Escaping the trains.

I like Italy, but I am honestly excited to be out. After living in Switzerland for so long, I started taking public transportation for granted. I am actually sort of surprised that the Swiss don't use seconds as well when writing out their train schedules.

Italy? No. Not a single train was on time, and they have all sorts of secret rules. There are about twelve different types of train, depending on their makeup and how fast they're going to go, and you have to remember which ones require reservations. Inevitably, every train I got on did. I got on one train in Cinque Terre at slightly after 16:01, on track one, expecting it to be the 16:01 track one train that stopped at each of the towns along the coast. Ohh, no. This was the previous train, late, not my train, also late, going in the same direction. This train wasn't stopping until the last town, and it only had little cabins, none of which I was allowed to sit inside. And I needed to pay an extra thirteen Euros for the reservation I needed for the privilege of going to the wrong town late. I grumped at the ticket collector while he yelled at me in Italian. Eventually, he gave up and I jumped out at the first stop.

I had trouble again when going to Pisa and Firenze, and I had trouble again on my way to Venezia. In Verona, the ticket office woman yelled at me when I asked if I needed a reservation for the train up to Bolzano (NO RESERVATIONE!), since it was the exact same train as the train to Innsbruck (SI RESERVATIONE!) and the ticket guy on my previous train, the Venezia-Milan run, had informed me that I needed one even if I was only going a couple stops, to Verona. She snatched back the reservation she had sold me for the Innsbruck train, refunded my Euros, and informed me that that sort of question should be directed to the station info people, not the ticket people. Even though the info people seemed to be touristy stuff like hotels and sights, and I would need to be at the ticket window anyway if I did need a reservation. I dutifully trekked to the info people, found that I did need a reservation, and bought it again from a different person back at the ticket office. Even the train station people don't know what's going on with their trains.

Verona smelled like vomit, by the way, so I spent less time than I had allotted for the city. (I also arrived late because guess what: my train was late.)

Oh, and another point: the Swiss have organized their train schedule so that the trains going in directions you might ostensibly want to go in after hitting a hub leave five to ten minutes after you get to the station. You just get off, flit over to the schedule board, get on the next one only a track or two over (or possibly on the same track, pulling in four minutes after your previous train leaves), wait three minutes, and you're off. Italy, on the other hand, has optimized missed connections and waiting times. I think they must anticipate late trains in this scheme, too, planning their departures to cause the maximum possible aggravation. It worked, or at least it did until I left the train station to wander in a new city.

Not Verona, though, because as I said, it stunk. The Dolomites and Bolzano were a pleasure as I rode north, up to Austria and away from ferriovia hell. I shared a cabin with a mother and her early-teen daughter, the latter heading up to boarding school in Germany. As the mother left the train, she appointed Anastasia my little sister for the duration of my trip, sealing the deal by handing me the rubber dinosaur that had come inside Anastasia's chocolate Kinder egg. I was happy to hang out with Harry-Potter-reading Anastasia, especially because she was able to converse in both Italian and German.

Still lost.

Italy has hands-down the worst breakfasts I have ever had. They call it good after a coffee and a styrofoamesque roll, possibly with jam to hide its lack of taste. The Australian doctor I sat with at the table and I managed to discuss the horridness of the rolls for a good five minutes before he told me about practicing overseas in Ireland. Cool.

I supplemented the "roll" with a yogurt-flavored gelato (close enough, right?) and headed off to Touristville, aka Piazza San Marco. First stop: the Doge's Palace. The Doge is basically Mr. King Aristocrat, though he doesn't have much power by himself, and he was elected for life. Nobody else in Venice is allowed to call their abode a palace, so all the other waterfront mansions are just called Ca' (house). The palace is both the Doge's living quarters and statehouse, so it's truly immense. I didn't grasp the size of it until I had been inside for a couple of hours. You can't really see how big it is from the outside, since it's overlapped by the Basilica di San Marco, and the whole piazza is so vast it downplays all the surrounding buildings. The Doge had it all: incredible art, gilt everything, senators, statesmen, giant halls, and secret passages. Most of the paintings are basically about how great Venice is, how just and fair her government is, how the Doge is the best guy ever, and how both Jesus and all the old Roman gods are definitely big fans of all of the above. I enjoyed the vast Grand Council hall, with space for 2600 people, enough for all the nobility to come in and vote. The frieze (see, I'm sort of learning archtitectual terms) is paintings of seventy or more ex-Doges, placed up there one by one as they died. One of them was traitorous and has been blacked out in punishment, a bad egg. In the same room is the biggest oil painting ever, Paradise, by Tintoretto. It's absolutely massive, and as usual, about Jesus and company (500 saints), with a holy light shining down to the Doge's seat.

The courtrooms, if I may call them that, were also impressive, this time for the mood they instill. Even as a tourist, I immediately felt small and oddly guilty as I stepped inside. The judges are a team of the nobles, plus, naturally, the Doge and his cohort, and you don't even get a chair during your trial. It feels like you don't get a say, either, though the paintings of Justice and Honor imply that all evidence will be examined. Government propaganda? You decide. Or they will, really. Off you go afterward, across the Bridge of Sighs and down into the dungeon. The cells look as cramped as I would have expected, and the Doge's new jail, despite plans for more light and comfort, looks no better.

Just in case you escape a sentence, the court has its initials emblazoned on an awful lot of weaponry, so they will still be hanging over your head. The armory was crammed full of swords, maces, suits, clickity guns, and all sorts of fearsome, pointy bits I couldn't name. There was also, inexplicably, a chastity belt and a few other metallic objects that weren't made for hurting someone. I enjoyed the display with a gun taken to pieces so you could see how it worked.

After the Doge's pad, I toured the Basilica di San Marco itself, in all its intricate, Jesus-y splendor. The Basilica was nearly dripping with gold, as though all I had to do was wander through and I would come out shiny. My favorite part was the floor, an impressive mosaic of beautiful bits of stone. The whole floor is in waves, since it is slowly sinking into the mire below Venice, but I think I like it even better because of its extra dimension.

I also saw the art in the Dicosean Museum, which included a reliquary containing an entire human hand, all mummified and grey. Ew. Cool. There was more gold, more church stuff, and some great paintings. Sadly, I was starting to get a bit over-Jesused, so I took a break for a boat ride.

The vaporetti aren't fast or romantic, but these water buses are a great way to get around. I got a 24-hour pass and watched the canal-front buildings slowly sink as we powered up the Grand Canal. I got off at the museum of modern art and enjoyed some marvelous sculptures and paintings (Klee, Klimt, Chagall, Kandinsky, etc.), mostly secular. I also popped into the Oriental Museum while I was there. They kicked me out at closing, so I wandered the Jewish district for a while. This was the first ghetto, I heard, so named because of the copper foundry (geto, in Italian) in the neighborhood they gave the Jews. Venetians sent them all to one island neighborhood in the 1500s, closing the bridges at night except for Jewish doctors. After more gelato, I hopped back on a vaporetto and scouted famous buildings: the Byzantine-inspired oldest building in Venezia, the Casino ("little house"! I get it!) in which Richard Wagner died, the fancy Ca' d'Oro, the Rialto and Accademia Bridges, all the stripey docking poles, and La Salute. This last church's dome is currently surrounded by scaffolding, but it's still gorgeous inside. The plaque says Venetians built it to thank Mary for not letting them die during the plague of 1630. I think. My Italian is terrible. I went all the way out to Lido beach before coming back and wandering town some more. Despite signs everywhere for idiot tourists, I kept getting distracted by alleys and shops and it took me an hour and multiple wrong turns to get back to the Rialto. In truth, I think I am finally getting the hang of navigating Venice. I can make it to the Campo S. Maria Formosa, right by my hostel, from anywhere. It took more than two day to accomplish this, though, and now I'm leaving again.

A few other notes:

• I successfully haggled for the first time in my life, over a few bananas.
  
• I am getting freckles. I don't think I used to get them. Perhaps the sunscreen does it? I am wearing more if it than usual.
  
• The police-, mail-, and fire-boats are a kick. There's an honest to goodness traffic light outside the fire station, unlike the rest of the canal system, and the post office has one of the biggest docks anywhere.
  
• I tried Venetian cuttlefish for dinner. Alarmingly black, but delicious.
  
• A lot of these houses look empty on the ground floor, then cheerily inhabited above. The water damage must be terrible. I kept thinking about The Italian Job when the speedboats buzzed past.

Water everywhere.

I caught an early train to Venezia this morning, then dropped my bag off at what I think used to be a convent and promptly got lost. Astoundingly, dead-endingly, completely lost. Four hours with quite probably no repeats in path lost. It was great. Along the way, I saw pastas in an entire rainbow of colors, with flavors to match: curry, mushroom, cocoa, pizza, cuttlefish, smoked salmon, pesto, beet, artichoke, blueberry, pepper, and chili/garlic. I wonder what kind of sauce you would put on some of those. My pizza-and-espresso lunch was super, and I of course hit another gelato stand right afterward. The specialty here is Crema de Dogi flavor, which is a vanilla-lemon base with chocolate-hazelnut paste swirls. It's better than it sounds. There are masks everywhere, due to Venezia's reputedly excellent Mardi Gras, plus glass in every shape and size, due to the island of Murano's famous glassmakers, and even a few stores with lace, the other regional specialty. One store displayed a windowfull of lace baby bibs. Really? What disturbed parent would put a scratchy bit of expensive, handmade art on an infant about to smear itself and its immediate surroundings with anything it can get its hands on? The glass was neat, though. I saw some great beetles, but that sort of thing is impractical to carry around Europe in a backpack.

The tourists in Veneza were even more endless than those in Firenze, but I managed to ditch them for a while and explore some side streets. You can't escape the gondoliers, though: they lurk in every cranny, ready to take you past the labyrinthine network of streets in the most romantic fashion. A few of us at the convent-cum-hostel tried to get a group together, but our travel schedules conflicted and we never managed a full, cheaper boat of six passengers.

Back in the touristy portions, I marveled at the gouging. Two scoops of gelato goes for anywhere between 1.70 and 3.5 Euros. A single espresso is from 0.90 to 2.50 Euros, depending on the location and clientele. I stuck to the cafes frequented by locals, obviously. There's also more interesting information there. Instead of umbrella salesmen, you can find out about the upcoming regatta between Amalfi, Genova, Pisa, and Venezia. Sadly, I will miss it by a day.

I spent the afternoon in the Correr Museum, staring at Venetian art and learning about its history. They had a lot of Bellini paintings, plus a great armory, tons of old coins, and all sorts of nautical gear. The museum is on Piazza San Marco, the main square, so it also had good views of all the action down below. I hung out along the waterfront (I know, everywhere is the waterfront, but I mean where the Grand Canal comes out) and in Piazza San Marco till the sun set, then swapped travel tips and itineraries with brothers from Nashville and a few Canadians.

Change of plans.

I was on my way to Venice when I just didn't get on the train I needed to transfer to in Firenze. I knew where it was and what time it left, but I just went outside and headed for the Duomo instead. Via a gelateria, of course. I keep falling into delicious trances while I'm staring at Renaissance art and when I snap back out, my tongue is happy and I'm missing a couple of Euros and there's a gelato receipt in my pocket. I hear somewhere around here has a rice flavor I'll have to sample.

Today was a whirlwind of sightseeing. Khiv, I have now had gelato at the top of the tower, and it was every bit as wonderful as you said it would be, though it was warm enough that I had to run up those 414 stairs while trying to catch the drips on my tongue. Giotto's Tower, for everyone else, is right next to the Duomo and has powerful views. I also managed to see the Duomo museum, where all the sculptures (Donatello, etc.) that ought to be inside the cathedral are, the Baptistry, Dante's House (more like mini-castle), the Piazza della Repubblica and its Abbondanza Column, Palazzo Vecchio, Pitti Palace, Chiesa del Carmine, Orcagna's Loggaria (ex-granary), the Uffizi Gallery (though I would like to spend much more time there), Ponte Vecchio, with its row of old shops, Palazzo Strozzi, Chiesa di Santa Maria Novella, Chiesa della S.S. Annunziata and the nearby orphanage (which is supposed to be the first Renaissance building), the Medicis' palace, chapels, and library (woo!), and the Orsanmichele, which has great statues on its external walls. Tired, I had another gelato and two cannoli to fortify me until I could get back to the hostel to make myself some pesto pasta.

I bought this jar of pesto in Cinque Terre and WHOA. It turns out I had never had real pesto before. It dances in my mouth. I have been having ciabiatta and focaccia with pesto at every snacky opportunity. I think I will go out for dinner when I get to Venice, maybe have some fresh fish and vino.

Firenze is so full of Vespas that I think I couldn't survive Rome. They're everywhere, rows along all the streets and zipping past the cars in silver flashes. This city is also full of gelaterias, as you can probably tell, tourists, stores like Bulgari and Louis Vuitton, gold leaf, and statues. The statues outside of the Uffizi remind me that Dante, Leonardo DaVinci, Donatello, the Medicis, Michaelangelo, Macchiavelli, Galileo, Amerigo Vespucci, and many more famous names all called Firenze home. Finally, the sun set, and I admired the ability of these suit-wearing Italians to weave home through mobs of visitors on their bicycles while carrying on a conversation on their mobile phones.

Cinque Terre!

I am terribly sorry that I am not allowed to upload pictures from this kiosk computer, as the views here are incredible. I have been staying in Riomaggiore, one of the Cinque Terre, in Liguria, Italy. It's on the west coast of northern Italy, along the Mediterranean, and it's got lots of rosemary, agave, prickly pear, and shockingly red poppy. The locals have built enough mortar-free stone walls (3000 miles) to rival the masonry of the Great Wall of China, all to hold their terraced vineyards up on the hills. Where they aren't growing vines, they're growing lemons. I love it here.

I hiked up to a nature sancturary on a bluff my first afternoon, then explored Riomaggiore before spending sunset on the beach. Riomaggiore has a pebbly little cove under the old railroad arches, but some of the other towns have actual sand. Yesterday, I hiked through all five towns. Riomaggiore leads to Manarola, which had a great swimming area with lots of fish. These two were the most undeveloped towns, it seemed, with fishermen heading in from their boats as the tourist flock headed out. I people-watched with a delicious espresso. Corniglia was the next town on my hike, after I climbed up the hillside to wander through Manarola's vineyards and check out it's cemetary. The cemetaries here are outside of town, to protect from disease, and they're mostly above ground, in stone crypts. Wealthy families have their own little houses, and nearly everyone's got a little stone flower vase (always full) and a photograph. Many also have a space for a light, usually holding electric candles.

Corniglia is up on a hillside, the only town without a good harbor. The locals still fish from there, though, hoisting their boats all the way up the cliffside when finished. I was temporarily out of money (1.57 Euros left) at this point, since my apartment-hostel made me pay in advance and the bank machines in the first three towns were either down or out of cash, so I couldn't splurge on a pastry. I continued along the path, more heavily forested now, to Vernazza, with a bigger "downtown" and working ATMs. After wandering town, I picked the best-looking gelateria for my first cone of the day: chocolate and pistachio. Then it was beach time for a while, alternately reading and watching the bambinos splash around sandily. I also visited the wine museum and tried the local honey (very flowery and herby) and wine specialty, a sweet, tawny white called Sciacchetra' (shah-kay-TRAH). They gave me free biscotti with it, which went nicely.

I left Vernazza a bit late, on account of my extended beach time, but I still had time to see the Oratory of the Dead and hike up to the Cappucin Monastary, a former convent. The steps up are so steep and long the locals call them the Zii di Frati, the Brothers' Switchbacks. Higher still is a great view of the old town, which lurks behind some forested hills to hide from invading pirates, and the town cemetary, filling in the ruins of an abandoned castle. It was spooky, since the sun was setting quickly by now, but what an incredible location for your remains. I met up with Olivier, my Croatian flatmate, at the train station. He's been living here for a while, selling his paintings to the tourists. We chatted a bit, then went back to Riomaggiore to catch up with Davide, my Italian roommate, and the Canadians and Atlantans who occupy the rest of the flat. I met Olivier's Dutch and Portugese friends at Bar Centrale, where they bought me a limoncelo. It was sweeter than I expected, more like a lemon drop candy than spiked lemonade. No thanks. If I was going to have sweets, I was going to have another gelato: chocolate and creme, this time. It began to rain soon after, thankfully, so we got to bed at a reasonable time.

Holiday.

I'm off on the traveling portion of my time in Europe now. First stop, Stresa, along Lago Maggiore. It's a bit west of Lake Como, in northern Italy. I just rambled the town yesterday, then hung out along the lake. I needed a bit of a break between work and mad-dash sightseeing. None of the accomodations were less than 45 Euros, but I found a kindly hotel manager who said she had a spare room in her home. If I would put up with an outdoor shower and toilet, plus her whining dog shut in a few rooms away, I could sleep for 25 Euro, including breakfast. Woohoo! Breakfast in Italy is less than a meal, though. I got some rolls and packet toast. Oh well. The coffee more than made up for it, as did my gelato last night: a chocolate & forest berry (blue, huckle, rasp, straw) rose on a cone-stem.