell people no.) one of the people waiting was a guy with a tiny baby. about 10 minutes later, it started to totally downpour. the man with the baby approached the bus, but nope, no dice, even with a wet baby, you can't get on a bus early.
3. just as a random note: italian train service.. wow. we have been spoiled by german and swiss train service, which is all automated and when you buy tickets, a schedule is printed that tells you when and where to get off your train to connect to a new one, and even which platforms to go to. not at all in italy. you buy a ticket (and usually you're lucky if the worker at the desk doesn't try to sell you a ticket for 3 times what it should be, which happened to us until we called the woman out.) and then you just get a tiny stub that tells your end destination. there might be no transfers or there might be 5.. it's up to you to find that out (and train maps with all the stops on them are VERY rare) and determine where and when to make those transfers. fun.
anywho, that was all just an aside. at the end of the travel day, we reached Peschiera del Garda, on the Lago di Garda, where we found a great campsite right next to the lake. it seemed like a great town and the lake was beautiful, but we were in a hurry to get to Venice, so we didn't stay long. also, there was a bit of fog, so any pictures we took will not compare to
these.
after our crazy travel day, we got to venice, and holy balls, that place is completely nuts.
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| a fork in the river and bridge we could never find again. From Italy: Venice |
this picture will always remind me of how crazy it is to get around venice. you can walk around, thinking you are keeping track of markers on the way, remembering bridges and canals, and then just never find your way to that spot again. we had a couple hilarious late-night walks, trying to find our way from a random spot back to the hotel, wandering around and constantly coming to dead-ends at canals or the same plaza again.
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| grand canal, thinking about squid ink spaguetti. From Italy: Venice |
if you go to venice, i definitely suggest the main vaparetto down the grand canal. it's really essentially a public bus, but it makes every stop down the canal and to a tourist, is a cheap hour-long boat ride and tour of the city. most of the time, i watched the guy working the ropes. since the boat doesn't slow to a stop, he has to lasso the dock, tie a quick figure 8 knot and get his hands out before the moment it tightens.. i thought every time he was going to lose a finger or two.
Treviso:we flew out of Treviso, and decided to spend a day there. we had heard it was known as "Little Venice", which is just a blatant lie, but it is a pretty great river town and better than a lot we had been to. it has an old city wall-turned walking path that goes about half-way around the town and is a good place to sit and drink boxed wine. maybe we haven't talked about that yet, but italian boxed wine is so damn good. we became connoisseurs of the many brands of boxed red wines. three advantages to the box: it is easier for traveling since public drinking is 100% ok in italy; you can be sure they won't sneak in any bubbles, which they are very fond of; street cred.
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| notice the "fun-sized" wine boxes.. juice box sized! From Italy: Treviso |
this is the fontana delle tette (literally Tits Fountain). when a new mayor was elected in treviso, for three days, red wine would be pumped through one of the breasts and white wine through the other. a totally amazing tradition which we assumed was over, but apparently it's not! i just found these pictures of a rebuilt tits fountain (
1 and
2) which we never saw, but i guess they're keeping the tradition alive.
there is a pretty big university in town and a ton of bikers.. never a bad thing.
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| one of the most bad ass things you could build: water wheel. From Italy: Treviso |
also in town, right when we were reaching near-starvation, we found the most incredible chinese take-out of all time. 3 euro for one of these heaps of chinese goodness.. if only it were in paris, i'd eat there bi-weekly at least.
as a fairwell to italy, we spent our last day roaming the city and getting pretty canned on boxed wine. amazing country!
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