Allyson and our fresh Italian pomegranates
Allyson, impaled on a door
Oh, the bruschetta was lovely
Climbing on stuff, one of our favorite pastimes
Gelato
So. Arrival in Venice. We walked off the train and it hit me as soon as I saw the boat taxies and bridges. This was it! The city itself! Unbelievable!
The bridges are great for sightseeing but not always the best for 32 students hauling luggage around. We clattered our way to the hotel. A few days before there had been a lot of flooding in Venice (nothing new there) that had flooded several of the rooms in our hotel. As such, one of them was unlivable and some of the students were going to need to be housed in different hotel. Well, seeing as there are only 4 guys in our group as opposed to 28 girls, it was decided that the guys would be expelled from the fun and sent to the other hotel. We grabbed our luggage and headed out into the dark with a map with random instructions to a place we’d never heard of. We arrived at the new hotel well enough and introduced ourselves to a guy that barely spoke English. The hotel was beautiful; a small, quaint place with lovely tea sets and upholstered chairs. The guy at the desk told us to wait for a few moments, no doubt to wait for out room to be ready. Eventually another younger guy walked into the hotel and made motions for us to follow him. Wait…
Where are we going?
What about the lovely little hotel? The upholstery! The tea sets! The quaintness! All of it faded away, abandoning us to the dark, rainy streets of Venice. The trudge continued. Two canals, three bridges and countless cobblestones later our guide turned into a darkened alley. “This is it” I thought, “we’re going to take part in our very own dramatic mafia-movie mugging!” Ok, so nothing happened. We were fine. We did, however, end up going into a small door that led to several rooms and a coffee machine. This was our hotel! No sign, no lobby, no host. Just a couple rooms and that sad li’l coffee machine. We were supposed to meet people from our group at about this time so we hurried up and dropped our stuff, grabbed our three different keys to get out (yeah, to get out) of our hotel and took off. The rain had started at this point and, of course, I was both to forgetful and too lazy to have my umbrella handy. So I got wet. At least I wasn’t sick or anything, right? Hahahahaha…
I went back to the hotel where our director was staying to let him know where we eventually ended up (Didn’t do a lot of good. He asked where our hotel was…no idea. He asked what it was called…no name. Tough conversation). I met up with a few of the girls and we went back into the deluge, still umbrella-less, looking for something to eat. Venice is a pricey town. Even the Italians think so! We found lots of restaurants that we could’ve mortgaged our organs to eat at and passed right by. We eventually found a great little cafeteria that served pasta. I had forgotten that pasta in Italy, even at the cheapest cafeteria, is going to be AWESOME. And it was. Amazing stuff, really. I went back, met the guys and we went back to our “hotel”.
The next morning I met up with Allyson and her termporary roommate, Ellen and we went out into the city. None of us had any particular agenda to the day, we just wanted to love our time in Venice. All three of us were in various stages of being sick, which led to a slower pace but we managed. I will tell you this right now. Vienna is EASILY the single most confusing city on the face of the planet. Loads of tiny roads, canals cutting everything up. Road signs and addresses don’t match, there aren’t any maps that contain more than 30% of the roads anyway. The roads wind, the disappear suddenly only to reappear 50 meters away on a perpendicular. I’ve never actually been lost in a city when I have a map but in Venice I was. Hopelessly lost. Finally! It was GREAT! It was a smidge on the rainy side, which dampened things a bit but actually worked well for taking pictures.
We stopped for breakfast at a little bakery and had a few pastries. Not bad at all. After this the morning was taken up in being lost. We saw churches, parks, monuments, beautiful buildings, mask shops, glass makers and everything in between. Where are they, one might ask? I haven’t the foggiest. Somewhere in Venice. Go get lost and I promise you’ll find them eventually.
Eventually our stomachs caught up to us and we really started to get hungry. I pulled out my trusty “Cheap Eats in Italy” book that had led us to many a fine restaurant on the trip and picked a few. Never found the first. Or the second. Or the third. I swear it was like the roads they were on never existed or if they did they were shifting in and out of reality, never staying in one place or going any particular direction. Finally after the third failure we gave up completely, meandered off into the city, resigned to our starvation and walked into the first restaurant we found. I looked at the menu and it said “Leon Bianco”. I’ll be durned. That was the third restaurant! We found it as soon as we stopped looking! We decided that Venice was teaching us a thing or two about navigating it’s streets. You’ll only find what you seek when you stop seeking it and let the city treat you to whatever it sees fit.
Best experience in Venice was St. Mark’s square. Big famous square with churches, flooding and pigeons. Hundreds and thousands of pigeons. So cool! We bought some of the birth-control laden bird food (supplied by the city government) and immediately were completely buried in birds. They come from EVERYWHERE! These birds are ravenous! It was hilarious! I had birds on my head, birds on my arms, birds on my shoulders, birds birds birds! Allyson had a friend that nested in her purse. I also had a dogpile at my feet with several layers of battling pigeons fighting it out for the precious seed. So funny!
Later in the afternoon we were on the boardwalk along the southern coast of the islands of Venice. It was beautiful. The ocean, the trees, the view. All of it was great. The weather had gotten sunny by this point and was ideal. We found a gelato shop and got their specialty, which was a slice of hazelnut-chocolate gelato in a cup with cream. So good! (BTW, for any smart-alecks out there making cracks about my pastry and gelato eating habits, I’ll have everyone know that I’ve dropped two belt holes since I’ve been in Europe. TWO. Take that.)
At this point Ellen was feeling a bit under the weather so we returned her to the hotel. Allyson and I grabbed some drawing materials, found a sweet little dock area with some boats and sketched for a while. The night was nice and the lighting perfect so it was nice to try some drawing. I’m not exactly Picasso. Basically I can’t really draw. But hey, I’ll keep trying! Allyson gave me some pointers and I ended up with some passable sketches. We were hungry so we searched the cheap eats book for a proper restaurant for our last night in Venice, decided on a place that was supposed to have good fish. They say that fish is the thing to eat in Venice. We grabbed our table along the canal and ate grilled salmon while freezing our noog’ms off. It was quite good! That was about it for the evening…
Saturday: last day in Italy. How sad! We did some more wandering saw some more stuff, ate large amounts of gelato and generally had a heck of a day. Last meal was tasty sandwiches.
We picked up a few souvenirs, dropped by a great Post Office and met back up with the group. The train back through the Italian alps was properly beautiful. At one point our director, his wife and my roommate David got off the train during a 30-minute stop to eat. The 30-minute stop immediately ended and the train left. Hahahahaha…they got left in some tiny town in Italy. We were a bit worried but I thought it was more funny than anything. Later they held the train and all of the people they had left behind were shuttled up to return to the train. Alls well that ends well, I suppose. We all made it back in one piece, utterly exhausted and ready for a little R&R.
Lickin' the saltywall
We left Vienna on Monday evening at about 7ish. We were to take a night train to Florence, Italy. We basically took over an entire traincar full of sleeping berths except for one poor room with a few people stuck in the middle of 30 BYU students with way too much energy. I only saw these travel partners once or twice but they looked as if they wanted to hurl themselves off the train. Hahahahaha…we stayed up for a while on the train playing games and generally having a good time, spent 20 minutes or so trying to understand the randomly shaped train sheets (never figured that one out) and finally fell asleep while chugging across the Italian countryside. We were awakened at about 6:00 AM by one of the cranky train attendants and were told that we had about 30 minutes until the train arrived at it’s destination. Naturally, we all rolled back over and figured we’d sleep for 29 more minutes. Then the train stopped. We all groaned and carried on for a few minutes until someone had the bright idea to look out a window. We heard a shout from the other end of the car “Hey! This is Florence!” It slowly dawned on everyone simultaneously that we were IN Florence and that if we didn’t get off the train pronto there would be unfortunate consequences. Chaos ensued. Students running around, collecting baggage, tying shoes while hopping down the hall, fifteen girls trying to use the bathroom in less than 2 minutes. We must have been quite the sight. Fortunately, everyone in our group managed to get their luggage and get off the train safely. We walked through the dark streets of Florence until we found our hotel and found out there (at about 7:00) that we couldn’t check in until noon. Oh the horror. Everyone was either in pajamas or nasty day-old street clothes that had been slept in on the train. We rapidly gave up any idea of smelling better than garbage and just dropped our luggage and went out into the city.
First order of business was the Dome. The Dome is right smack in the middle of Florence, a cathedral with supposedly the biggest free dome in Europe. If you’ve never been to Florence, I’ll tell you that the Dome is beautiful. The inside of the church is nothing terribly spectacular after all the other cathedrals in Europe, but the exterior and the inside of the dome itself was great. We climbed the steps up into the dome, checking out the painting of Dante’s inferno (Basically people getting disemboweled in Hell. Gotta love uplifting church pieces!) and finally onto the top. This was a beautiful look over the city, with all of the rooftops, gardens and market in our view. We climbed back down the tower, nearly getting motion sick from the tight spiraling staircases, and hit up the market we saw nearby. European markets are way too much fun. Lots of people selling everything from fresh fruit to pirated goods to useless junk. Everything is worth haggling about, as they usually start selling to tourists at about twice what they’ll actually get from someone who’s not getting fleeced. I ended up with a few nice Italian ties for 2 euros apiece. Not bad.
After checking into the hotel about noonish and eating a lovely little eggplant sandwich from a street vendor, Allyson, Heather and I went back out into the city and walked. Walked walked walked. We aren’t even sure how many miles we put on that day. We found a recommended (by my great little “Cheap eats in Italy” book) Gelato shop and tried the local specialty. Woohoo! Gelato was a hit. The fruit flavors we tried we intense. Gelato, incidentally, ended up being the weakness of many a young lady in our group. I have heard tales of upwards of nine scoops a day for some in Italy. I liked it, but not quite THAT much. Frozen custard still holds my crown as best frozen dessert. Later in the evening we went to Michaelangelo Piazza, a square on a hill overlooking the city and took in the sunset. At this point hunger was rapidly setting in and we followed a road back into the hills looking for a particular restaurant. An hour and a half later we gave up. We dragged our poor starving bodies all the way back into town, nearly fainting and stopped at one of the finest Neapolitan pizza places in town. We made a reservation for a half-hour later and found a clean patch of cement to collapse on during the wait. The pizza was worth all the starvation (Probably partially because of our intense hunger) and we polished off the day with a bit more Gelato.
Florence is a beautiful town. It is set amidst tree-covered hills and still holds a very renaissance feeling. This is where the Medici family really kick-started the arts and intellectualism that fueled the Italian renaissance. The who’s who list in Florence includes Michaelangelo, Donatello, Dante, Machiavelli and just goes on and on.
Wednesday: More walking. We started with a return to the market and then tried as hard as could to get lost. It worked fairly well, and took several hours to return to where we could figure out where we were. After a while we returned to the hotel to drop stuff off and prepare for the evening. We found a park in the area, played around a while on the swings and ran around like five-year-olds. Great fun. I think all of the Italians in the area thought us a bit strange but I’m sure they just dismissed us as crazy tourists and let it go. Florence is packed with an unreal amount of tourists. I was blown away. Going anywhere near the Dome in midday is like reliving the life of a canned sardine. It’s like a giant moshpit. Bleh. I don’t like tourist crowds much.
Our entire group met at the Uffizi museum at 4:20 to get in as a group. We got in at 5ish and just sort of dispersed. Allyson and I, not knowing as much as we possibly should about art, kind of just meandered around looking at things and having very little idea why they were important. The art is impressive, mind you, but a painting of some guy who was a random doctor in the 1600s has never really done it for me. After a while we decided there were better things to do and took off. We were quite hungry and looked for some type of fruit stand or market. We found a place with a little old Italian guy selling some fresh fruit and expected that to work out well but NO! This was one mean old Italian dude. I was picking up the fruit trying to decide which pear to buy and he completely freaked out on me. Started shouting at me to not touch the fruit and slipping back and forth in between Italian and English. Whoa…since when can you not touch fresh fruit at a fruit stand? It’s not fine art, my friend. Take a chill pill. I’m not just going to buy a piece of fruit because someone tells me it’s ripe…I decided to not buy anything there and moved on. We did find a little grocery store and picked up a little something there, including a pear that was nice and ripe (I’d know, I checked them all).
After finding some food we went on a hunt for cake. Our goal was to find a super-rich chocolate cake and somewhere to sit as it had started to drizzle a bit. We had no specific destination in mind, as we prefer to see where random roads lead, as we headed out on the search for cake. First we stopped at a little bar/lounge. The proprietor was very kind and re-opened the restaurant portion of his place for us to have some cake. I had cheesecake, Allyson carrot cake. The cake was fantastic and actually fairly cheap. We weren’t satisfied in our craving for sweets and went out again. At this point it was really starting to get going with the rain. We discovered that Liesl had conveniently forgotten her poncho in my bag and we used it to shield ourselves as we ran around the city. Again, the Italians must have been amused by two Americans running around holding a poncho over their heads trying to stay somewhat dry. We found a little coffee shop and bought a cake-like thing (Actually it turned out to be a bowl of frozen cream puffs covered in dark chocolate and hazelnuts) but when we bought it they told us we had to wait at least an hour to eat it. Well, we couldn’t wait that long so as we continued our poncho-and-now-cake-holding journey, we stopped into another café and got some pastries to hold us over until we could devour our chocolately treat. I got a pear-chocolate pastry that was surprisingly yummy and Allyson had a pineapple filled treat. When we eventually arrived at the hotel we messily plowed into our creampuff loveliness and got chocolate all over ourselves. After we had made ourselves completely ill we grudgingly shared the chocolate with others (making darn good friends in the process) and tried to convince our stomachs to forgive us.
Thursday morning we felt a little guilty for not having visited most of Florence’s museums and tourist attractions so we decided to join a large group going to the Academia in the morning. This is where the famous “David” by Michaelangelo is housed. It’s actually a fairly small museum, though impressive, and we were back out on the streets in no time. We continued our pattern of getting lost, but this time to the south. We walked past the Medici palace and gardens and just kept trucking until we found ourselves in the hills outside the city. This place was gorgeous. Beautiful windy streets, small towns, parks, fountains, hills, everything you could want. We took loads of pictures. Eventually we were a good 3-4 inches off the city map and the time was running short so we tried to find out where we were and how to get back. We stopped at a restaurant with a little map, asked for directions at a lovely hotel and managed to bump into a bus stop. Just as we walked towards the bus stop we heard a HUGE crack of thunder. A bus pulled up immediately, almost magically, and we stepped on as the heavens opened and the rains came down. As we watched from the dryness of the bus, the streets were literally filled with water and hail. Incredible timing. We weren’t sure exactly where the bus was going, but by speaking my lousy Spanish to the Italians I ascertained that it would, eventually, end up somewhere in Florence. We got off the bus in an area that seemed fairly well-used by tourists and, incredibly, were fairly close to our hotel. We lucked out all over the place that day. That night we were to jump a train to Venice but before we left we wanted to eat some lunch/dinner. We stopped at a good-looking restaurant with tomatoes and mushrooms in the window (I’m a sucker for restaurants with fresh tomatoes and mushrooms in the window. Works every time.) Once we got inside and were looking at the menu, Allyson pointed out a dish to me with truffles. TRUFFLES! I’ve been looking all over for those! One of my goals in coming to Europe, Italy especially, was to eat truffles. I ordered it in anticipation. Truffles have always been described to me as an amazing eating experience and I was not let down at all. They are fantastic. They are unlike anything else, and therefore impossible to describe, but they taste good and the smell coming off the sauce they were in was seriously like crack cocaine. I spent more time smelling my food than I did eating it. Very cool.
We grabbed our luggage, met up with the group and hopped on the train for Venice. Venice! How cool!
I’ve failed to mention that I was getting sick at this point. I’d had a slightly sore throat in Florence and on the way to Venice it decided to get serious. My nose was running and I had congestion. I wasn’t about to let that happen, though, so I took some cold pills and told it to go away. That worked marginally well.
I didn’t get really excited about Venice until we started across the narrow bridge that leads to the islands that are Venice. At that point I was running around the train, looking out the window and basically acting like a 9-year-old with a new toy. Venice! I’ve wanted to go to Venice for a loooong, long time.
Well heavens. I haven’t written for a while, but that’s mostly because I’ve been on a trip to Salzburg and the surrounding areas. We left Wednesday morning and just got back tonight. The trip was the most amazing experience I’ve had in my entire life. I know that’s saying a lot but I’ll explain and once you get the entire story you’ll understand.
Wednesday morning we hopped on a bus and headed out. First stop was Mauthausen. Mauthausen was a Nazi concentration camp in Austria during the second World War. I’m not sure what to say about it. If you’ve been to such a place you’d understand. I have no idea how people could treat others in that way. Somehow it seems that the people responsible for the atrocities committed there had completely lost sight of their (and their prisoners’) humanity. Very frightening and sickening. Literally. I got a bit physically ill just being there and had to sit for a while. Hideous. However, in a more poignant moment, Allyson and I went out into the meadow next to the camp and picked lovely little wildflowers and it provided a great contrast of beauty next to the ugliness we’d just experienced. In the camp we would walk into a room, see the walls and it would slowly dawn on us that people (hundreds if not thousands) had suffered and died looking at those walls. Very quickly sobering. Some in our group were able to stay fairly objective and treat the place like a museum but I was not. I skipped the movie at the end of the tour because I had basically seen all I ever wanted to see and already learned the important lessons that such a place is there to remind us of.
We left Mauthausen and continued on our bus down to the lake/mountain region of Austria. The town we were visiting and staying in that night is called Halstatt. It is an ancient town (now somewhat more modern) perched on the edge of a mountain, clinging to the rocks so as not to fall into the beautiful alpine lake. The single prettiest town I have ever seen in my entire life. Allyson and I managed to take over 1000 pictures on our trip so I ought to be able to find one or two good ones soon. Anyhow, we got to Halstatt and basically had the afternoon to wander around and do what we would. Allyson, Anne, Brian and I walked up a down the town for a while, taking pictures and repeating words like “Wow” and “Amazing” ad nauseum. Later that evening we ate dinner in a cool restaurant with ivy all over the exterior and growing into the interior through the windows, fish heads and game mounted on the wall and waiters in lederhosen. Allyson and I split a dish of roast venison that was spectacular. It was cooked perfectly and came with several sauces, well cooked vegetables, beet sauerkraut, baked apples stuffed with cranberries and potatoes. I really thought I’d died and gone to heaven. We wandered around for a while after dark, taking in the nighttime air and sights before heading into bed. Interesting to see the contrast of the most beautiful place experiences of my life and the ugliest place I’ve ever been to falling on the same day.
Thursday we got up early and visited the salt mines near Halstatt. These mines have been working since 5000 B.C. How about that? It was great to take the tour through them, which included fun slides and sneaking away from the tour guide to lick the salty wall (mmmm….). They had underground light shows in some of the chambers, pretty nifty. Back in town we visited a church full of skulls and saw the prettiest graveyard ever. Each grave had a carefully cultivated and unique flowerbed growing on it. Eventually we tearfully (Ok, there weren’t any tears but it was darn close) left Halstatt, visited a old church with amazing woodcarvings in some-town-with-a-German-name-that-I-can’t-remember and ended up in Salzburg at about 5ish in the afternoon. Salzburg is a wonderful town world-renowned for being the birthplace of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and for being the locale of “Sound of Music”. (More people know of the latter than the former fact. Sad commentary on society.) Salzburg isn’t as pretty as Halstatt (a fate shared by most places on earth) but has a lot of history and some amazing sights, sounds and smells. The main square was full of little booths with craftsmen doing their trades. Blacksmiths, clock makers, pastry chefs (MMMM!!!! Warm fig pastries!!!!) and leatherworkers plied their art right in front of our very eyes. I loved that part of town. That night we went to dinner at a place that’s name had something to do with Monkeys and had some good food. Allyson and I split (something we do quite frequently, as it allows for more tasting) an herbal cream soup and a dish that was toasted bread with cured bacon and grated horseradish on it. Tasty tasty tasty. As you can see, seeing beautiful sights and eating good food was pretty much the name of the game. Another good (long) day; we went home, wrote in journals and staggered off to bed.
Friday: morning guided walking tour of Salzburg, saw all of the main attractions and figured out what we wanted to go back and see more in depth. We got to see cathedrals, houses of famous people, gardens and beer-soaked festivals. What could be better? After the tour we climbed up one of the local hills, Mönchsberg, looked out over the city and took more good pictures. The climb was a lot of fun. We came down off the mountain and went to Mirabel gardens (the do-re-mi song gardens). There was a nifty little playground that we played in for a bit, a labyrinth and lots of carefully manicured flowers. More exploring of the city in the afternoon. We visited the nearby fortress on top of a mountain and ate dinner there. Dinner was vegetable strudel and four types of Viennese sausages. Very local and authentic, exactly what we wanted. We ate at the castle wall on a cliff, overlooking a huge valley. Every once in a while I still have to remind myself that this is all real! We bussed our way to the hotel to get jackets and things for the evening and then went to dessert. Big story there. We went to St. Peters, established in 802 A.D. No typo there. The place is over 1200 years old. Charlemagne ate there. Possibly the oldest restaurant in the world. The restaurant was so incredible. The inside was something straight out of an expensive magazine. What did we order?
Salzburg Nockerl!
What the heck else? We’re in Salzburg, for pete’s sake! Salzburg Nockerl, for the uninitiated, is a baked meringue type dessert with cranberries baked in and raspberry sauce over the top. I’ve been hearing Mom talk about it for years. It was like a dream. Very rich, very tasty. Allyson and I were totally defeated by it and unable to eat the whole thing. I was, at that moment, quite possibly as happy as a person can even be. 1200-year-old restaurant, night air, perfect decorations and lighting, eating Salzburg Nockerl with an amazing girl. Straight out of a movie, I swear. Once in a lifetime kind of night.
Saturday: Woke up, did the breakfast thing and met a group of kids to take a picture on a big, cool tree that we had seen the day before in a park. We walked around the gardens a bit more and proceeded to Mozart’s house. The tour through Mozart’s house included seeing some of his instruments, original scores and listening to a lot of his pieces. Very cool for a rapidly blossoming classical music nut. After the tour we got another fresh fig pastry (MMMM!!!) as a sort of midday snack. After checking out the shopping area of Salzburg (finding several articles of clothing and other items that we wanted that would each cost over a thousand dollars. Each. Anyone want to buy me a handcrafted accordion?) and watching some guys in funny alpine outfits do some local dances, we went back to St. Peters. We got some appetizers and soups (won’t take the time to explain; simply know that they were the most artistic, unique and tasty foods I’ve ever eaten. If you want to know more ask me about it). We grudgingly walked back to our hotel, sensing our impending doom and hopped on the bus back to Vienna. I know, it’s stupid to be disappointed about going to Vienna, but after all this can you blame me? Honestly?
Stay tuned:
We’re off to Italy next week! Holy overwhelmingness!
