Siena to Venice

We have really enjoyed Italy and not simply because of the spaghetti and gelatti...the Euro 2008 games have helped as well. We have most definetly become addicts although I think this has just reinforced the quieted drive for the sport which he tucked away when he picked up the paintbrush...it is amazing to see the universal gusto for a game that is very hush, hush in the states.

Anyway, we left our favorite town of Siena and spent the following day waiting in line to see the great works of the Florentine artists in the Uffizi. One thing that amazes me is that I can revisit places that were once my favorite and not that they are not still great but for some reason the magic of the experience for whatever reason is contained in the past. I believe the first time one sees La Primavera is the lasting moment although it was amazing this time, it did not necessarily produce the same reaction. We hurried on up the road to Treviso which is a somewhat large town but not touristy but actually a real town. It would be like coming to the states and visiting Charlotte, North Carolina. Cool city but nothing to write home about and the real issue is that it closes down at 9pm unlike all the other big cities. So, when we discovered that the reservations we printed out did not have an address or a phone number and nothing was opened we spent an hour and a half trying to communicate broken italian to the gelatto ladies about the small, obscure bed and breakfast which no suprise they had not heard of.

In the end, we called my sister in New York and had her look up on line where the hotel was located and 15 minutes later we realized that our map did not even have the area of town on it, so we grabbed a cab and found our B&B in this little neighborhood in what seems to be suburbia Italy. Hilarious!

The next day thought we joined the flow of tourists in Venice and looked at the gondolas pass by and Hoyt noticed that there were many empty. I pointed out that that is because they charge $75/hour and so they pretty much maybe do 2 rides a day to the unsuspecting tourist and make their living and hang out and people watch the rest of the day. Ahhh bschool making me a cynic...
We did make it over to Murano which is where all the Venetian glass is made which was really facinating to watch but then, of course, the stuff we really liked was the stuff that was unique and artistic which is more a piece of art than just a vase...we settled for the wine stopper and many a photos...

Today, we got out of the cities and headed for the alps on our last eurail ticket before we leave for Dublin tomorrow...turns out that all tourist offices are closed from 12:30 - 3:30pm so when we got to the mountain town at 12:45pm for our hike we had no way of knowing where to go...as inventive souls we did what any good mountaineer would do - we headed for the mountains. We found a trail which turned out to be more of a rock climbing trek and laughed a lot at the Lauren and Hoytness of the situation...we found our way back to town and at the suggestion of our b&b owner, we are now eating at the local internet cafe/bar/restaurant/big screen tv place to watch the euro game...the spaghetti was yummy though...