I'm Not Normal

Sorry it's taken me so long to get this blog up.  I wrote it on the plane on the way home, but haven't been able to actually post it to the internet until now.  This is not my final post about Italy...I have one more reflective post that I will get to before the weekend, so please check back for that one.  Until then, here's our last weekend in Venice.

Christine and I read in a blog about Venice of a new “People Mover” to transport people from the parking garage and the cruise ships to the island.  Since it was just the 2 of us this weekend, we decided to give it a shot and see what it was all about.  When I think “people mover,” I think of one of those moving conveyor belts at the airport where you just stand and it moves you along.  This Venetian “People Mover” was essentially a monorail over the water, connecting the mainland to the island, and is supposed to be much more efficient than the vaporettos.  It costs €1 for a one way ride, and there are 3 stops; The beginning, at the parking garage, one stop in the middle for the cruise ship passengers, and then the end at Piazza le Roma, where all the train traffic arrives.  Considering the price, ease, and speed of getting from one side to the other, the people mover turned out to be highly convenient.  A one way ride on the vaporetto (water bus) costs €6,50 and it generally takes at least 30 minutes to get from tronchetto (the parking garage area) to your destination.  The only drawback to the people mover was the location of drop-off.  The vaporettos obviously have more access to the areas in Venice, and you can generally find a bus stop somewhere within 3-5 blocks from your destination.  Piazza le Roma was easy for the location of our hotel, but if we had been staying on the other side of the island, we would have had a hike to get to our hotel.

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John

It is officially my last night in Italy.  My plane leaves tomorrow morning, and by 6 p.m. I'll be in the beautiful sunshine state.  For my last weekend here, Christine and I decided to go to Venice so I could say bye to Sergio and see any last minute sights I'd been wanting to see.


Believe it or not, of all the times I've been to Venice now, I hadn't yet actually gone in to Saint Mark's Basilica.  It's amazingly impressive on the outside, so I couldn't even imagine what it was like on the inside.  Rick Steve's said the inside of Saint Mark's is like covering (some crazy odd number that I don't have access to because I don't have the book) football fields with contact lenses.  26,240 square feet to be exact.  The ENTIRE inside of the massive church is mosaic, from wall to ceiling.  There is so much mosaic work that it is unfathomable to think of how much work went into the completion of the building.  Just to give you an idea, which I know won't really do any justice to the immensity of the church, but here's a far away and a close up of one small minor part of the mosaic work.

Life Lessons

The last few days have been pretty uneventful but productive nonetheless.  I mentioned this a couple of posts ago, but my time in Italy, and this experience in general, has been one giant, invaluable life lesson that I couldn't have gained any other way.  I honestly am coming out of this a completely different person than I was on May 24th when I boarded the plane to come over here, and it's all for the better.  


For the past 3 years (at least) I had been hell-bent on coming to Italy.  It was like some unexplainable power had taken over my brain and was telling me "You need to go to Italy."  I was doing anything and everything I could to get over here, and I didn't have the slightest idea what I was going to do once I landed.  I had purchased travel books and novels set in Italy, done countless hours of research online, and watched the Travel Channel anytime the show was set in Italy.  Needless to say, I was obsessed, and I didn't have anything else to go off of other than that I just knew I needed to come to Italy.


When the opportunity of a lifetime came through my e-mail one day, it's safe to say I was just the slightest bit ecstatic.  I was finally going to achieve one of my lifelong dreams (if you can call it that at 23 years old), and, as an added bonus, I wasn't going to be a sole, lonely American in a sea of Italians.  It really was the perfect opportunity and something I had been dreaming about for years.  Another check off the bucket list!

It Tastes Like Chicken

Today was a pretty uneventful day, so I'm going to post more "You know you're in Italy when..." pictures and comments.  Christine cooked up one of the rabbits that have been hanging out in the freezer for dinner tonight.  Elia and Ida do a really good job at cleaning the meat before they give us their headless pets, and the meat is very lean to begin with, so aside from cutting the meat off the bone, there's very little preparation involved.  Christine found a recipe online that involved slightly browning the rabbit meat in olive oil, adding crushed garlic, some rosemary (from the garden), and a bottle of white wine.  She let it simmer for a few minutes, and then baked it in the oven for about 3 hours.  And guess what?  Rabbit tastes a lot like pork, with pretty much the same consistencies as well...maybe a little less tough.  Living in Florida, everybody always says gator tastes like chicken, and now I can say that rabbit tastes like pork.  It was pretty good though, I've got to say.


Today Jameson was running around the kitchen rummaging through our makeshift pantry, and he pulled out a bag with yesterdays leftover baguette from dinner.  You know you're in Italy when your kid starts gnawing on a rock hard day old baguette.  And so it begins.

Bread Crumbs, Mi Amigo

Alright, I've got a shiny €2 coin for the first person who can tell me what late 90's teen chick flick the title quote is from.  And NO GOOGLING!  (I'll give you a hint...they're glow in the dark.)  The movie rates right up there with She's All That for all time best teen chick flicks.


Enough with that, on to the blogging!  I went out for a bike ride today, and got so lost I needed bread crumbs to find my way back (hence, the title).  I like to mix it up on my runs/rides, because, well, let's face it, it's a heck of a lot more fun to have a change in scenery, and you never know what you're going to find around the next corner.  I started out on the road right across from our house, which is the same road that took me to the grocery store last ride, so I had get a bit crazy with my turns.  I ended up on a dead end at one point, and then on the autostrada for a period as well.  I can officially check that off my list of things I've done in my life that not many other people have.  The autostrada is like the Italian version of the autobahn, but it has speed limits, so it's really just like a highway or toll road.  Here, though, instead of just ending or merging into another highway, the road is still under construction, and it just tapers down into several roundabouts leading to different cities in the area.  Because of all the turns and winding roads, I'm not exactly sure how far I went, but I tried to map it out as best I could and it came out to about 8 miles.  I just kept using the big mining spot on the side of the mountain behind our house as my landmark, and I eventually ended up in Sacile and was able to find my way home from there.  I had planned on taking more pictures during my ride, but ended up only taking 2.

Arnold and Danny DeVito Were Onto Something

There's nothing like a good Italian beach to make you suddenly and acutely aware of A: How incredibly pale you are, and B: How incredibly modest you are.  Seriously.  I've lived in Florida for nearly 24 years now, never more than an hour away from the beach, and with a pool in my front yard.  My first beach trip of the year is generally in January, and my last lay out/swim at the pool is normally somewhere in November.  That means the most I ever go without wearing a bathing suit is about 2 months.  It was my daily habit to lay out by the pool and read everyday before work, so I was rockin' a pretty decent tan when I arrived in Italy.  Now, I've gone almost 2 months here without wearing a bathing suit, so obviously I've lost some of my tan, but you'd think that the 24 years of Florida sun would have somehow found a way to permanently tan my skin just a bit.  Maybe it has, but I've got NOTHING on these Italians.  I wanted to ask for a picture just to show the difference in skin color...it's sickening.  It would be like putting Kate Bosworth next to Denzel Washington.  Absolutely no comparison.  There were 5 year olds with tans that were easily 10 shades darker than me.  And they've got virtually no tan lines, which brings me to my next beach observation.  Men wear speedos.  All of them.  Bright pink drawstring, plain white with a palm tree picture over one butt cheek, and little mini shorts.  I saw them all.  From 2 years old to 80, they were all showing some serious leg.  After some observation, here's how they do it.  The guys wear their speedos, and then wear regular board shorts over top.  When they're not swimming or tanning or strutting their stuff, they put their shorts on, you know, just to cover up a bit.  I saw the same super tan 5 year old wear 3 different bathing suits today, not a single one less than 2 inches above the knee.  So we've got all ages of tan Italians running around in Speedos, and then we've got the women.  I didn't see a single one piece bathing suit on the entire beach today.  I think I would have noticed too...she would have stuck out like a sore thumb.  I'm talking, everyone, from 80 years old to 8 months pregnant, wearing teeny weenie bikinis.  And yes, there were a few who were tanning topless.  And it wasn't attractive.  I seriously felt like Jackie O sitting there on the beach in my black two piece bikini.  And it's completely normal here to not just not dress your daughter on the top if she's under the age of 7.  

You Know You're Italian If...

There are some things in Italy that just make me laugh.  For instance, the same old man driving his tractor down the road in front of our house every morning.  The mobs of 30+ bikers flying down the road, and bikes trailing mopeds/vans as pacers are also pretty funny.  The mail lady driving her moped with her little white helmet on always gets me, as well as watching mopeds drive right past you and all the other cars in front of you at a red light just to weasel themselves in front.  These things aren't necessarily comical, they just elicit a chuckle because they're so ordinary but yet so unique to Italy.  Never in America would you see  warning signs on the side of the highway about an upcoming speed trap, and then see a giant sign next to a box with a police officer painted on the side signaling the radar zone.  You also wouldn't ever see a CAN of Coca-Cola for €3,49 unless you were at a theme park, and hanging the laundry out to dry is (sadly enough) pretty much a poor man's game.  Here are some pictures I've collected of things you'd only see in Italy.