What made today so exhausting? Well loyal readers I will tell you.

Exhausting step 1: 3 hours in the Vatican, Sistine Chapel and St. Peter’s Basilica. These buildings were really cool to see but 3 hours was way too long. We have found, in our opinion, that the guides spend too long on any 1 given piece. It’s nice to learn about the art but i’d like to see a bit more and learn a bit less. Maybe that sounds naive but I can only retain so much information in 3 hours. It’s like wrapping your brain around a fire hose of knowledge and we would just like the hose turned down a little bit. That being said, we saw a lot of cool stuff. Raphael’s rooms were very cool. I was finally able to see the School painting where he made homage to Michelangelo, the Sistine Chapel is just amazing, St. Peter’s is breath taking. We also saw Michelangelo’s The Pieta – a very cool marble sculpture of the Virgin Mary holding Jesus after he’d been crucified. It is the only piece of work that Michelangelo ever signed and he did so late at night, illegally, because someone else was getting credit.

I can’t really describe the Sistine Chapel any better than the pictures all over the internet do. You have to see it and I recommend you do. It is an awesome site. Incredible to think he painted it in just 4 years and I suspect we still don’t know all the little hints and jabs he made towards people in the community. Maybe I am wrong but it just seems that these artists had a lot of tricks up their sleeves.

Outside the Vatican we made our way to lunch. What was lunch today? Pizza by the slice Roman style and oh boy was it good. You picked your pizza and they cut it and weighed it. Nic and had 4 or 5 different types and they were all delicious. The restaurant didn’t have seats, you just sat on the steps outside wherever you could find space. In order to remember this amazing pizza, Nic took a picture that I uploaded to Flickr.

Exhausting step 2: walking to the Piazza (yep, finally figured out how to spell it. Just pizza with an extra a) del Popolo, Mausoleo Augusto and the Spanish Steps. Piazza del Popolo was leg one of our 3.5 mile walk once we left the Vatican.  The Piazza was really cool. A large square with another Egyptian obelisk in the center. On the way Nic found purse 1 and 2 of the 4 she ended up buying today. Now, we all know Nicole and we know she can be a bit stubborn. Well, now the purse vendor knows it as well. We started out with 1 purse for 30 Euro. We walked away with 2 purses for 20 Euro. That’s not too bad of a deal on our end. Now I am sure these purses cost him 5 Euro total but who cares every business has to make money and every consumer wants to reduce that business’ profits. Nicole did just that! If she were writing she’d tell you all about them but I am just going to say that she is very happy with them and thinks they are exceptionally cute.

From the Piazza we made our way down a shopping street to the Mausoleo Augusto. This turned out to be kinda lame. It was an old fortress that Augustus used back in 9 AD. That sounds  pretty sweet to me. The problem is that it is surrounded with a fence and trees so you can barely see it and can’t go inside. The map and book we were using did not mention this so we were a bit bummed out when we got to it. Either way, we kept on trucking and made our way to the Spanish Steps.

The Spanish Steps are pretty cool but nothing like I’d imagined. I thought they’d be a bit more than just steps leading up to a church covered with people. I was wrong. But, it was still fun to go see them. The thing I am loving about Rome is what our guide talked about, mixing old or ancient Rome with new Rome. For instance we were sitting on the Spanish Steps, looking at a Dior store front, getting water out of an ancient fountain while taxis drove by all surrounded by newly renovated buildings. It’s like nothing I have ever seen.  Monuments that are thousands of years old are just stuck between new construction and modern life.

Exhausting step 3: bargaining with street vendors. Buying purses was even fun for me. I already told you that we bought 2 purses of 4 and that we spent 20 Euro on those 2 purses. Well, the second round of street bargaining came with knock offs.  These guys are hard core sales man. They make car  sales man look like amateurs. They simply start bagging things up and handing them to you before you are done making a decision. We didn’t fall for that. We bargained with 2 separate vendors for about 15 minutes before Nic bought purses. The cops were coming down the street and they started to pack up so we offered him 28 Euro plus all the change I had in my pocket, about 50 cents, and he said no. We said, fine, no big deal and started to walk away. He didn’t like that and changed his tune quickly as every other vendor around us was packing up to leave. He mumbled something, obviously irritated that Nic and I drive such a hard bargain, packed up 2 purses and we went on our way. So once again we started the conversation with 1 purse for 35 Euro and walked away with 2 for less than that. To say the least, Nic was thrilled.

Exhausting step 4: walking home. Oh the walk home. Remember, our entire walk was about 3.5 miles without the Vatican and St. Peter’s time. I found a fountain on our map we were using. And the fountain looked pretty cool and was large on the map. I thought, “hey, if it’s on this map and it’s pretty big it must be cool”. I was wrong. Once again today we walked to something that wasn’t as spectacular as we had hoped. Now, the area was neat and we found some cool shops but the fountain itself wasn’t too much to write home about.

But, on the way back to the hotel, we did find another vendor to buy a suitecase from. Someone in my group is buying enough stuff that we have to buy a new bag to take it home with. We drilled this guy down from 25 Euro to 17 and change because “that’s all I have on me right now, take it or leave it” seems to work well for nic and I. Yes, I did have more than 17 Euro but i’m not going to let him know that

So, we had a great day up until now. Nic is napping I am blogging and uploading pictures.

Till our next post, Ciao.

Today started early; too early to be honest. We had to be fed, watered and on the bus by 8am. As we all know, that is too early for Nic and I.  We did make it downstairs at 7:50 for a quick breakfast before boarding the bus. Today was a big bus day, we left at 8am and didn’t arrive in Venice until 5pm. Yep, 9 hours on a bus, or I should say 9 hours traveling.

I am used to the Howe/Heuer method of car travel: you get in the car and you go until 45 seconds before you either die of starvation or pee yourself. There is no leisurely stroll down the highway. You have to get from point A to point B and you HAVE to be in the car. You don’t choose to be. If you were a zillionaire you’d take a plane or a helicopter or something. But you have to take this car and no one wants to be in it so you get there ASAP. Your brother may crowd your space with a bag of food because he’s learned that he may not eat for 12 or 14 hours or your walkman may run out of batteries so you give your dad your Red Hot Chili Peppers tape to play, which has cuss words on it and is not suitable for you at the age of 13 so he takes it. Either way the goal: get to point B in as little time as possible so the family doesn’t implode.

The Rick Steves method of travel? Stop every 2 hours for 20-30 minutes. Now I know that the driver, Ben, who is awesome, needs a rest and I know driving a bus from Austria to Venice is a lot of work, but 30 minutes every 2 hours? That break isn’t for him that’s for everyone to pee and look at rest stop crap. If I had to choose less stops and more time in the destination city, I would, but I can’t so I make the best of it.

9 hours after leaving Austria we pulled into a bus parking lot in Venice. Now there aren’t any motorized land vehicles on Venice, no bikes, no scooters, no skateboards, nothing, just people walking and boats. Lots and lots of boats. So our time in Venice starts with all of us piling off of the bus and grabbing our bags. Most of us had lightened our load in Austria by putting things we didn’t need for Venice in a separate bag. Nic and i combined our stuff into 1 bag, it was still heavy but nothing like it’s been. We make our way from our bus to a Venician bus. What’s a Venician bus? It’s a boat. Yep, 29 of us with luggage pile onto a boat with the rest of the world. We cram our way into the back, some stand, some sit. 29 people plus luggage takes up a lot of space on these “buses”.

The buses are beat up old boats with tons of seats on them. They aren’t ferries like you’d go to Angel Island on but more like oversized general boats that they can bus people around on. Coming into Venice is awe insipring. No roads, boats every, rickety beat up buildings and people everywhere. It’s a mad house but we love it instantly. Nic, who doesn’t have to carry a bag to the hotel, is smiling and taking pictures as our bus takes us right up the Grand Canal.

The buildings seem to rise out of the water. They don’t slowly emerge or have gangways into the canals. The water simply slaps against the side of the building, seeps up under the ground. It truly is an amazing sight to see. The city was built on pilons that were hammered into soft soil and sinks about 4cm every 100 years. Combined with global warming the city sank 5cm in the last 100 years but also lost 7cm of depth to rising water. Pretty crazy they’ve seen 12cm of change in 100 years.

So, we take the Grand Canal to our stop, the Rialto Bridge. It’s the most famous and beautiful bridge in Venice. It is covered with little shops and people constantly. The entire bus empties and away we go to our hotel. Now, Venice streets are narrow, winding and confusing. The group stays together, mostly, and makes it to the hotel. Our hotel is very cute, Nic and I are on the 3rd floor again, remember that’s the 4th in the US and we don’t have an elevator and our bag weighs a ton. Well, too bad, we, I mean I carry it up 4 flights of stairs and to our room. It’s very cute, you can see it on Flickr.

We rest for a bit, take quick showers and head out for our orientation with Colleen in St. Marc’s Square. St. Marc’s Square (SMS) is the lowest point in Venice and thus floods most often. The tides change every 6 hours so the square can have up to 2 feet of water in it at some times of the year. The Venicians put out planks of wood on top of metal risers, creating movable temporary walkways. When the water is down, they take them down; but they simply stack them on the side for the next tide. Tonight, the square was dry; however, we could see water near the drains from what had been a recent “flood”. We don’t know how much, sometimes only a couple of inches come in.

Anyway, we take about 45 minutes in SMS with Colleen before heading to dinner. Oh, by the way, SMS has some pretty cool buildings in it. A lot of the decorations were made from treasures stolen during war so they don’t match. There is a greek statue with a roman head and an egyptian crocodile. Whoever ruled this area as time went on simply kept adding to the treasures. Some things look like a very very very old garage sale. St. Marc’s Church is one of those. It is covered in columns, not useful ones, just decorative, that people gave to the church after they conquered different lands.

After the orientation we went to dinner. The entire group walked down a few streets to find pub food. Neither Nic or I wanted a sandwich for dinner. Seriously right, we are in Venice and people are getting sandwiches. Screw that. I ran ahead and found a couple of cafes on the side. I turn around and Nic and Colleen are right there with me so the 3 of us had dinner together. We split a bottle of white wine and Colleen told the waiter that he was “ridiculous” because he wouldn’t give us tap water with our wine. He said we had to buy a bottle of water. Well, our wine comes out and a few minutes later, 3 glasses of tap water. Very well done Colleen.

For dinner I had the special seafood pasta. Fresh pasta with butter, white wine, shalots, garlic and tomatoes (yep, tomatoes) covered with small clams, calamari and mussels. It was fantastic! Nic had a garden salad with oil and vinegar and simple pasta with red sauce. She said it was good but I think mine was better.

After dinner the night just got better! Our treat from Colleen? Gondola rides (we knew she booked them for us. We only had to pay $25 per person; very cheap) with her favorite singer Michelle, an accordion player and bottles of bubbly. Joe, Jeanne, Rus and Fern were put in the gondola with the singer and the rest of us piled into 4 other gondolas, 6 to a boat. We thought Venice by day was pretty. Venice by night is breath taking. Very few boats out, fewer people. No noise from the motors. Just Michelle singing and the accordion playing us down the canal. The boats grouped together so we could all hear the music. Michlle was truly magnificent. Women were so happy they were crying. I mean this gondola with the singing and a full moon in Venice: baby making material. It had to be the best hour we’ve had on the trip. Even though we were with 27 other people it felt like it was just us mozy-ing up the canals.

Not that you could top the gondolas but we made our way back to SMS to see the live restaurant bands. There are 3 bands that play outside the restaurants in SMS. They were the original “battle of the band” and they take turns playing music with classical instruments. You can stand for free and watch, sit and buy a beer for $12 or go inside at the bar and buy a drink for $3. We went inside and found our bus driver, Ben! Score, he is a blast. We ran upstairs to use the toilet before ordering drinks. On our way back, who else is there? Colleen, Susan, Erin and Cindy. We all have a Spritz together. I can’t remember exactly but a spritz is white wine, ice, sparkling water and some sort of bitter liquor. The first sip was horrible. The second, not so bad. The third better and by the fourth it was really refreshing.

We polished off our sprtizes and headed back across the Rialto bridge to some bars. Venice isn’t a late town like we are used to. By 12 or 12:30 everything is pretty much closed. We found a bar, ordered drinks and sat outside on a pier on the Grand Canal for an hour or so. The six of us just chatted about life, our families, the trip and all points in between. It was a great way to end our night. We polished off those beers, strolled back into the hotel and called it a night. We haven’t been this exhausted since London.

Till tomorrow, our only full day in Venice, Ciao!