We couldn’t leave Europe without first scoping out the art in Florence and seeing what all the fuss was about with the
canals in Venice. Let me preface by saying we had only arrived back home from Athens 4 days before we set off for this trip, which explains a lot.
We found Florence to be a lovely town with just a few too thousand American tourists. I would REALLY like to know why more Europeans don’t go to Italy because it is really a lovely country. In most other places we have visited we have been surrounded by Brits and Germans, with a smattering of Americans thrown in, and perhaps the odd Frenchman. In Italy however, without exception every single city we have been to has welcomed Americans in abundance and been entirely lacking in Europeans. Anyway, this isn’t necessarily a problem, but it does dilute the real Italian culture that we want to be a part of. Given that we are part of this phenomenon as well, I can’t really complain 
Back to the story though. So when we arrived at night we thought Florence was beautiful. When we awoke the next day we realized that even though it was mid-October, the tourist season in Florence knows no bounds. We went to the Uffizi Gallery and had to fight our way through the crowds. When we got out, we had to fight our way through more crowds to get to the nearest gelato stand. After we ate our ice cream, we had to fight our way through even more crowds to see Michaelaneglo’s “David”. It was all very exhausting.
Florence is an art mecca; everywhere you look you can usually find high quality sculptures or frescoes. In fact, we had to reserve timeslots just to get in to the Uffizi and the Accademia. In the Uffizi (the most important Renaissance gallery in the world), we beheld such wonders as Botticelli’s masterpiece “The Birth of Venus”, Roman sculptures, and works by Leonardo Da Vinci, Raphael, Donatello, Michaelangelo… yes folks, we did see masterpieces by all of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles! The art was glorious, but in the end we are not art people so we didn’t linger for too long. The “David”, in the Accademia, is absolutely stunning, as are the various violin and cello Stradivari. We also went to the Santa Croce church, which is unremarkable except that Dante, Michealangelo, Galileo, Machiavelli, and Marconi are buried here. What an allstar line-up!
Annie, a family friend, hooked us up for dinner with reservations at the restaurant of one of her Italian chef friends. We dined for nearly 3 hours at Trattoria Icche ce’ c’e, courtesy of Chef Gino and his wife Mara. They were a wonderful couple and the food was even better. Thanks Annie! You might think up until this point that we were very productive in Florence. WRONG… as I mentioned before, I had virtually no time to prepare for this trip, and as a result we ended up missing a lot of things altogether (Donatello’s “David”), getting lost, or not knowing what we were looking at.
On top of our disappointment, the apartment we rented had bed bugs… I suppose it was inevitable given all the travelling, but it is still really gross. Good thing we only stayed there 1 night, because Joe was really eaten up. I’m not sure why, but bugs don’t usually fancy me so I was left relatively untouched. To add insult to injury, our taxi driver ripped us off and doubled our fare. I wouldn’t say this trip was as bad as our Berlin trip, but it is definitely in second place. We were glad to be out of Florence by the end of the second day.
Venice, I am happy to report, was an entirely different experience. Well, not entirely, but in most of the important ways at least. There were no bedbugs or crappy taxi drivers. In fact, Venice is the world’s only pedestrianized city, so we didn’t really have to worry about traffic of any kind. We arrived at night and were absolutely enchanted. Venice’s many charms only get better at night, when the day-trippers leave and the alleys and canals are quiet and romantic. We had the best gnocchi ever, then went to San Marco Square to hear the dueling orchestras. After wandering around for an hour, we didn’t really know what to do until we found a small shop open late that sold alcohol to go. We grabbed a bottle of Prosecco (complete with 2 plastic cups) and walked around until we found a quiet canal-side piazza in which to pass the time.
The next day we grabbed a map and set off. What was really nice is that in Venice’s tiny alleys you actually feel like you are in Italy, not the cheap, commercialized shell you experience in many other places in Italy. One of the major highlights was just getting lost in the backstreets, having only the slightest idea of where we were. We had a really good, detailed map, but I still manged to get us lost a few times, which suited us just fine. It was only when we got close to the Rialto Bridge that we remembered that we are in fact tourists sharing this lovely place with tens of thousands of others just like us. We passed on the gondola ride (€80 for 45 mins), and opted instead for the stripped out versions that serve as ferries crossing the Grand Canal (€0.50 for 2 minutes). It wasn’t exactly romantic, but it gave us the basic idea and saved us a wad of cash.
We somehow found the tucked away gondola workshop, complete with alpine workmen. We also made it in to San Marco Basilica (after nearly stepping on about a million pigeons), with its wall to wall glittering gold mosaic ceiling and mosaic tile floors. San 
Marco Square was entirely different during the day. I have never seen so many pigeons in my life! Lots of people fed them and became covered in a mass of frantic, flapping wings. One even landed on my head for no reason, but I saw to it that it didn’t last very long! Other than that, I can’t really recall most of the things we saw because we just wandered a bit aimlessly, and managed to soak up the atmosphere and just enjoy ourselves a little better than we usually do.
Unfortunately on the vaporetto (waterbus) to the airport I caught a really nasty bug which involved me losing my voice and showing symptoms of a cold for almost 2 weeks. I missed 5 days of work (thank God for unlimited sick time!), but the trip to Venice was still worth it.
Pictures are now up; there are some particularly beautiful shots of Venice. Coming up, our last 2 trips will be to Istanbul, Turkey, and Egypt (Cairo and Luxor), so be sure to tune in next month!