Venice/Florence

After the Oded Workshop, I rushed off to catch my plane to meet my parents in Venice.

It was a little bit intimidating but exciting at the same time to be traveling by myself. Catching the train to the airport was super easy, and getting into the airport wasn't too much trouble. I had to go through the metal detector three times, though, which was very annoying. Then the guy looking through bags was asking about what crops and animals went with each state.. he thought that a big thing in Iowa was chickens.. I made sure to add corn to his list.

The flight was super short, it felt like we barely had any time in the air before we were preparing to land again. Once I got off the plane, the automatic machines to buy tickets for the Alilinguna, the boat bus, were not working, so I had to talk to somebody to get a ticket...

The boat bus was kind of cool, it was definitely an interesting way to get into the main part of town, seeing everything from the water and the outside first. When I got off the boat, however, I was supposed to meet my parents at the Campanile in St Marks' Square. I figured, though, that there would be signs all over the place. This was not the case. I had directions to my parents' hotel (but not the name of it), so I headed off in that direction, since I could see a few towers and I wasn't sure which one I was looking for. Like all great Italian directions, however, they were a little bit off. After wandering around for about a half hour as it was getting dark, though, I ran into my dad returning to the hotel to grab a sweater for my mom. So, in the end it worked out.

We then went to dinner and ended up getting a fixed menu dinner, of some traditional venetian dishes. As we were looking at the menu, though, they brought us some sparkling wine. I'm not sure if they thought I was younger than I actually was, though, because initially they had given me some sort of extra sweet strawberry drink. (I traded with Dad, though, I'd rather have the wine and he'd rather have the sugary drink). The meal was... interesting. Plenty of things like anchovies, octopus, unidentifiable fish, squid ink sauce on pasta that turned all of our mouths black, and liver. Needless to say, although it wasn't a delicious dinner, it was quite the adventure.

The next day, it rained most of the day, but we spent most of it in museums, so it was okay. We went to the Museo Correr, where we saw a lot of 18th century.. things (I loved the library), and the Modern Art Museum (disappointingly small, but we saw some Wassily Kandinsky, Gustav Klimt, Joan Miro, and a couple others...), the Doge's Palace, where we went in the Bridge of Sighs (completely surrounded by giant ads on the outside, ugh). We also went into the cathedral there that day. After dinner that evening, we got some gelato and spent time floating between the dueling orchestras in San Marco Square.

The next day was actually quite sunny and warm, and we explored a few more parts of Venice we hadn't wandered to yet before catching the train to Florence. Before we left, we found some good gelato, and I was excited about my chili pepper chocolate flavor, yum!

I met up with Andrew when we got into Florence, and he took me on a mini art history/walking tour, looking at plenty of fabulous sculptures and such on the way to his apartment. His apartment has an AWESOME rooftop with a beautiful view, I'm so jealous! It was very nice. We tried to go to one of Andrew's favorite places, the Art Bar, for awesomly fruity drinks, but it was apparently closed on Sundays. So, instead he took me to the Mexican restaurant and we got some Dos Equis with lime instead (!!!!! finally satisfied that craving...). After that, we headed off to his class mates' apartment for a dinner party, it was quite tasty.

The next day, Andrew took me to the Spanish Chapel off to the side of Santa Maria Novella and explained all the frescoes to me. I then met up with my parents. Again, it rained a bunch this day. This was unfortunate, because I was not dressed for cold or rainy weather, but I did not have access to my clothing, since it was all at Andrew's apartment and he was in class for the day. I borrowed some from my mom, but I was still cold and had wet feet all day, which did NOT help the fact that I was a little bit sick.. definitely got a little worse after that day. We saw a couple nice churches, and a museum where we saw Michelangelo's Pieta he had started for his own tomb, and a nice view of the city at the top of the hill. I got the wonderful opportunity to stand off to the side and listen to the Italians make fun of my parents for posing for pictures with the silly three-wheeled work trucks... oh my.

In the evening, I met up with Andrew again for the night. We had grand plans: go to the Art Bar for fruity drinks (maybe make it to the free harpsichord concert at his school?), dinner for one of his classmates, then the Jazz club. We did make it to the Art Bar... I got a strawberry daquiri (which I would usually never order), which was really just a ton of delicious fresh fruit piled on top of some drink.. even passion fruit!

Then we headed off to dinner. Turns out we were going to some super secret restaurant club thing.. it was an unmarked restaurant and we had to pay to join and get a club card before we could go in. I knew dinner was going to be really good, though, when they handed us handwritten menus. They brought us plenty of wine and bruschetta, then apparently what I had ordered for dinner (I didn't really know) was lamb with marsala.. it was really really good. Andrew had ordered something called gnudi, which was large balls of spinach coated in ricotta cheese. These were also so soft and delicious. We also got some tasty desserts, and they brought this giant jug and told us to finish it. We didn't really know what it was at first.. apparently it was grappa, and had a bunch of fruits that had been sitting in it for about a month. There was so much sediment in the liquid, and it had a really nasty taste to it. I was not a fan... but other people got a little rowdy. It was a pretty fun dinner, though, and kind of exciting that it was some sort of secret club.

For spending one full day in Florence, though, I picked absolutely the worst day, as the Uffizi and Accademia are both closed on Mondays... (not to mention that a few days later Patrick Wolf played a free show and Hot Chip did a DJ set the day after that.. hope you had fun, Andrew!). Guess that just means I need to go back sometime.