Ate so much gelato that I got real sick / Shout-out to the pope and my catholics

The subject line of this entry is taken from the theme song (or lyrical ballad, as you please) Leah and I wrote to commemorate our trip to Italy. I will not reproduce the lyrics in full, first of all because their brilliance might make your heads explode, and second because they just aren't as funny when I'm not singing them to the tune of Beyonce's "Single Ladies." And dancing. Which is actually the funniest part.

But, to start from the beginning...

Leah, Ellen, Kristin and I left for our epic Italian adventure last Tuesday. We took the metro, the RER, and then the bus to Beauvais (you know, the airport that is not as serious as CDG or Orly, thus making it the third best Parisian airport. Comforting!). Our flight for Pisa left (sort of) on time and got us there at late o'clock. We walked about 15 minutes to our hotel where we proceeded to get basically no sleep. But there was free breakfast in the morning, and we were able to catch a bus to see the leaning tower. I will admit that it wasn't nearly as leany as I thought it would be, and I actually thought the building next to it was a lot more interesting, but we took the necessary kicking-over-the-tower, holding-up-the-tower, and dancing-to-Single-Ladies (don't judge me) photos in front of it. Then we headed to the train station to hop a train to Venice and, what with our excellent timing, we only had to wait about 10 minutes. It was on this ride that Leah and I, instead of observing the countryside, wrote our traveling song. I'm pretty sure the Italians all around us were sick of our shit by the end of the ride (or rather, fifteen minutes into it), but they never complained. At least not in any language I speak.

We arrived in Venice in the early afternoon, and I'm pretty sure nothing has ever smelled so good to me in my whole life. I've heard Venice smells awful in the summer and, while I have no trouble imagining how unpleasant that must be, in late February it's all salty-fresh and delicious. We boarded a boat bus--way more efficient and just plain AWESOME than I thought it would be--that took us to our hotel, about an hour away on the other side of the city. It was gorgeous and I took crooked pictures of everything (literally) I saw along the way. Venice was something I could never really imagine beforehand, even having seen pictures and heard about it, so being there was kind of like seeing something I never fully believed existed. Like a unicorn...with more gelato. Or a unicorn made of gelato.

Our hotel in Venice was great once we found it. The city will lead you down a miniscule alley way between two buildings only to present you either with a dead end, or several even smaller alleys to choose from, snaking off along buildings that were definitely not built with regard to right angles or any architectural conventions so normal as that. I could have walked in circles for hours and had no idea, but at least it would've been a lovely few hours. We spent the afternoon wandering around canals and bridges, eating gelato and coveting murano glass jewelry and notebooks. We saw Saint Marc's square and heard the church bells, and contemplated the gondola rides (but 80 euro is a bit ridiculous). At one point we ended up in a shop selling beautiful leather-bound notebooks, run by an adorable old woman who had a ball babbling at us in Italian even though we obviously had no idea what she was saying. Kristin bought a notebook and as we were leaving she made us wait, took out four pens (the wooden kind with the metal tips you have to dip in ink), packaged them up all individually and gave them to us. She even took a photo for us and was generally the cutest Italian fairy godmother anyone could ask for. We didn't know how to properly thank her in Italian, so we just smiled really, really wide and hoped she got the message. She probably did, or else thought we were a bunch of crazy people attending some kind of idiot convention in the floating city.

After getting thoroughly lost we ended up having dinner in a little pizzaria near the hotel. Our waiter was this Filipino guy who, I must say, did a superlative job of representing my people. He kept trying to convince us to "go to discotheque!" with him and the cook, who he called "Mr. Olympian, because his muscles are so big from making pizza!" Mr. Olympian apparently had a crush on Leah, and the Filipino apparently just wanted some disco buddies, because he literally asked us every time he came to the table. And by that I mean on every trip to and from the kitchen, whether he was bringing us anything or not. "Yes," he told us, "we go to discotheque weekends! You know, Friday, Saturday, Sunday..." I said, "But it's Wednesday!" And as if that was completely normal and acceptable he said "Of course! Wednesday too!" So if you ever wanted to know what real Venetians do, I can tell you that they go to the discotheque. Every night. Another gem from that conversation was the part where he told us he was Filipino. Obviously I said "Me too!" to which he promptly replied, "Are you sure?" And that was my night in Venice.

The next morning after a breakfast provided by the hotel (consisting of croissant-in-a-bag's, breakfast "cookies" and orange juiceboxes) we headed back to the train station by way of the water bus. We had a slight fiasco in which the woman at the ticket counter informed us that the reason our train wasn't listed was because it was leaving from a different station, and that we wouldn't be able to make it there in time. Luckily she just switched us to the next train leaving from the station we were actually at. Every trip has to have one screw-up, and that was a pretty minor one as far as screw-ups go.

Our hotel in Florence was just 5 minutes from the train station and was in fact an apartment complete with kitchen, balcony and view of the skyline with the Duomo smack in the middle of it. It smelled funny, but we got over it pretty quick. We had lunch at a place Kristin knew which was also really close by--truffle-oil pasta was a good way to start off my Florence experience. Florence as a whole consisted of a lot of walking through cobble-stoned streets, fawning over paper stores (oh, the stationary!) and leather goods, and obviously eating as much gelato as my non-milk-drinking, slightly lactose intolerant body could handle. Luckily Kristin knew all the best gelato places, none of that tacky crap sculpted into the shape of flowers and pumped full of air. My favorite flavor was either cookies or rocotta (which I'm obviously spelling wrong, but whatever), closely followed by peanut butter.

It was also definitely an art overload, not quite (but almost) to the point of Stendhal Syndrome--something that apparently causes people who come to Florence to immediately get overwhelmed by the massive amounts of pretty all over the place, and faint. That would've been fun in a fabulous, melodramatic, period-piece sort of way, but alas.

We went to the Academia on Friday to visit Michelangelo's David. Mostly I remember that his butt was beautiful and I wasn't allowed to take a picture of it, but I'm sure it was also a magnificent work of art. But...the butt! I mean, I've never been one for butts, but (haha, but) you just have to see it to believe it. How many times did I just write butt?

Anyway, we also spent a whole lot of time wandering around the Uffizi, where we saw a ton of Botticelli and Jesus (of him, not by him, obviously), among other things. I swear I appreciate art, I just have a hard time differentiating between the eight hundred and seventy two scenes of Jesus being crucified, washing peoples feet, pulling fish out of who-knows-where, or generally doing Jesus-y things, that I saw in Florence.

We also saw several gorgeous churches, my favorite of which was Santa Croce, where Kristin gave us a fabulous art history lesson (definitely go to Florence with art history people, it'll make you feel very cultured). Then we visited the monestary of Saint Marco where we saw Fra Angelico's fresco of the annunciation (the one where Gabriel has what look like peacock wings) which actually was absolutely beautiful. We saw a ton of tiny monks' rooms with really small windows and really big Jesus frescoes--I think I would've preferred the reverse, but I guess that's why I'm not a monk. Also because I'd just flounce around singing "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?" and all the other monks would hate me, but that's irrelevant.

We spent an afternoon in the gardens of the Medici palace (one of them, anyway) where we imitated statues, ran around like the annoying american tourists we were, and took some seriously magnificent jumping-off-of-things pictures. After that (and on several other occasions) we had fun bartering with the leather sellers. They'll tell you they have to get money to buy milk for the bambinos, but we used our super team tactics to get them to lower their prices in time. And by super team tactics what I mean is we stood around and scowled and pointed out everything wrong with the bag until the seller was so annoyed all he really wanted to do was get rid of us. Hey, it's harder than it sounds.

But of everything, I think--actually, I know--that the food was my favorite part. Truffle-oil pasta and pizza, pear and cheese ravioli, spaghetti carbonara (with artichokes!), racotta and spinach ravioli, and sausage that was actually spicy, unlike anything in France. We went to a restaurant on Saturday night which is apparently run by a Hapsburg prince who just really likes to cook. When you come in they give you free champagne and apparatifs (presumably because Hapsburg princes aren't in it for the money). The platter included liver pate, zukini stuffed with something amazing, eggplant, several delicious cheese things, bologna (a fancy kind that people actually want to eat though) and a few mysterious but very tasty vegetables. There was much more, but if I think about it any longer I'll get hungry, and it's a good three hours till dinner time here in Paris.

All in all it was a marvelous vacation, even though come Sunday we all got home (very late) nursing colds. I guess actually getting sleep before having splendid Italian adventures for 15 hours straight every day is probably a good idea, but we didn't think of that at the time. I need a vacation to recuperate from my vacation, but it was definitely worth it.

In other news, Valerie is home from the hospital! I was definitely feeling the lack of crazy French people in my life. Not to say that Edouard isn't crazy enough on his own, but you know. So I'm sick, but life is good.

Ciao bella, until next time.