Venezia: Are you drunk?
The group now referred to as the Lucky Seven (Me, Courtney, Meghan, Liz, Kim, Lane, and Robert) left for Venice early Saturday morning. Liz, our group mother, packed snacks and made sure we didn’t all fall asleep at once and get gassed and robbed.
Waiting for our second train, we were sitting on a bench near the public restroom (a sort of pay-per-use little structure), and Liz watched as a woman put money in the slot, and then wasn’t able to open the door… She then “hid” herself behind said structure (in full view of a watching Liz and half of our group), squatted, and proceeded to (sorry about this) take a dump. Liz, then Meghan, then Kim, all witnessed this event. When she was done, the woman walked very sternly right past us.
At the last minute, Courtney had found us a hostel right on the island, which ended up being perfectly located and really nice. We had a private suite with our own little kitchen with 5 beds and a couch (Kim claims she doesn’t mind sleeping on the floor), which was perfect other than the fact that half the group woke up covered in bug bites.
The first day, we mostly walked and shopped around, and Lane managed to put away 7 scoops of gelato. We watched the sun set over the Grand Canal sitting on the Rialto bridge and sharing a bottle of wine. At night, we looked around for something to do, and were told by several locals that Venice has absolutely no nightlife. We ended up in the one plaza playing music, and then sat on a dock with a few other circles of tourists.
The second day, we explored Piazza San Marco, and even found a contemporary art exhibit. To get inside, we had to walk through a pitch black, narrow tunnel, and we found ourselves in a room with a projector, showing a film by a German artist about his project, which consists of moving a large black cube into various public places. Being art students, and the only people there, we began to dance in front of the screen, making human shadow puppets… The curator walked in and loved it, and took Lane and I up to see the rest of the gallery, which was also very cool.
We took a gondola ride right before we left, but although we paid a total of 80 euros for the experience, the gondolier refused to sing to us. We decided to do the job for him and all participated in a pretty nice rendition of “Kiss the Girl” from The Little Mermaid, to which our lovely gondolier responded “Are you drunk?!”
On the train ride home, several of us were participating in a backrub chain when two cops walked by and stopped, and one asked °Anch’io?” (Me too?). We assumed he was kidding, but they kept coming back and asking. They discovered that Kim is a professional massage therapist, and eventually got us to join them in another cabin, where we proceeded to take pictures in their hats and talk to them for about an hour while Kim worked on one cop’s shoulders. As it turns out, they live in Orvieto, too, and they were able to hook us up with a bus up the hill (we were planning on just hiking it, but were happy to cut out the hour-long walk).
The cops verified Liz’s worries that people do, in fact, spray “gas rufies” into chambers full of sleeping people on the night train, and while they stay asleep, take all of their stuff. Lovely.
All in all, it was a really fun trip, and we were all glad that we got to experience Venice, if briefly, before it sinks (we were told it will be completely uninhabitable in about 30 years). I will be traveling to Cinqueterre with the same group, plus Lindsey (our “Crazy 8th”), this upcoming weekend, and could not be more excited about it.
