Ok, taking a shower this morning was darn near impossible. I decided I’m just going to smell on the ride back to France on Sunday (Bill noted that no one would even notice)… the undersized bathing facilities is too much for me. I told Bill I was ready to go find another hotel and he told me he is not spending his two days in Venice trying to find a place to stay and to just suck it up. Fine.
We managed to get Patrick and his crew up early enough to check out the hotel breakfast. He greeted me with good news: the hotel is 300 Euros a night for both rooms, not each. Ok, well, I’d said last night that the hotel would have been ok with me for half the price. I got my wish.
The breakfast area is not set up to handle groups of more than three people interested in eating together. Groups of two would be better. So when we went in and said 6, then held up 6 fingers for them to understand, the waitresses were a bit overwhelmed. We sat at three tables in a row… not good for conversation. The breakfast didn’t include any eggs, which I know made it even less ideal for Patrick. But at six Euros a person, we figured it was good for the coffee and a roll. (not croissant.. they had lemon flavor…gross)
Not being able to come up with much of a plan since it was too hard to talk, we just hit the streets of Venice. Our first stop: St Mark’s Square. I had no idea I knew what it was until I got there, then I recognized it. (I’m such the fine world traveler!) And there I found the answer to a question Julie posed earlier in the week I didn’t know the answer to at the time: where is that place with all the birds? I have never seen (outside an Alfred Hitchcock movie) so many birds in one place. It was really kinda creepy. For a Euro you can buy a baggie of bird feed that is like a pigeon magnet. Sarah was more than happy to put some feed in her hands and hold out her arms to attract the birds. Bill let some land on him, too. So did Julie. Patrick and I drew the line at being bird perches. Kaitlyn mostly screamed and threw feed down. She was equally happy chasing the birds as she was feeding them. Some seemed too fat to even take flight in an emergency. Talk about thriving on the tourist industry!
From there we went to the lagoon for a bargain-basement tour of the grand canal on the boat bus. There was one problem with our plan. The drivers were on a 24 hour strike. I knew that happened in France, I didn’t know that happened in Italy. Live and learn. Lucky for us (ahem), the company could offer us a semi-private tour of the canal in English… the family discount made it a mere 100 Euros. Bill paid and we got on the boat. This was not a good time to figure it out, but I’m not such a fan of boats. It isn’t the rocking motion; I never felt sick. Just scared that the darn things would tip over and dump us all into the canal. Kaitlyn felt quite the opposite. She stood on the back seat and held her hands up in the air and, I swear, hollered I’m king of the world!
The fear and/or thrill of the boat ride made us all hungry. We wandered some more until we came across a restaurant that we could agree on. Ok, a restaurant where Patrick saw something he’d eat on the menu. Heck, I’m not even sure how we picked it. I was so hungry by then. Later I realized it was written up in my Italy with Kids book because the author let her children roam in the square by the restaurant; I’m not going to do the same.
Ever since hitting the ground in Venice, Kaitlyn has been asking… no, begging… for a mask. We promised her if she behaved in the morning, she could have one on the way back to the hotel. We steered her away from the shops with the masks that go for hundreds of Euros. The one we ducked into included an artist hand painting and decorating the masks, but the prices were much more reasonable for a four year old’s request. The woman in the shop showed Kaitlyn some little masks that would fit her and Kaitlyn went for the pink one. (big surprise) Then she made us put it on her and she proceeded to wear it for the rest of the day.
Napping was not on Kaitlyn’s list of things to do, but it was on ours. So we finally got her to settle down and I agreed to stay with her while Bill went to climb the tower in St Mark’s Square for a grand view of the city. I had no interest in climbing stairs; I had a great interest in sneaking in a nap of my own. I was found out when Bill returned an hour later and I was just waking up. I’ve got to learn to use the alarm on my cell phone! That’s ok, he had his own confession to make: the tower has an elevator.
Our next wanderings were just that wanderings. We really had no destination, just the determination to get lost and enjoy it just like the books and other travelers had told us to do. We walked down the grand canal then back some side streets and from there I have no idea where we were. We definitely seemed to be away from the tourist spots, although not away from the tourists (we weren’t the only lost people carrying backpacks and cameras.)
Pretty soon the wandering made us hungry then the wandering took on a mission… finding a restaurant with chicken Parmesan. Yes, Patrick had set his mind to yet another made-up-American-take on foreign food. Remember the quest in Paris for chicken cordon blue? After lots of menu-reading, Patrick looked at one and declared this is where we’re eating. He’d spotted cordon blue on the menu. When everyone else sat down, Kaitlyn and I went to the bathroom. When I came back, Patrick’s mood had definitely changed. While I was gone, at Bill’s urging, Patrick asked what was in the cordon blue. Veal. Frustrated, he ordered a plate of spaghetti and tomato sauce. Bill and I were both pretty sure we’d be trying to find the McDonald’s after the rest of us finished eating. Maybe they’d have chicken Parmesan on a bun. Then the meal was served. Patrick coated it in cheese (always risky here, but I didn’t say anything) and he spun some on his spoon and took a bite. He was in shock. He announced that he had just taken a bite of Grandma Murphy’s spaghetti sauce. (She was Maria D’Incecco before Mary Murphy) So I took a bite. He was right. He polished that off and asked for a second plate. He tried to explain it to the waiter, who I don’t think spoke enough English to understand. I tried to ask a guy who looked like he was in charge if we could have a copy of their menu to take home to remember the meal. He didn’t understand, either. But he did go get the other guy in charge who does speak English. He understood. And Patrick left with a menu. And he left promising we’d be back.
Happy after the amazing meal, we thought a gondola ride would be a nice way to finish the evening. But even with warning, the prices caught us off guard. Besides, the wine and cappuccino at dinner was starting to make the idea of an hour in a gondola unappealing. One gondolier even cut his price for us when we turned him down initially, but nature’s call was getting louder. And it was getting late. There’s always tomorrow.