Katie and Tommy: Around the World

Since Katie had felt sick again the day we left Florence, we spent our first morning in Venice sleeping late in bed with the hopes that the extra sleep would jump start her immune system. So by the time we had woken up and were finally finishing our late lunch, the Fausts had already arrived back from several hours of walking in the morning hours. When Katie and I finally got dressed and headed out the door, the four of us stumbled along toward the Rialto Bridge. Mrs. Faust commented to me that it was very difficult for her to take her morning run that day because the narrow alleyways rarely went for more than 30 yards or so before dead ending. A few minutes later, we arrived at St. Mark’s Square. Katie was ecstatic. She finally got the chance to partake in her all-time favorite traveling past time: feeding pigeons.

Reluctantly, I joined in as well (though after I had put on my rainjacket). We walked around the square a bit more taking pictures and after stopping for some lunchtime gelato, we spent the rest of the day just wandering around the narrow streets and looking into shop windows. One of the most favorite experiences while in Venice we had that afternoon while sitting at a café and watching people go by, especially kids on their way back from school. I wondered what it must be like to grow up in a place like Venice, with hardly any grass or green spaces, all of these disjointed streets amidst strangely green colored canals, and the realization that if one wanted to make a living here in Venice, it would have to be off the tourists that visited (as evidenced by the fact that 80% of the city’s GDP comes from tourism).

While we were in Florence we enjoyed so much the restaurant that Foder’s had recommended that we decided to go to one of theirs in Venice, as well. We were a bit surprised by how generous the portions were– in the end, everyone was helping each other finish off the last remaining pieces that remained, something that we found to be a rarity during our time in Italy. When we returned to the hotel that night, Katie and I stayed up late finishing up some important emails we had to send to graduate programs and such.

The next morning Mr. and Mrs. Faust walked on their own for a few hours before we met up with them and went walking through some of the calmer and quieter parts of Venice. We walked largely through what used to used to be the old Jewish ghetto. One of the biggest appeals about this experience was how few the tourist were and with the lack, the simple pleasures of peacefulness and quiet. For lunch we got some pizza at a café near the train station and then the Fausts went to mass while Katie and I returned to the room to rest up.

Earlier in the week we had discussed how we wanted to do a gondola ride but were worried about how much it might cost. Fortunately, we were able to negotiate a bit with the gondolier to get a better price. Something that struck me was how quiet the canals were! The streets can become truly deafening and you just get used to it; being able to sit in silence on the river made me realize for the first time just how much I had been missing silence!

For dinner that night we got especially lucky: we went out looking for a restaurant we had seen earlier that day, but upon seeing how abandoned it looked, we chose to go to one just across the canal. That place, Dona Onesta, was likely one of the best places we went in the 10 or so days we spent in Italy. And we stumbled upon it almost wholly by chance!!

While we were trying to buy tickets for the next morning’s water bus, I heard an ambulance siren. I had grown accustomed to their sound so at first it didn’t really haze me, but then I realized that there was no way that the sound could have been coming from a truck! We all ran to the end of the Grand Canal just in time to see a speedboat with sirens whiz by us, evidently in route to an emergency. It is the little things like that that have made Venice so interesting to be in.

The next morning, March 30^th, we had to get up very early to catch a waterbus to the bus station (and then the airport.) We didn’t get much sleep that night because Mr. Faust’s alarm went off an hour earlier than we had thought it would. When we were later on the bus, however, we began to notice that our tickets were all validated an hour ahead of what the time on our watches was showing. When we arrived at the airport, we realized that we had forgotten (though no one had really told us anyway) that the last Sunday in March is when Europe switches to Day Light Savings time! Fortunately, we were still in time for everything and no one had to miss their flights. We told the Fausts goodbye at security and then about an hour later Katie and I boarded our own plane destined for Paris!

We apologize for how long it has recently taken us to update this blog and put up pictures. We’ve been making a lot of major life decisions lately and been trying to enjoy the limited time we have with our parents! More to come in the next few days!

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 6th, 2008 at 11:30 pm and is filed under Italy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.