italy (honeymoon) – my personal timeline

Protected: momentary ouch

italy – third day

the third day in italy started off with a classical italian breakfast in our lovely hotel. the breakfast was had on the side of a canal, on a cute table, with fantastic cappuccino and a lot of small pastries. (by a lot, i mean for italy – there were 2 or 3 of them. usually there is 1, maybe). the breakfast was a fantastic start – the sun was shining, the skies were blue, and moods were high. our plans for the day were simple and good: walk around venice for a couple of hours, have a small lunch in a hole-of-a-wall place (literally), and then head out and down to florence, where we would meet tim’s friend from cali, alex, and his sister lina, who were in italy travelling prior to their study semesters in london. it sounds like such a packed day, and it really didn’t feel like it. the beauty of vacations!

walking around venice was gorgeous. we absolutely didn’t follow any specific guides, other than having vague goals of finding the large bridge, seeing the large square, and having something to eat. otherwise, we stumbled around blindly into gorgeous alleyways, tiny dead end streets, and at times even no people. venice is indeed a gorgeous city, which doesn’t seem to be anywhere close to dying or sinking, despite the worries of some. a wonderful mix of tourist scams and incredible charm makes it a really strange beast – there are almost no “natives” living there any more, and yet somehow it feels incredibly authentic. perhaps it is a well oiled tourist money churning machine, but does not hurt at all.

the best experience of the day was food (as it was usually, with italy). while the sights were wonderful, the food was unique. via our wonderful tour book we found a tiny place that had tiny incredible sandwiches, really cheap prosecco (sparkling cold white wine) in large glasses, cozy benches outside. the space itself was literally a counter. there was no space for more than 3 people to stand near the counter. it was AWESOME! we still fondly regard it as the best lunchtime find in italy (well, i do, at least).

the large square surprised me with a load of birds. i lost pretty much all photographs from this day, except from what you see here – i think from starting lunchtime. which means a lot of wonderful vistas off the shore, the boat back to the hotel were lost… (i had some problems with the card. i can’t figure out if i recovered the photographs and can’t find them, or if i actually lost them. sucks, but oh well! as long as it is not everything.) since i can’t show pictures, and i kinda suck at describing, it was an awesome walk full of holding birds without paying for the bird food, wonderful sunlight, great views of the water, a lot of romantic mush, and generally a great time. plus a boat ride through the entire canal, during daylight (bus-boat, we did not waste money on a gondolier). charming!

on the large square, we ran into a russian man (with an asian wife), who could clearly handle birds. he just picked them up off the ground, and when he saw me taking a photo of his, he gave me one. except i suck at holding the birds, so it got away pretty fast. other highlights include pointing the camera at my own hand as birds continuously land and take off it.

on which note, this square, st marks i think, that was full of birds, was also full of tourists, of course. which mean that it was also full of pick pocketers. great fun at watching them slink around the crowd and slink away as soon as they make eye contact with you. i wish we had a little more time so we could watch them operate!

our trip to florence was an easy drive. we passed through a most incredible sunset view of the city; i’m half kicking myself for not taking a pictures, half realizing that it was out of the question – we were running late, and finding hotels after dark is not fun. the memory is stunning, though. the old florence, the large dome, all coated in golden light. you wouldn’t have believed the photograph anyway, perhaps!

the evening in florence was excellent – we had dinner with alex and lina, made plans for the next day, got drunk at a snobby place, and happily went home in a cab. i was getting sick, but thankfully my sickness was at its peak at this evening; i started getting better from this point on. from what i do remember i almost didn’t go out to dinner, but i was starving… good thing i went – the food was delicious, the conversation fun. tim tried the famous florence steak, which is basically an enormous slab of meat. not much to it!

maybe my descriptions aren’t that great, but i really really really love remembering this. thank goodness for a blog! gosh, i miss italy.

italy – second day, evening.

leftovers from verona:

the drive from verona to venice was remarkable only because we found a really cute soft cooler(tim really wanted one for some reason – i think we ended up using it, but mostly i’m happy that i have an awesome lunch bag).

the evening in venice was strange. we found the hotel easily; they upgraded our hotel room to the best one when i mentioned we were honeymooning. (it was a small b&b place). the view from the window was gorgeous:

and while tim was ok with drinking some wine and figuring out where we’ll eat, i went outside to take some photographs:

and right as i was taking those last few, the rain started pouring down. i ran back in (i was only like 3 minutes away from the hotel), and looked at the grey skies and lamented not taking a single jacket. damn.

after the rain ended it became better:

and we went out for dinner:

the dinner itself was the least tasty dinner; perhaps we did not appreciate the wine sauce enough.

after the dinner we messed up which boat we need to take back, froze a little bit, and got home. the end of day two!

italy – first day

this is slightly late, but why not.

our departure to our honeymoon was the day after the wedding, in the evening. thankfully we found a hotel that let us do a late check out – like 4pm. we seriously needed that time to sleep, so that was excellent.

walking out of the hotel holding my wedding dress in my hands felt somewhat surreal. i mean, that’s when it hits you that it really IS a non resuable-packaging :-)

the packing was easy. i knew what i wanted to take fairly in advance – i actually ended up under packing for the first time ever, as i didn’t take a rain jacket (and to spoil the surprise shocking ending, of course it rained for like 3 days). with our two small suitcase, dad, my aunt, zhen (tim’s friend from cali who was here for the wedding) and ourselves we headed to the airport. zhen went first – his flight was at 9. our was at 10, and we arrived pretty late. we actually were taken out of the line and ushered to the front because we were cutting it so close to our plane’s departure. :S but, it was all good – we got 2 seats next to eachother!

as it turned out, the 3rd seat was taken by the self proclaimed “congratulations, you’re sitting next to the biggest geek in the world” guy, who exclaimed that after seeing our wired magazine. he was flying to germany (the plane was to munich) for some conference on how computers affect daily life. except he couldn’t. stop. talking. for the entire flight. it would be hilarious and entertaining to watch such stupidity if it wasn’t so painful. (and he seriously wasn’t the biggest geek, i’m pretty positive i know at least 500 people geekier than him – and that’s u of t alone.)

anyway, that aside, the flight was easy. i slept some, tim – not really. our arrival was at 8am, and right away we saw the wonderful efficiency of the germans. NOT. the line into customs was a funnel of our entire plane to 2 agents. it was a free for all, more or less. one nice thing about the airport is that they gave our luggage back quickly (we packed for carryon but for some reason they said we can’t check them), and that you could smoke inside. go europe!

our car rental was upgraded for free (yay), the coffee in the airport was delicious, and soon we were on our way out of munich and into italy.

the drive was around 7 hours long, and i think i slept through most of it.

i need to run so i guess i’ll stop here. quickly: we arrived to verona, got lost, got found after an awesome conversation at a gas station in french and spanish and his italian, and tim slept. i went to the supermarket, which deserves some talking too. here are some snaps from prior to verona.

germany - drive church on the way out