October 8 - Travel Day = Double Gelato Day

The thrilling adventures of Jean and Suzanne continue!  This morning we were feeling smug about our knowledge of the vaparetto which is never a good way to feel on vacation.  Ever.  Don't do this kids.  You will regret it.  In our smugness, we decided we'd have no trouble taking the vap to the San Michele island, a small island off the coast (does Venice have a coast?) of Venice that contains nothing but a cemetery.   Oh how wrong we were.  Basically, if you take the vap one way, the island is 6 stops.  If you take the vap the other way, the island is 17 stops.  We were about 6 stops into our trip before we realized our mistake, however we could have cared less.

I should begin at the beginning.

First of all, I stayed up until 1 AM last night blogging.  I'm such a slave to our adoring public.  After a lovely restful night of sleeping at Tivoli hotel, we got ready very quickly, got mostly packed and headed down to breakfast.  A lovely breakfast was had.  They served yogurt, sweet breads with jams and something very like nutella but not nutella, juices, coffee, tea, fruit cocktail out of a can, proscutto and cheese, rolls, cereal, and little packages of crackers that we could take with us.  Mom took some yesterday but not today.  Also, boiled eggs.  I wrote some postcards during breakfast that I didn't get mailed while in Venice.  Sorry children.  Your post will be mailed in Florence.

(I'm writing this on our train to Firenze...the people in front of me are laughing because their kid fell asleep in a funny way on the train and the man is trying to take their picture without waking them up.  We have shared about 6 smiles about this.  I'm tempted to take mom's picture becuase she is asleep next to me.  What a trooper.  We decided to walk from the hotel to the train station with our luggage today and had to cross three bridges which means steps up and steps down on each bridge.  We got in the train and mom said..."I'm just going to close my eyes."  She promptly fell asleep.  We have just arrived in Padua.)

Okay, so after breakfast we vapped it like pros to the train station where we switched vaps to go to San Michele.  That's when we made our vap error.  It didn't really matter though.  We got seats on the back of the vap which meant we could sit in comfort and still be outside (normally when you are outside you stand, unless you are on the back) and we got to see the whole skyline of Venice go by us.  We got to go out to open sea for a long way and saw the Ospedale (hospital) and all the different neighborhoods of Venice whiz by.  When we saw the Ducal Palazzo we knew we were in trouble.

We decided we didn't care about the long vap ride.  It was great fun and of course we took about 1 million pictures.  We also got so briefly see the Ducal gardens from the vap which was a mini thrill.

We arrived in San Michele around 11:00.  It is a beautiful and packed island full of nothing but the cemetery and the church.  But don't this that this makes it a lonely place.  It's a happy cemetery full of nooks and walled sections, lots of mausoleams, thousands of graves, chapels, and of course, the big church.  Lots of important Venitians (and other nationalities) are buried here.  During our explorations we found two princesses before we found who we were actually there to see...Igor Stravinsky is buried in the cemetery and also, the one, the only Ezra Pound.   We got to see both their resting places...someone had left a note for Ezra.  And a rose.

We were very careful about our vap ride back...we hadn't minded our detour in the morning but we didn't want to do the same thing again so we had no trouble vapping back to the train station.  We hopped off, validated our passes again and hopped back on again (the difference between the number 1 and the number 2 is that the number 2 is an express...we were very proud that we figured that out) for the number 2 to the Rialto.  

The Rialto means shopping.  It also means public pay toilettes which we didn't mind doing at all.  We grabbed a quick piece of pie and gelato (because Italy) then shopped away.  Presents were bought, I found a necklace I liked, mom picked up some Murano glass jewelry and some prints of Venice and we took lots of pictures of shop windows including a glass version of Munch's Scream (I swear...those guys can make anything out of glass).  

We could have hung out in the Rialto all day but decided it'd be a good idea to get going.  Firenze awaits!  We had one last thing to do...we wanted to see the two main sites in our neighborhood...the Frari Basilica and the School / Church of Saint Roch.  Mom was extremely excited about Saint Roch because she used to teach at St Roch school.  We took our last vap ride back to San Toma, our neighborhood stop, and used our friendly free map to navigate without error over to the two sites which are RIGHT beside each other.  

They told us the Scuolo was 10 euros (but we are looking in the guide book now [no internet at the moment] and the guide book says it was only 7...whatever).  The scuolo would have been amazing to see but we figured we'd better go light on the art today since Firenze is tomorrow and we were short of time...so instead we just saw the church for a donation.  

Guess what is there?  The bones of old Saint Roch!

A note on taking pictures in churches in Venice.  They tell you everywhere that you cannot do this.  Everywhere we went people just did it anyway...except for St. Roch.  There was a man there who was snapping his fingers and saying ah, ah, ah!  No photos! to everyone who snapped pics.  Mom and I went up front to "pray" (well, she probably did) and while there, I managed to capture an image of the front of the church.  Forgive me good lord baby jesus for I have sinned.

Gelato happened again.  Gelato happens frequently.

We stopped quickly to snap a few of the outside of the Frari Basilica but we didn't want to take the time to go in.  Back to the hotel to pick up the luggage and we walked to the train station (three bridges...trooper style) to hop on the train we are sitting in right now, to go to Florence.

Must tell you about the mustard colored capelet I bought spur of the moment while walking to the train station.  There we were, actually ON a bridge when I saw beautiful little capes hanging outside a shop. I scurried over (as well as someone can scurry with two suitcases, a backpack, and a loaded purse), checked the price and lo!  I own a mustard colored capelet!  Reminded me of the dress I bought in Greece.  That one I saw from a bus window.

Our last thoughts about Venice:

1.  Weather - sucked the whole time.  No sun at all.  However, if it had been sunny, I would never leave, so be happy for the rain because it means I actually will come home to America.

2.  There were boxes around the city (in walls and things) that had donations slots for Poveri (the poor) usuallly with an icon above.  Mom liked seeing the little icons.  We are assuming we will see more of these in Rome.

3.  Mom liked seeing people's laundry hung out all over the place.  We also saw some papier mache fish on a balcony that we never actually got a chance to take a picture on.  You live on in our memory paper fish!

4.  Our vap stop at San Toma had a huge sign on it that said "Welcome to Iraq."  We did not know why.

5.  Button Cat is generally pissed because she is not seeing anything.  Sorry BC.  My bag is not conducive to taking you around.  Maybe we'll have better luck in Cambodia next month.

Ah.  Venice.