Weekend Trip to Venice

One of the fantastic things about living in Europe is instead of answering "What are you doing this weekend" with "Oh, not much, doing errands, seeing a movie" I can say "Oh I'm going to Italy for the weekend!" Everything is so close over here you can see dozens of different cities in a few days.

This past weekend I had my first trip to Italy with friends Semhal and Connie. Venice is just a short 1.5 hour flight from Amsterdam (although we stopped through London) and I was so

looking forward to the sights, the people, the food! It did not disappoint!

We took a bit longer than a weekend leaving Wednesday night and staying through Sunday morning.
We stayed at the Carlton Grand Canal Hotel in San Croce which was at the top of the Grand Canal. Fantastic hotel, nice people, great location. When we arrived it was a gorgeous night - nice enough to find an outside table for a fanstastic dinner at a cafe. Even coming from Amsterdam which is known for it's canals it was so stange to be in a city where canals are ALL there is for transportation and the water is a lot higher. It definitely made me watch my step considering I am not exactly known for my grace!

Thursday we got up and took the Vaparretto down to Rialto area to look around the Fish and Fruit market. It was amazing how gorgeous all the stands were - although the fish stands weren't so much "gorgeous" as they were alive...and squiggling. But I knew right away that i'd be eating fish while there since it was as fresh as it gets! Rialto area was brimming with fun shops and fantastic looking windows filled with spices, candies, all things good!

We walked around the Rialto bridge which is supposed to be the famous bridge in Venice but I thought the bridge by our hotel was much nicer. Rialto bridge was riddled with tourist shops which was a shame I thought. But the views were nice and of course I took a million photos of the same thing - water, boats, stripped poles, gondolas.

We made our way down to San Marco and had a glass of presecco at an outdoor cafe in Piazza San Marco. It was gorgeous staring at the Bascillica and the Doge's Palace. It's gotten veDoge's palace was really beautiful and housed the old prison as well which was, well...creepy. San Marco also has one of the nice shopping districts so we spent some time that weekend browsing the Furla, Armani and Alberta Ferretti stores. We had a great dinner and tried to go to Harry's Bar only to find it inexplicably closed at 10PM so made our way to the only open bar we could find which resulted less in relaxed sipping of yummy italian drinks and more of out-running Italian admirers that came out of nowhere. I was identified immediately as the weak one in the herd (sad!!) but none of seems that professions of love are just a normal everyday greeting used by Italian men. Ahhh Venice.

Friday we went through the Jewish section of Venice which was really beautiful and headed over to Murano - the small island 10 minutes from Venice via vaparetto and known for it's glass. It turned out to be a gorgeous day and we wandered all around the island stopping in all the shops. We had the BEST meal of the whole trip there in a little tiny town square - the best ragu I've ever eaten and another fantastic wine. We wound up staying there for about 2 hours before dragging ourselves up again. We stopped in to view a glass blowing demonstration and it was amazing! After taking a hunk of glass out of the first, the man took approximately 30 seconds of pulling and flipping to create a beautiful horse! It was amazing! They had beautiful things in their workshop for sale so I decided instead of buying lots of little things I'd slurge and buy myself one giant present. Thankfully, they ship. We caught the vaparetto back just in time to see a gorgeous sunset and noticed it was getting a bit foggy. While on the 10 minute boat ride it turned into full on pea soup where nobody could see anything! All the boats were sounding their horns and shouting to one another to try and find position. We finally made it to our stop about 30 mintues later adn stumbled into Harry's Bar to check it out. Overall - very disappointing I have to say. It's the home of the Belini but I'm not big on sweet drinks so it held no great appeal for me. They did however make the best tasting Tom Collins I've EVER had! Semhal got it and I was jealous the whole time.

After a short rest and another great meal we headed down to Rialto to go to a jazz bar. It was a lively place with good music and a lot of people, a strange owner...and alarmingly massing drinks! The start of a very long night! My friend Cat and her friend Kim met up with us around mindnight as they'd just flown in from London so finally we were all together. So much laughing! However, as Semhal found out, the mix of giant drinks, laughing and being beholden to the vaparetto schedule (and sloooow speeds) can be a bad combo if you don't plan your bathroom breaks...

Saturday was our last day - we met up with Cat and Kim in Rialto again to walk around and head back over to Piazza San Marco so we could do some shopping. Cat and Kim got some really lovely things at Armani :)
More excellent food items adn wine and then a tour of the Bascillica. Gorgeous inside but very very dark - not the usual lit up areas that you see in old churches to highlight the glass and stations. However it did provide great views of the square and Sam Marco. This was the one day it absolutely poured rain so we were a bit tired and cold from the days of walking and sightseeing. Our last night in Venice we all went to a great dinner and had prosecco, antipasti, fantastic fish and outstanding desserts. What a way to top off the weekend.

Sunday morning we headed back to the airport via water taxi getting one last look at Venice by boat - a gorgeous city with tons of amazing old architecture, great food, very friendly people and atmosphere. I am so glad I've seen it with all teh threats of it one day going underwater. It was just the thing for my first real vacation since starting work - now I want more!

[MORE PHOTOS BELOW]

Donkeys and Elephants: Keep your hands inside the car at all times...

I've said before in previous posts that I'm surprised at how patriotic I've gotten being overseas. I find myself welcoming so many things European, but still looking around and thinking - it's really no wonder the US is a world power. Let's see - we work hard, take little or NO vacation, have a huge sense of drive to succeed, tip like there is no tomorrow and our stores are open ALL THE TIME! I'm sick of hearing "why can't we get ahead" by countries where the stores are closed 80% of the time and completely random schedules! Especially when I find myself standing in front of the grocery store knocking on the window like the little match girl because everything is shut. So I go home and stare at my fridge contemplating if I should attempt mustard soup, or just eat mustard on a cracker... This is when go to the happy place in my head of the all night groceries, Targets, 7-Eleven's etc. Nirvana!!! Of course there is the downside of the segment of America you wind up seeing at the all-night grocery stores is usually Billy Bob and friends all sporting mullets and way-too-small "I'm with Stupid" t-shirts.

Ahh America.

So being patriotic, and a true believer in voting, I of course got frothed up about the mid-term elections! Not ONLY because it meant extended coverage from my squeeze Tim Russert and his fancy white board (come on, smartest political man on the planet), but this was a BIG DEAL! I even managed to get my friend Madelon into it! Madelon is Dutch so of course I would not expect her to care about this stuff, but she was just as hooked as I was! I think maybe because it unfolded kind of like a game and Madelon is one of the biggest and best sports fans I've ever seen in my life - but still, she was practically sweating red white and blue. Madelon actually has some experience with the Americans as she was reinforcement #1 during Team America's Amsterdam invasion - see previous post :)

I should take this time to highlight a particularly salient view of American politics here:
www.endofworld.net

So, I tried to explain as best I could the process of elections recalling my 9th grade civics class - majority, minority, the whips, battlegrounds, donkeys, elephants, speakers, congressmen and senators so unfortunately Madelon may have come away with the impression that we have elected farm animals who will duke it out in some sort of "celebrity death match" style event in a big round house...which is probably the most accurate description of this giant circus.

While I sit there with my little papers, listing the states, who needs to hold what, who needs to take what, and avidly watching the returns, I've realized from watching the most recent elections that we will never again know ANYTHING on election night other than the fact that "Too Close To Call" will likely be tattooed on Brian William's butt.

Halloween 2006

I have to give credit to the Europeans - they get into Halloween dressing up! Nothing is more annoying than going to a party all decked out in your colored tights, wig and star-spangled giant underwear only to realize you were the only one that actually took the "wear a costume!" on the inivite seriously. You wind up spending the rest of the night up close and personal with the punch bowl failing to find it funny when others use your cape as a napkin or asking "Hey WonderWoman, where is your invisible jet?".

I was very plesantly surprised that this crew was among the most decked out i've seen! Semhal hosted a fanstic party complete with a Gay-sha, Reaper, Princess Leia, Lois and Clark and of course Castro. I decided on Princess Lea but nixed the infamous Gold Bikini as being in the Netherlands makes you unappealingly pale. But the buns were oustanding - I wored them for 2 days. Here's a look.