Italy Day 3 - Florence

This morning we woke up early to head to the train station.  We headed out to the vaporetto and realized that our stop didn't open until 10am, which didn't jive with our 9:30 departure. So we headed to another vaporetto station! It wasn't that far. Anyways, we got to the train station an hour early and killed time before our ride. So when I said we woke up early, I meant it. My mom runs on stress just like I do, but my idea of STRESS is several magnitudes above hers, so she stresses out about "what if our 15 minute boat ride takes 45 minutes and our train leaves 30 minutes early" instead of "rebuild this entire robot by tomorrow". I accepted this years ago, but I would have liked a bit more sleep...

Anyways, the train was sweet. Highspeed rail peaking at 299kph (over 180 freedom speeds), shooting through mountains and superlatively comfortable. They did decide to enforce the covid rules about halfway through the ride (evidently covid is still contagious for two days until October starts), but that's more other-people-stress I've learned to accept. Two hours later, we were in Florence! And we are definitely no longer in a historical themepark anymore. There were trucks, taxis, and mopeds waiting to spook you as soon as you step off the curb.  After a 15 minute hike we arrived at our hotel (formerly a nunnery, and still owned by the church). We dropped off our bags which gave us a lot more freedom of movement.

We grabbed some sandwiches at a local shop (side note: local sandwiches are so good. $4 and 30 seconds gets you a hot sandwich with freshly cooked bread and great ingredients. If this were within walking distance of my house/shop it'd be half my diet) and headed down to the river to take in the views. The views were pretty good, but Ethan had heard they were better at the park on the edge of the city-center, just past the old city wall. So we headed out in a light drizzle. Fortunately, the drizzle quit after a few minutes, and left great weather behind it.  The city wall was massively impressive, and featured an enormous tower. (look up stats here: [Porta San Niccolò was built in 1324 and stands 115 feet tall. If you have more history LMK I'm super curious but can't find much online]). It was 4 massive stories, and had [160] stairs the whole way up! (Un?)fortunately, the doors were locked, and we couldn't climb the tower. So we climbed the massive hill behind it instead! It had decorative fountains and waterfalls as we climbed up the face, and ended with an incredible viewing platform up top. It was a very tiring climb, but it was worth it to see the whole city laid out in front of you.

We left through some decorative gardens with lots of hybrid statues (monkey-lizard, cat-fish), ponds, and weird plants. And it was all downhill, which was great!  So we made our way back down and through the city wall, and to the Ponte Vecchio (lit: old bridge), which just like the oldest bridge in Venice was covered with jewelry stores and knickknack buskers, and came with more great views. Italy excels at those.

But this was a lot of walking, and the rain had started again, so we grabbed some gelato and commandeered some chairs under the bridge, at a restaurant that was talking their midday break, where we could recover and regroup.  We decided we'd do either the Uffizi (art gallery) or the Museo Galileo, if the line at Uffizi was as long as we were warned it would be.  The line was not as long as the warnings, and in under 25 minute we were through the line, through security and bag check, and checking out 2000 year old sculptures.

Quick, name that animal!

The museum was a giant U, with the inside lined with sculptures from the Medici collection, and the outside filled with rooms of paintings from the masters. Personally, I loved the sculptures. Ranging from 200 BC to the 1700s, they were amazingly crafted works of art, most with fascinating stories behind them. Sculptures of famous historical figures were constantly pointed out as being definitely not them, or carved hundreds of years later based solely on coins from their reign. The sculptures were also modified constantly back in their day. You'd find a classical Greek torso, with a classical Greek head from another sculpture, reattached by a renaissance sculptor who also added the arms from scratch. It was so wildly different from modern archeology, where one would never modify an artifact, let alone chisel away the second figure for aesthetics sake or reshape a face to be someone else. Particular highlights included the Seahorse (A horses forebody, with fin-hooves, and a dugongs tail), a donkey-manatee (who surely inspired the catbird and monkey-lizard from earlier) and the room of Niobe. Niobe was the queen of a now-lost city in modern Turkey, who bragged to have more children than Leto, elder Olympian and consort of Zeus. Goddesses hate that sort of brag, so Leto sent her children (Artemis and Apollo) to teach Niobe some respect. So the entire room was this grieving terrified mother and like 20 kids all fleeing, warding off blows, dying, and dead. A few even had holes where brass arrows once pierced their sides. It was great.

The outside and lower level were all paintings. Botticelli, Leonardo, Rafael Michelangelo... so many masters. Too many masters. I would wander through and just read the notes on the most interesting painting in each room, making up the time I lost overanalyzing the statuary and catching up with the rest of my family. There was a lot of classic art, but my favorite was the room on light-sourcing, where artists demonstrated their mastery by lighting the entire scene, accurately, from just one or two points of light.

By this point is was near 6pm and we were exhausted. So we headed back across the bridge and back towards the hotel, looking for dinner. Several meh options were passed up, and slightly desperate we went for the first decent place we could find. It was amazing. Between the rest, the beer, the appetizers, the wine, the conversation, the sausage, meatballs, chicken, pasta, roasted potatoes. Possibly the best meal so far, which is saying a lot.  Then again, it may just be the further you walk the better food tastes, and today we're at 19k steps (8.5 miles, two of which we dragged suitcases)... We've upped the ante every day, so I think we've earned that reward.

Tomorrow is looking to be another hard day, hitting the second half of Florence (Duomo, crypts, some tower, etc), the train, and a reception dinner for Lisa's wedding. Wish us luck.

[The consistently yellow walls and muddy water meant is was already monochromatic.
Why fight it if it's worked for millennia?]

Italy Day 2 - Venice - St Marks and all the Boats

Empty Column? Better add 100 saints, each  and every one specific and identifiable!

Guess where we went this morning? San Marco! This time to we wanted to see the cathedral. We arrived at 9am, and were near the front of the line when the cathedral opened. The cathedral is covered, inside and out, with mosaics, prominently featuring gold leaf.  It's massive and old, and the sheer amount of detail in the mosaics and carvings around the cathedral are overwhelming. We saw the reliquary of St Mark, and it's so much gold, it's the largest oldest goldwork and gemwork, it's also overwhelming and overdetailed. But still cool. Among even more gold we spotted various bible stories across the ceilings - especially in the outer section where there was a bit more space between them. I also especially appreciated the mosaic floorwork where precise geometric work in linearly increasing sizes, meaning every tile is just slightly different and yet all were perfectly cut. [At some point expect a post dedicated solely to the amazing floors across Italy]

This one's an easy one... 

   

After the Cathedral we jumped on the vaporetto (waterbus) and took it all the way across Venice, twice as far as last night. The new moon meant the tide was high, and we saw flooded sidewalks and doorways the whole way down, and admired the mansions of the old merchants, who had warehouses on the first floor, their homes on the mid floor, and servants quarters higher up. The Grand Canal makes a giant S, and our plan was to walk across the second lump of the S, San Polo. So we just started wandering in the correct direction, and figured we'd see what we saw and find lunch along the way. We found plenty of fascinating alleyways, some of which dead-ended into the flooded canal.  It was great. I love wandering lost, especially in Venice. We found lunch (carpaccio and pizza, with a really good house white wine), people-watched, and then headed back to the hotel. The only problem being we were on the wrong side of the grand canal. This was actually great, since it meant we had to take the trafdafdsafsdaf across, a $2 gondola-ferry. It was a lot of fun, and my dad was ecstatic to be riding a gondola on the grand canal in Venice, something he'd been enamored with for decades. It was fun. I'm gonna take the tyrtradafsdfasdfas [traghetto] whenever I have a chance.

We're now back at our apartment decompressing after lunch, doing laundry and figuring out what we're doing this evening. It probably involves boats. Maybe the ferry, maybe a gondola. We'll see.

This morning was such as success, we decided to do it again! This time we took the traghetto back across the river. Now that we knew what we were doing and weren't taking pictures we could enjoy the ride, even though it was only two minutes. We then immediately hit the vaporetto (an express this time! And we sat in the back, which offered great views), which we took down close to where we left this morning, only instead of heading into the city, we disembarked on the opposite side of the canal and headed out of the city center.

We now set off in yet another unexplored direction, taking streets at random with only a general sense of where we were going. We ended up going through the art district towards the residential district [Ghetto Nuevo]. This land was newer, the old copper factories having been demolished, with wider lanes, newer buildings, and almost no stores. I found it very interesting to see the other side of Venice, Mom thought it was rather sketchy. But we pushed through to the other side of the island, where we could look across the sea. There we found a vaporetto stop, and took the first vaporetto we saw - all vaporettos go to San Marco or the Train station, and from there we could transfer to another boat if needed. The day passes are great, you don't even think about it, just jump on the boat. This one was an older boat, filled with families and school children, and a fun change from the tourist-jammed boats we were used to. We circumnavigated most of the island, until it cut in and ended up back on the grand canal, across from the casino.

In the backstreets near Casino we found a gondolier (Matteo? Mattias?) and discussed pricing for him to take us toward our apartment. He began negotiations by insisting he wasn't a taxi, but my mom could deal with the awkwardness so we ditched that plan and decided to take the standard loop instead. He was a great guide and took us down the side canals, out into the main canal by the casino, and then back into the side canals. He told us all about his job and his life, he lives on Murano (nearby island) with his parents and grandparents - and he's following in his father's footsteps as a gondeliero. He's been a gondoliero for 4 years, and had to do 10 months of training to get the job. He said there are 433 gondlierors in the city, in 11 companies ranging from 20 to 77 men. He has to run a trafagererfs 2 days out of every 10, but said he prefers traditional gondolier work because the required breaks during tragasdfadsfadsing eat into the wages. He has his own boat, but it's in the shop for repairs so he's running his partner's boat today.  He told us about the tides, the depths of various channels, explained the signs we'd been curious about, about the water clarity (the propellers stir up all the silt on the bottom, during pandemic the lack of motorized boat traffic meant the water cleared up and you could see to the bottom, and see all the fish in the water). He piloted expertly, ducking under the bridges, kicking off the walls, taking corners within inches of the stonework, and yelling at the motor boats - as is traditional.

We were now the tourist attraction, and they were all taking pictures of us as we took pictures of the surroundings. And finally near the end, we found the flooded doorway from before from the opposite side... complete with baby swing! All in all very cool, despite being a routine tourist trap it's definitely worth doing so that you can enjoy all the back canals and the angles you can't get from the bridges. Mostly, a lot of water-damaged doors and crumbling brickwork, in various stages of disrepair or under  repair, complete with scaffolding anchored into the walls themselves.

Having checked off all the boxes on our Venetian todo list, we headed back to the hotel, cutting through the ancient markets and checking out the souvenir stands as we went.

We're back at the apartment to dry our laundry, heading out for dinner in a bit. Everyone's recuperating at the moment. I'm currently at 15k steps, about 7 miles, and I'm sure I'll throw another mile or so on there tonight, but that's all for the blog. Ciao!

Italy Day 1 - Venice - San Marco

Ethan and Hannah getting puddle shots

[I'm going to retain the as-written slightly-loopy style, because I enjoy the authenticity. Enjoy] I slept! 9-3.30 and 4-9, it was great. A little scary when I thought the 3.30 was gonna be it, but I started a new audiobook and it did the trick. After breakfast we headed over to San Marco Square to see the cathedral! The cathedral had a massive line. Massive. We looked around the square and watched the tidewaters (new moon = big tide) begin to rise from the drains around the square. We also checked out the clock tower, but the entrance is a tiny locked door that says nothing about access. So we went to the museum to by tickets to the clock tower! [My mom loves to do research and I love to send it. It works out amazingly] And the Doge's palace (so we could skip that line [another hack from the research. Go mom!]). And while we were there, might as well hit the museum!

The museum was massive, a Napoleonic restoration of the old governmental building. Marble floors, intricate everything, etc etc. The museum was divvied up into multiple sections. Weapons, old maps, almost every coin ever minted by Venetians, A canon with an open breech, models of boats, pottery, and soooooo many paintings I couldn't begin to care about, especially as my legs were beginning to hurt. At the end we blitzed through the palatial chambers for the Napoleonic governors and maybe some Hapsburg noble. Very much Versailles-light.

After the tour of the museum we still had some time before our 2pm clock tour, so we grabbed sandwiches at a local shop (paninis make so much sense now, they can have delicious and cheap sandwiches premade, then reheat them in a few seconds and sell hundreds). We ate by the grand canal, learned we were not allowed to eat while sitting, and stood awkwardly while we enjoyed lunch. Clock tower time! We walked back to the museum to meet up with the tour guide and 1 other guest (I can't believe there were huge lines for every other tour and only 1 non-Farrell for this tour - which is only offered once or twice a day). We all walked back across the square, and up to the small door which she unlocked with an ancient key.  Inside the tower we learned all about the clocks history and operation. Up until 1999 the maintenance crew lived in it, but in the last modernization they installed a wall of PLCs, high power stepper motors, and automated most of it. [If you're an Electrical Engineer that made sense, if not... it's high-power high-reliability hardware usually found on assembly lines]

We got to watch the giant wheel-of-fortune "digital" displays change in front of us, and then headed to the top to see the giant statues, These giants (later renamed the Moors as the copper tarnished to black) were 2meteres 50cm tall [8'2"], and struck the bell with their sledge hammers before every hour (the other clocks in the square would chime the hours). The view was incredible, the whole square, and the surrounding streets. Apparently if the weather is clear enough you can see the dolomites, but they were not in evidence at this time. (Also mention the solar clock, later simplified)[The clock used to be even more badass, but they gave up on that complexity]. Then we went down a level to the side wings/roofs, from where we got to watch one of the moors strike the clock.  Great tour, 5 stars, etc etc. Digital Display (Brian)

Next on the list was the Doge's palace. The Doge was the elected head of Venice, which essentially made him the leader of half the world's trade. Which sounds like it would make him a very powerful person, but he was elected, and the nobles were keen to keep him in line. So essentially everything was ran by committee, and the palace was devoted to rooms to both emphasize the committees, and the power of them. Entering, you would walk up gilt staircases and through the armory to your meeting room, where the various committees convened. If you were in trouble, they would put you in a dark room with imposing painting, and then you would walk through a dark door immediately past the pathway to the prison, to remind you of your uncertain future. Rumor has it they would torture prisoners nearby so you could hear their cries (and if there were no prisoners in need of torture that day, they felt no shame in hiring an actor - at least according to the tour guide I eavesdropped upon).

Great Hall (Brian)

The last stop in the palace itself was the massive great hall - a single room, one of the largest in Europe at the time, for all the nobility to meet to discuss the events of that week, and painted around the edge of the room were all the Doges of all time - except for the one who tried to stage a coup.... His portrait was conspicuously blacked out as an eternal reminder that the power rested with the nobility (Until, you know, Napoleon decided it didn't).

Bridge of Sighs - Ext (Brian)

Leaving the palace we crossed the bridge of sighs, where you would sigh as you caught your last glimpse of the outside world on the way into the prisons. The prisons were fun to wander through, covered with tight doorways, excessive steel bars, and a few amazingly good stonecarvings prisoners scratched into their windowcells [edit: window-sills. But windowcells is rather apt] to kill time.  After the palace, we went to dinner. We put Ethan in charge and he chose a promising street, and eventually selected one that offered patio seating. The patio was a courtyard, actually connected to the network of streets via an alley (from which a lost tourist wandered at one point). It was great weather, interesting surroundings, and mixed food. The bruschetta we started with was amazing, the ravioli and mixed seafood quite good, and lasagna was fine. ("No, it was meh" - Mom, interjecting live while I type).

After dinner it was sunset, and having learned that the bell tower had an elevator and did not require us to walk up 50 flights of stairs, we decided to hit that! The line was immensely shorter than earlier, only a few elevator-loads, and we made it up and exited the lift as the bell tolled. For whom? me? this joke is terrible rephrase [editor: nope]. Either way loud AF but fun AF.  We then wandered the perimeter of the tower taking photos and panoramas, and the light was ideal. Perfect mix of great sky and enough lighting for the rooves and canals to pop - and even highlight the previously invisible dolomites. It darkened as we did laps of the tower, admiring the bells and the plaque where it noted that Galileo "expanded the horizons of mankind" on this point (we had to look it up to make sure, but this was where Galileo demonstrated the first celestial telescope to the nobles and the doge ((innovating on the English design of the terrestrial looking-glass invented a year prior)) ). As it got truly dark, we headed back down to start our journey home.

Fed up with walking, and finally done in San Marco, we decided to take the boat home. We bought two-day passes so we could jump on the vaporetto (the busses of the canal system) whenever we wished, and we rode it through the darkened canal. Due to the elections, the stop nearby our apartment was closed, so we chose to keep going and bailed at the Rialto bridge. We then started walking back to our hotel, made a wrong turn, and suddenly realized the amazing replica of the clock tower and the moors before us was so accurate because it was the same exact tower with the same exact windows we looked out of earlier that day. What I thought was a straight canal with minor kinks was in fact a horseshoe canal with a massive bend, and we managed to travel to within a few hundred yards of our embarkation point.  So we walked back through San Marco square to our apartment, getting some cannoli on the way.  14,000 steps, but a very interesting 14k steps.

We've realized that Venice is now entirely tourist-driven. The workers and volunteers typically don't even live in the town, and the locals have launched a campaign called 49,999 to have them declassified as a city to avoid higher taxes (I think. Total guess as to why, but they really don't want to be a city). So in short 500 years have seen the powerhouse of western civilization reduced to a much more interesting version of Disney world.  That could be worded better fix that. [Nope.] Done. Ctrl-S.

And we're back! Surprise!

After unwinding and journaling at the hotel, Ethan and I decided to go back to San Marco to watch it flood again as the tide hit, and watch the the bell ring 132 times at midnight. Now that we finally knew the path to San Marco, we were able to make it to the square in 10 minutes, much quicker than our previous times [25 minimum]. We watched the flood waters rise, listened to the band at the restaurant play their final songs, and hung out until the stroke of midnight. The Moors struck their 12 strikes, and then waited for the cacophony. Instead, the Bell tower struck 96 times and the two little dingers on the clock tower we were promised never even fired. But we did get some great flooding and with the night lighting, we got some amazing shots.  And so once again we took the hike to/from San Marco, snagging some more night shots along the way.

Italy Day 0 - Venice

Aquaculture!

[Woke up early, finished packing, and drove over to my parents place. Then we all left for IAD where we caught our 5pm flight to Ireland. Our second leg left ireland at 6am (2am american time), and I finally fell asleep for the flight to Italy. Two hours later I awoke on the descent towards Venice. It's amazing. Tons of canals across the entire region, artificial lagoons for aquaculture everywhere on the shores of the Adriatic, and the cityscape of Venice in the distance. There's adventures coming, diving into the unknown, and it's invigorating. We finally arrived in Venice around noon, local time. We proceeded through a perfunctory customs and immigration checkpoint, and started following the signs for water taxis.

I'm now going to switch this post to my original notes with minimal rewrites. I think that's the best way to share the surreality of being dropped, sleep deprived, into the unknown.  And if you've never tried that, you should. [[I really enjoy this style.  Most? All? of Italy will be primarily as-written]] ].

Found the water taxis, dad gave a random dude (on our dock tbf) the ticket he printed off the internet, and said dude walked away with it. But he came back with his mate, who escorts us into his? boat.
This is chaos. Boats everywhere, almost hitting each other, all the wakes reflect and compound off the jetties to bounce us hard, not quite thailand chaos but same genre.

Once we make it out of the channel it's pretty awesome. Flying past lane markers across the bay to Venice, boats passing us, passing other boats, an ancient city approaching from the distance.  The plane -> boat transfer is awesome and a clear delineation that "you're not in Kansas anymore". [If you ever go to Venice, take a boat to the city the first time.  If you have to get off a Venice-bound train in Marghera before the bridge, do it. Anything less is a disservice to yourself]

After a few minutes, we're all [I'm good at persuading people to do dumb shit] sitting on the headrests looking over the boat, hanging out being cool. It's very cool.

Hit Venice itself, slow down, enter a canal proper. It's like straddling 1000 years. Gondolas everywhere. Old buildings, docks, landings, boat garages, bridges hundreds of years old, all while you ride in motorboat and take a pic on your phone. Pilot has us duck down for a bridge or two (Ethan and dad reached out to touch it. Why not? I do).

Boat honks violently. Enter the main canal. Main canal is massive. Rookie year at Battlebots is a life consuming monstrosity [I left for a two-week Italy trip only 3 weeks before filming bb, 1 week before ship date, after a 3 month build], so I haven't done any research. I didn't even know we were flying into Venice until this? morning. It's great.

Right is the fancy shop bridge [Rialto]. We head left a mile up-canal and stop at a bus-boat landing dock and unload. Call the airbnb.  Wait for airbnb while massive seagull investigates dead rat. Airbnb lady shows up, we walk to airbnb. It's on the 3rd floor off a random alley and filled with books. It's actually pretty great.

Freshen up, change shoes, etc, head out to lunch. I try to get bank money but can't, so we wander around discussing food options until nobody has any preference anymore and stop at the first place we see.  I order coke and pizza (del quattro formagio). It's surprisingly good. Definitely livens us all up.

Wander the city a lot. I honestly don't know what squares we saw, or what buildings.

Go to the fancy bridge that's an ancient market [rialto again]. Great views, lots of fun watching the chaos in the boats below and the people above, 5 minutes speculation over trash boat before it does the trick. Very similar to arc de triumph or bangkok riverboats.

Go to nextdoor mall that's an ancient market because it allegedly has roof access. Roof access is closed for a private event so we just wander into random luxury shops to look out their windows.

More wandering

Go to the supermarket. Younger generation buys wine, it's so cheap. I wait outside while they finish debating shopping and stick a doomba sticker to a pier.

Head home. Drink a glass of wine and unload groceries. Make a new plan: Some bridge and gelato. I honestly don't know which bridge. Between exiting the psychosis that is BB and sleeping 14 of the last 90 hours I'm just enjoying, not worrying about the details. It's fantastic. [End of initial journal entry]

[Second Entry begins]
Eat gelato at a monument for XXXXXXXXXXXXX. Contrary to my first thought, his name was not Naczio a Abrenzia. [Born in neighboring-region]

Walk to the new bridge. Delightful woodcarved bridge over the main canal with a sunset in the background and churchbells ringing. Doesn't really feel real.

Wander towards some square (san marco?), detour to see the bay, then head home. Lots of window shopping and people watching.

All in all it's awesome. It's kinda amazing being plunged into a new culture, language, transportation network, etc with no prep. Luckily my family has done lots of prep, but even so I always love that feeling. Looking forward to sleeping and then seeing a lot more when I can actually think.