En Route

We only had one night in Florence, so we had to make the best of our morning before we had to catch the afternoon train to Pisa. We had booked tickets to visit the Uffizi Gallery, but with my injury as well as what we believed too little time to visit such an art gallery. So we instead decided to visit the Florence’s Duomo.

Before that, however, we stopped in at the San Lorenzo market to look at the wares and goods. There were bottles upon bottles of olive oil, there were stacks of garlic heads, there were heaps of sun dried tomatoes, there was barrels full of dried porcini mushrooms- an Italian foodie paradise. I wish I had bought some aged balsamic vinegar they had for sale there for less than $10 euro, as it was such a deal. Sadly I never got back to the area to purchase it. 

As soon as we arrived at the Duomo, Simon headed right for the steps to the dome and the great view it provides over Florence, while I hung back and walked around the interior of the cathedral. 

The cathedral itself is pretty sparsely furnished, as many of the items have been already moved to museum, but the main focus of it is the fantastic fresco in the cathedral’s cupola:

Giorgio Vasari started this magnificent work of “The Last Judgement” and it was finished in 1579 by his student, Federico Zuccari. Simon was still waiting to enter the dome, so I headed outside to walk around the perimeter of the duomo’s piazza. While out there, I visited some gift shops and encountered these three ladies who were fiddling fiercely classical pieces.

Simon, far above in the cupola, managed to get a few awesome shots (and even more awesome panoramas) overlooking Florence. 

When the belltower stuck 12 noon, we both knew our time in Florence was drawing to a close, so I met Simon at entrance and we ran back to our hotel to grab our bags and head to the train station. We were meeting Simon’s parents at the Pisa Centrale Station at 3. In our haste to get on the train, we forgot to validate our train tickets. Oops. One shouldn’t forget the validate their ticket, be it for a train or bus. That can lead to big fines. We were thankfully let off with a warning (whew!) and reminded ourselves to not do that again.

We met with Simon’s parents 10 minutes early and we all drove to the Frantoio del Monte villa outside of Lucca, where we met up with all of the extended family who came from the UK. In total, 14 of us rented out three apartments within the villa. In our villa, we were staying with Simon’s Aunt Bernadette, cousin Claire, her husband Rich, and their adorable little boy, Luca. The villa was set on what used to be an olive oil pressing factory, and we found olive trees surrounding us. Shame that the olives weren’t ripe for picking yet.

After arriving to a self-serving accommodation, we had to run out shortly after to pick up some basic food items to get by for the week. I’m not sure how very basic they all were, but it’s really amazing at how inexpensive food is to buy in Italy, especially local produce and products. Buying a wedge of parmegiano reggiano cheese in Vancouver can cost over $10, but in Italy? Maybe 2-3 euros. If only I packed a separate suitcase for food items- I would have filled it fairly quickly.

We had a lovely dinner with the family that cousin Nicole and her family made for us and we finally kicked back, resting our weary travel bones.

Our time arrived that we had to leave our beloved little apartment in Venice behind and head west into Tuscany. We packed everything up and made our way to the train station. We wanted the 2-hour fast train into Firenze (Florence) but they were booked up til 1pm. Drat. So we decided to take the slower and far cheaper regionale trains. We booked one that with 2 transfers, would make it to Florence within 4 hours.

All was good for the first leg. We enjoyed watching the scenery go by, we enjoyed the relatively quiet train ride. Then we made it to our first transfer, Bologna. I should’ve noticed at the time that the date was July 13, in that it was Friday the 13th. Things went a bit crazy in Bologna. The connecting train was on platform one EST. East. Okay, we headed for platform one. We found platform one but no signage for “EST”. Cue the confusion. We were like “okay, guess it’s just platform one then” but there was no signage. We were out of water and food, so while waiting I decided to look for a water fountain. While I was puttering around, I found Platform 1 OVEST (west). So there was a separate platform. Oh darn darn darn. I tried to run back to Simon to catch it in time. We ran for platform 1 EST. We ran and ran. I injured my calf muscle in doing so. And the train was long gone. It wasn’t a great moment for me. I even wiped away a few tears because I hurt my leg and I was stuck in Bologna.

Another train came within an hour, and while waiting for the train we did find water and sandwiches. But without doubt, I had injured my leg again and I had to make do with the pain. We finally caught our train out of Bologna and made a safe transition to our next train in Prato, finally reaching Florence at 4 or so in the afternoon, an hour later than if we had just waited in Venice til 1. Blargh. Or what a bunch of baloney (given that it happened in Bologna).

Florence was the opposite of Venice, in a way. While in Venice we were in relative peace without the cars and bikes buzzing past us. But in Florence it flourished. We slowly made our way along the cobblestone busy roads with our suitcases to our place for the night, the Hotel Collodi, we took quick showers, and we headed out around 5pm for our few hours of sightseeing. I felt so sad that we lost so many hours of the day due to travel and I had to walk slowly due to my reinjured leg. Still, we made up for the lack of time in walking all around Florence in the Friday evening.

Florence, the birthplace of the Renaissance. It was a pretty gorgeous city. Even in the limited time we had there, we were overwhelmed by the architectural beauty and the exquisite statues that it had contained. We knew that without a doubt, we would someday have to return. Preferably for 5-6 days, rather than just a few. 

We saw the Duomo, the Piazza della Signoria (and the replica statue of David AND the water fountain that served up sparkling water!), Ponte Vecchio. We ate an amaaaazing dinner al fresco deep in the city at La Grotta Guelfa. The city was so alive even at 11 at night. It was pretty magical.

Hotel Collodi was a lovely charming hotel. But we both woke up in middle of the night beyond sweaty and hot. The room had air conditioning, but we didn’t have any controls over it. And during the night, it turned itself off. By 4 in the morning, it was stuffy and hot and there was little we could do other than open windows and brave mosquitoes. Seriously Italy, screen your windows. It isn’t hard to do and it makes for a much more enjoyable sleeping experience during your hot summers.

Our last day in Venice was a bittersweet one. I wasn’t quite sure I was ready to leave it behind. It’s truly a magical place and even though parts of the island are too touristy and busy, there is always places you can go to find quiet and solace. The lack of cars makes it strangely peaceful, even though I will never forget the deep roar of the vaporetti engines heard on the Grand Canal at all hours. We vow to return, preferably in spring or autumn.

 

We started out the day in truth Italian fashion, with a cappuccino and a croissant. From there we caught the vaporetto at San Stae and took a ride down the Grand Canal toward the beautiful and ornate Basilica della Salute. I had the great fortune of standing right next to the captain’s door, and I was able to enjoy a full view of the canal.

The Basilica Della Salute is most impressive from the outside and is one of the most beautiful buildings seen along the Grand Canal, even at night. Whenever we took the ride along the canal in the vaporetto, we’d hear the audible “oohs” when we passed by Della Salute. On our final day, we had stopped to take some photos of the church, and as it was open and free to enter, we also went inside and looked at its two domes…

After we visited there, we started making our way through Dorsoduro in hopes to find the Frari Church. Along the way, we did stop in Campo San Barnaba and had lunch again at Ai Artisti. After lunch, we did find the Frari Church but we were disappointed that they charged a pretty large admission fee to enter and didn’t allow photos to be taken inside. We passed it and took photos from outside.

.

We walked around Dorosoduro and Santa Croce for awhile, then made our way back toward our apartment, stopping at Pasticceria Rio Marin along the way back to try their tiramisu. Oh delight at the end of my fork. That remains a favourite.

For dinner we headed back to Al Vecio Pozzo, where we had eaten the first night. I had a pizza bianca and Simon ordered a steak with a balsamic reduction, cherry tomatoes, and arugula which was absolutely incredible. The meat was so rare, but it was not very bloody. We’re trying to understand how steak could be made so well. I must remember to try to recreate that at home.

We had plans to go from there down to St Mark’s to catch the sunset in our final night, but I had the great misfortune of sitting in some bubble gum and I had to return to the apartment to change my shirt. By the time I did that, the sun had set and my calf muscle was starting to hurt. I opted out. Simon, the gentleman, also opted to not go even though I encouraged him to go. We walked instead into Cannaregio and looked around, getting ice cream and sitting along the Guglie Canal to watch the boats pass by. It was pleasant just doing that. Arrivederci Venice.

A five-night holiday in Venice wouldn’t be complete without a day’s trip to some of the other islands surrounding Venice. We bought ourselves 36-hour vaporetto (water bus) passes and headed for Burano first, which is popular for its colourful buildings and delicate laces.

We had to first catch a vaporetto to Murano, the closer island, and then catch a connecting vaporetto to the farther Burano. The trips to and from Murano were almost fully packed. We hung so low in the water that we were at the same height as those riding fishing boats. I wish I had a better viewpoint to take photos, but we were left standing in the stuffy non-windowy parts for the most part.

Burano. An island known for its intricate lace and colourful buildings. Leonardo Da Vinci visited it in 1481 and bought a lace cloth for the main altar of the Duomo of Milan. I wished we had arrived there earlier in the morning because the lighting would’ve been less harsh and the heat would have been less merciless. But we still enjoyed ourselves a lot. We just had a watermelon granita (Simon loves granitas/granites ~ Italian slushies) and tried to stay out of the sun. 

The plan was to visit Burano and then catch a vaporetto back to Murano to enjoy our lunch. So that we did. But in hindsight, we probably should’ve eaten in Burano. By the time we reached Murano’s shores, I had taken in a bit too much sun. The week of walking Venice had made me tired and sore. And we were so hungry by 3pm that we chose a place out of desperation which was not as great of an eating experience as I would’ve wanted. Well that’s actually not true. We opted for seafood dishes in Murano, I had a pretty awesome fish lasagne. I think my lack of enthusiasm was more due to the way I was feeling than what I was eating. With the help of our server, we did locate a store that I had wanted to find that sold Murano glass beads in bulk. That is my big souvenir for Murano. I am very satisfied with that.

Murano is well known in its history for glassblowing. In all of Europe, Murano glassblowers were the only ones who knew how to make mirrored glass. The artisans were treated like royalty as they had such an important export. And they were even supposedly not allowed to leave Murano to practice their craft, and were threatened to have their hands cut off or even killed if they tried. Even in this modern day, the glassworks from Murano is something of itself.

After buying the beads, we grabbed a vaporetto back to the main island of Venice. We had a bit of a reprieve back at our apartment and then headed out in the evening for night shots. It was time to head back to Saint Mark’s Square, with hopes it would be a little less busy and a lot more atmospheric. We took our first ride down the Grand Canal just after dusk.

Saint Mark’s was still pretty busy when we got there at night. There was an orchestra playing and people were crowding around to watch. We found a nice spot on a bench to sit and we set up our tripods to get some long exposure shots. Just after we started to shoot, a thunderstorm was starting to roll in. The winds picked up and lightning was spotted in the sky. So we hunkered down for some shots. The lightning sadly was partially hidden by the clouds and it quickly made its way out of our line of sight. But we have a better memory of St Mark’s Square because of it.

While in the square we met up with another photographer from Toronto who managed to capture the lightning well over the Bridge of Sighs. Sigh, why didn’t we think of that? We chatted cameras for awhile before we parted and went our merry ways.

Surprise of surprises, we got lost trying to navigate from St Mark’s Square to Rialto Bridge. Both of our phones had dead batteries and we had to rely on the not-so-reliant signs to guide us there. We eventually found it and took a few shots there before taking the vaporetto back to our stop at Ferrovia.

I woke super early at 5:30, just in time for a magnificent sunrise over Venice. I opened up all the windows as there was a strong breeze that felt absolutely lovely. Once the sun was up, we went out to Pasticceria Rio Marin that is only a short walk from our apartment for our morning cappuccino and pastry. Simon had a savoury roll filled with zucchini and I ordered the chocolate croissant, which was pretty amazing as it also had orange zest in the dough. It was heaven, and we enjoyed it while it was nice and cool sitting in a table right on the Rio Marin (our canal). I read online that they make a pretty great tiramisu, so I may have to try a piece before we leave on Friday.

After that, we made our way over to a supermarket to buy a few things for dinner. There I was confronted with some of the cultural differences in buying produce between here and home. Like for example, at home I pick my fruit up, sniff it, check it out before adding it to my basket. I use my bare hands. Here in Italy that’s a no-no. It’s a bit ridiculous, but all the people handling individual apples and oranges put a plastic glove on to be able to pick up the produce. No problem greeting everybody with multiple kisses, but don’t you dare pick up that fig with your bare hand. Somebody in the produce section scolded me. Oops. Mi dispiace!

Then we went to check out from the market and I was happily in the line, and the cashier left her station to run to the back (where the produce was). Uh oh I made another error. Apparently rather than having a code system in North America that they input into the register, they bag and tag everything they purchase back in the produce section and so everything that makes it to the front cashier has a barcode already on it. I felt really bad about that one, because a large line was piling up behind us. Lessons learned.

We also washed a few clothes and hung them out to dry, which was interesting because the clothesline hangs from right below the window and if I were to drop the clothes while hanging, they would end up in the canal below. So I tried to be very careful that didn’t happen.

After doing all those normal everyday things, we needed to head back to the TIM store to get those sim cards. We went off in search of the Rialto Market along the way, which is a large public market in Venice where they sell fish as well as produce. We bought a slice of watermelon and a basket of strawberries, where we proceded to eat standing on the docks near the canal. The pigeons accompanied us, and took delight in eating the watermelon seeds that we dropped for them.

We then headed over to get our sim cards, which was pretty reasonably priced. For 20 euro you can buy a sim card that is prepaid for one month. It has voice and text within Italy and 500MB of data per week for the whole month. There’s no actual limit, but after the first 500MB the speed goes down to 32kB/s. Some things are really expensive in Europe but mobile telephony is not one of them. What they charge in US and especially Canada is ridiculous. Seriously.

We then went to find a restaurant in the Campo San Polo that I read was really good, called Birraria La Corte. We were having salad for dinner that night at the apartment, so we opted to have another pizza at lunch. After that, we headed back for the apartment and there I crashed on the couch and had a two-hour nap. Zzzz.

In the evening, we decided to explore Sestiere Cannaregio. Cannaregio was the old jewish ghetto settlement and it holds a lot of charm in the old storefronts and peaceful less-touristy residential streets off the main drag. We bought some lettuce and cheese for dinner and came back to make our first homemade meal in Italy- tomato and basil bruschetta and a salad with figs and prosciutto. Simon was going to head out in the evening to take night shots, but he and I both were wiped out from our outings and early morning wakings.

We fell asleep last night watching the sky light up from heat lightning.

We got a bit of a late start on our first full day in Venice simply because of the ridiculous night that preceded it. Our main quest for the day was to find a magical TIM (Telecom Italia Mobile) store so we could purchase some SIM cards and get local telephone and data packages for our phones. We walked through the meandering streets. There a hardware store. Here a book shop. No mobile stores to be had. Finally found a TIM store at the base of the Rialto Bridge. They need a passport to purchase. D’oh! Oh well, we were already at the Rialto.

Next on the agenda was to find a lunch. Finding a place between Rialto and San Marco Square that isn’t overly touristy and expensive is challenging. Nothing looked overly appealing. So we kept walking.

If you’re going to go to Saint Mark’s Square in your first day in Venice, you’re going to have a bad time.

Piazza San Marco (Saint Mark’s Square) was madness. Absolute madness. It’s beautiful, for sure. The ornate basilica, the magnificent Campanile tower, Doge’s Palace. It’s the largest of squares in Venice and worthy of the view. But the tourists… yikes. I think 75% of tourists who come to Venice only really visit the Grand Canal, Rialto Bridge & Saint Mark’s Square. And that’s it. It’s sad, honestly. How much they miss out on. When we arrived there in noontime, there was a five-hour queue to enter St Mark’s Basilica. Five hours in the scathing summer sun. Nothing appealed to me less. My heel was bothering me after the walking I had done in the morning, so we sat down in a corner to rest. We were there for about 3 minutes and the “tourist guides in their orange tshirts” (aka St Mark’s Square police) came over to tell me I couldn’t sit there. What? Meanwhile people sit on the steps of major bridges where people try to walk. I was off to the sidelines in a corner resting my aching foot in a bit of shade. Between that and the five hour lineup to see a church (oh and no cameras pfft), I decided then that I didn’t really like St Mark’s Square. We may return either tonight or tomorrow night (after the throng of tourists return to their hotels and cruise ships) to take some night photos and be told we can’t use tripods (I’m sure). But that’s all I care to see of Saint Mark’s. Shame, really, after watching David Lean’s film “Summertime” with Kate Hepburn and Rossano Brazzi, I was thinking St Mark’s would be so much more lovely than that. And I’m sure in another time of year and day it is. We’ll see when we go back for night shots.

We stopped to see gondoliers going under the Bridge of Sighs and we headed on toward Accademia Bridge and Dorsoduro (which I read is one of the best neighbourhoods of Venice-it is.) It was critically hot by the time we reached Ai Artisti in San Barnaba Square, which is where we stopped for lunch. We then headed back toward home, reaching back around 4. Six hours of walking. Not bad considering I am still recovering from my strained calf injury.

We had a respite before heading out later for dinner, where we found another of Michelle’s recommendations, La Zucca, named after the pumpkin. It was spectacular vegetarian food. Simon had the pumpkin flan (the most popular meal of the restaurant) and I had tagliatelle pasta with pesto and cherry tomatoes. Both were spectacular.

I happened upon a gondolier along the way and was curious about how much he was asking for a ride on his gondola- he was going to give me a special rate of 80 euros when he said he normally asks 100 in the evening. 80 years for a boat ride. For that price, I’d expect the ride to last 3 hours. Maybe if I had more money than sense I’d be up for it. Or if we were sharing the boat with other people.

The humidity wasn’t quite as bad the second night and although we still only had maybe five hours of sleep, it was a lot more comfortable.

Seeing Venice for the first time is magical. We had the fortune of seeing her from the jet, even though we had the misfortune of sitting on the wrong side of the plane to take photos easily. My fear of flying and landing was shadowed by my complete excitement to finally look upon the lands of Italy, a nation I have wanted to visit for all of my life.

Marco Polo Airport was a breeze to get through as we had already cleared EU customs in Schiphol-Amsterdam (disappointing, though, I would have loved an Italian stamp to be the first stamp to kiss my new passport’s pages.)

We took the 17:20 ATVO bus from the airport to Piazzale Roma (Venice’s main bus terminal). For the most of the 25 minute ride over to the island, we were texting up a storm, trying to reach Michelle or Giorgia, the owners of the apartment we were renting for the week. We never received a text in response, but Michelle & his nephew-in-law Luca were already waiting for us. They helped walk us to the apartment (in Santa Croce, only 10 minutes’ walk from the bus station). Along the way he answered my questions and showed us great places to eat. He even made us a 19:30 reservation at the nearby Vecio Pozzo, where they themselves eat every week. Three flights of steps were waiting for us to the apartment itself. But we made it and quickly settled into the swing of things.

Dinner at the Vecio Pozzo was pretty spectacular and set the bar rather high for us, eating-wise. We ate pizza, naturally, because it was our first meal in Italy and because the restaurant had like five pages of pizza concoctions. I went with the less adventurous but assuredly more italian prosciutto and mushroom. It was pretty spectacular. Italians don’t usually slice their pizzas unless you buy by the slice itself, so you usually cut it up as you wish at the table with a knife and fork.

After dinner we decided to head over to the Scalzi Bridge to catch first glimpses of the Grand Canal, which is located just steps away from our building. After that, we decided to explore some of the streets of Santa Croce and (surprise!) we got lost in the maze that is Venice’s roadways. It’s madness, delightful madness.

Once we finally reached home, the lack of sleep from the night before was taking its toll on us and we barely wanted to do anything but sleep. And sleep we did, for about an hour or two. We woke up miserably hot because although we had an AC unit in the apartment, it wasn’t working very well and the humidity was ridiculous. I woke up at 1 in the morning and couldn’t bear it, so I opened all of the windows which gave some slight reprieve. This lasted about 20 minutes, and then we realized the horrible- I granted the green light for the mosquitoes to come and visit. We got bitten, oh my, we got bitten. Our levels of tension grew to a level that sprung action into Simon. He decided to try to fix our air conditioning. We weren’t sure what the culprit was, but it ended up being related to the proper drainage of the condensation that accumulates (aye, especially in humid Venice). When they installed the unit, they chose not to install the hose pipe to the outside. They instead cut the AC hose short and sealed it off. The condensation, having nowhere to go, pools up in the reservoir system and after about 45 minutes of use, it turns itself off with the lights all blinking. There is the emergency hose that is also plugged, but it has a stopper on the end and we were able to drain out the excess liquid. We had 45 minutes or so of AC bliss and it was done. So the full of the night was comparable to taking care of a crying baby. When the AC caput, Simon would go “milk the cow” (as we started calling it) to have another hour of bliss.

This problem isn’t something that can be fixed without properly reinstalling the AC unit, so this is a problem that will last for the week. I’d contact Michelle about it, but there’s not much he can do for the moment. So we have grown used to the draining process and keep a pot under the AC unit to empty the reservoir. Yeah, a bit of a drag on our great week in Venice, but at least we have an AC unit. It’s to be expected as the temps are higher than average for this week. Welcome to summer!

Day 1: Seven hours into the flight. Just south of Iceland. Trying to get a wink or 2 of sleep but proving difficult. Flying business class seems like such a waste of money… until about seven hours into a flight. My strained calf has been remarkably good up to this point. I’ve been making sure to get up for a walk-about every hour or 2.

The night before our flight to Venice! Packing for six weeks is not an easy task. I like to say I can travel light, but I just don’t think I’m capable. I’m taking a bit of a reprieve from the packing process to post a video time-lapse that I found on Vimeo. I’m getting pretty excited. :)

July 7 : Depart Vancouver for Venice

July 8 - 13 : Venice, Italy

July 13 - 14 : Florence, Italy

July 14 - 21 : Villa in Tuscany w/Simon’s family

July 21 - 25 : Rome, Italy

July 25 - 29 : Sorrento, Italy

July 29 - 30 : Ravello, Italy

July 30 - 31 : Matera, Italy

July 31 : Overnight ferry to Croatia

August 1 - 3 : Dubrovnik, Croatia

August 3 - 6 : Split, Croatia

August 6 - 7 : Plitvice Lakes National Park, Croatia

August 7 - 10 : Budapest, Hungary

August 10 - 13 : Smižany, Slovakia

August 13 - 14 : Trencin, Slovakia

August 14 - 15 : Bratislava, Slovakia

August 15 - 18 : Vienna, Austria

August 18 : Depart Vienna for Vancouver