What do you Feel Like Eating? Italian or Italian?

This had to be the place I was anticipating the most. I had always wanted to go to Italy since I was a little girl. I think it was a combination of the lure of the people, the romantic history, the amazing art and of course, the FOOD! Like all women, I had seen movies like "Roman Holiday" and "Under the Tuscan Sun" and dreamed about my Italian get away. We really agonized on where we should hit in Italy. We immediately crossed Rome off the list because we had heard horror stories about how the city is crowded and dirty and how rude the people could be. I am not one to believe stereotypes about people or places but my rule is that if more than 3 independent sources tell you the same thing, i'm inclined to believe it. Needless to say, Rome got crossed off...quick. Bruce and I had always wanted to go to Venice. Especially since the city is essentially dying. Venice in the 1960-1970's actually had a robust population of over 500K inhabitants. Now, the number has dwindled to less than 60K full time inhabitants. Even worse, continued flooding and rising water levels has threatened to wipe the 1500 year old city off of the map. We decided Venice or Venezia as it is known in Italian was a "must see" place.
We arrived in Venice after another day of long travel from London. Venice and London aren't that far apart in distance, but we wanted the cheapest route possible. That meant flying from Copenhagen (our last destination) to London (a one hour flight) followed by a 7 hour layover in London, followed by another short flight from London to Venice.
We arrived in Venice and immediately remembered that this is a city of water. We landed at the airport and realized that there was NO way to our hotel via land. We would have to take either a water taxi (Vaporretti) or the public water bus. We were tired, our bags weighing us down and we both wanted to just take the private taxi...then we found out the price...$90 per person!!!! HELL TO THA NAW (just like Whitney Houston would say!) For $90 per person, I should get a foot and back massage and big, half naked man carrying me around on his back!!! DAMN! Ok, we are so public water bus people. There was nothing wrong with the public water bus. It was nice, clean but of course, the hitch...the 10-15minute ride from the airport to the area of our hotel was stretched out to about 90 minutes. We stopped everywhere in Venice and then some. I fell asleep, it took forever but it only cost us $26!

Water "streets" of Venice

So we arrived at our stop, in front of the famous San Marco Piazza in Venice. If you didn't know, this is the heart of the "tourist" city. The location of St. Mark's Basilica, the Dodge's Palace and all of the best museums. We were armed with a map and a clear sense of where our hotel should be. Or so we thought!
Why didn't someone tell us that alleys are considered streets in Venice..AND they don't have signs. After hauling our big, heavy crapy over several bridges and down cobblestone streets we were ready to give up. I know its hard to imagine but there are NO CARS in Venice. No taxis around to help you, nothing. All the streets are narrow, like only able to accomodate two people walking shoulder to shoulder! Just when the idea of sleeping in an alley seemed like a good idea, the Angel of Travel told me to look up. Just like that, I saw a random sign pointing the way to our hotel. The only problem was that the damn sign was pointing down a dark alley. "Is that a street?", I said?  Hell, after an a two hour water bus ride and another hour of hauling luggage down cobblestone streets I didn't give a hell about being jacked, knifed or killed. I figured that we'd had enough fun to die.

The narrow "street" leading towards our hotel

We turned down the alley, then followed another sign down another alley and found ourselves into a small, dead-end courtyard with our hotel tucked into the corner. It was completely dark except for the lights from the hotel. THANK GOD! Just the beginning of our Venetian adventure...

Our hotel, tucked into the corner of a piazza

After a great night of sleep (thanks to exhaustion and pain) we woke up to a crappy, cloudy, Venetian day. And it was cold...awesome. Honestly, I didn't care about the weather. In fact, it really gives you the opportunity to appreciate a city. If you can love a place when it is cold and dreary, you really love it. (Kinda like loving someone when they are young and fine and then they get old and fat)....

In front of San Maria di Salute

Bruce in the famed Piazza di San Marco

We had a map of the city, but it was useless. Every street had side alleys which were not named on the map but happened to hide little treasures like authentic "mom and pop" restaurants and shops. It was fun ducking in and out little stores and alleys. It was like you were discovering the city for the first time.

We found our way to a restaurant for lunch and had the most amazing, authentic Italian food! (what'd you expect?) Herein is where the problem lies. Me and Bruce are early risers. We need our breakfast to start the day. Half of the free world doesn't eat breakfast. Not what we call breakfast at least. Our first experience with Italian breakfast they tried to give us a crossaint and coffee. What am I supposed to do with that?! That's like a breafast appetizer! Where are the eggs? Bacon? More carbs? When I asked for something else, he offered me a chocolate crossaint. Ok, after explaining to him we needed more "food" food, the man smiled nicely and offered us a panini. Ok, more like what I was talking about but WTF on the price!!! A ham an cheese panini with coffee at a little alley cafe came out to $20! That is not a breakfast! Thank God, lunch and dinner more than made up for it. My favorite thing about Italians is how they eat...Dinner is a long, drawn out event that can take hours. Please don't go there and get impatient because the waiter hasn't come over within 5 minutes of you sitting down. They don't believe that a meal should be a timed Olympic event like we do in the US. A meal is something that should be savored, relished and enjoyed with friends and family. I think as Americans we are so used to the Chili's waitress brining the check with the entree that we can't fathom sitting for an hour, just talking after dinner is finished. Either that or we are so busy trying to make it home to clean, pack lunch, check email, pay bills and watch TV before the next day of work. Italians truly have a better way of looking at meal time! A typical Italian meal schedule looks like this:
7-Arrive at restaurant
730-800-Talk to you family/friends
8-815-Order/argue over what everyone gets
815-830-Talk some more
830-900-Eat antipasti
9-915-Talk some more
915-930-Eat First course of meal
930-10-Eat second course of meal
10-1030-use toothpicks to pick out rest of meal, re-digest it and talk some more over coffee and grappa
1030-11-Talk about things you haven't talked about yet
11-1130-Go home because the restaurant is closing

Bruce enjoying his seafood pasta

Its not just the quality of the meal time but the sheer quantity of food that they give you. Who in the hell can eat all of this!? We sat down and the first menu has antipasti. Usually, cheese, meats or "finger foods" that we would call an appetizer. Ok, we got one. It took about 30 minutes for our cold meat and cheese platter to get to us...I'm trying to stay in the "Italian mind set" but I was wondering after 20 minutes...did they have to go milk a cow to make the cheese? Damn! After we killed our antipasti, we get another menu for the "First course". What is a first course? We asked, and were told "Itsa first course". Ok, that cleared a lot up. The first course looked like what we consider "main". Mostly pastas. So we ordered our pasta dishes thinking this was it. Two giant bowls of pasta arrived (30 minutes later..they had to make the pasta fresh...for real!). We made it thru and sat back, fully fat and happy from our Italian meal. Or so we thought. Then the waiter magically appears with the "Main Course" menu...WTF? I can't eat anything else! I thought the pasta was it!!! After some mild harrassment and the mention that the meal was for everything....not just some, we figured we mine as well suck it up and order our due course. Now, you know i'm greedy but I was actually worried that they would make me eat more after the main. We some how implored them not to make us eat two desserts but did have the coffee. After approximately 2 hours of waiting and about 30 minutes of eating, we still had to wrangle our waiter for the check. They seemed shocked that we wanted to leave after a short 3 hour meal....Gotta love the Italians!
I truly thought Venice was an amazingly beautiful city. It is old!!! Like traveling back in time. We saw a home that was in the same family continuously since the 1400's (my family can't even keep a phone number more than 5 years!). The culture and rich artwork is apparent everywhere you go. Of course, we had to wander into one of the famous museums and had the opporutnity to see art and paintings dating back to the 2nd century. It was amazing and we are not big museum people. Our favorite part of the city was just walking. Every street, every alley told a story and held some type of history. We could actually see the effect of the rising waters in the city. In fact, it is now illegal to rent or live in an apartment on the ground floor in Venice since the flooding is so common and getting worse.

Quiet waterway in Venice

Venice was also a city of amazing contrasts. It was crazy to see a building built in 1300 with a Burberry shop and a Gucci shop in it. These people like to shop and they love to be fashionable. I'm really not sure if they were native Italians or just tourists but everyone was dressing their asses off! We looked like homeless slobs next to 90% of the population in Venice. We actually almost starved to death not because we couldn't find somewhere open (like in Amsterdam or Copenhagen) but because we weren't dressed nice enough to eat in most establishments. We didn't come on this trip to go to nice, fancy restaurants. In fact, we specifically left dress clothes at home. I brought one dress from Old Navy (not dressy by any strech of the imagination) and Bruce had one dress shirt but no slacks. None of our little wardrobe pieces could get us into the "nice" restauraunts. We didn't care. We were all about the bootleg, mom and pop establishments.

Old building, new shops-Italians love their designers!

Aside from our aimless wandering and our museum visits we did take a boat to the nearby island of Murano, home of the famous Venetian glass blowers. I'm not going to lie, in my ignorance I didn't know that Venice was famous for its glass art but we had the opportunity to learn about the rich history and see some of the works of one of its most famous artists. We toured a factory in Muran and actually got to see a master glass blower at work. In front of our eyes, within the span of 10 minutes, he made an amazing glass horse with just his mouth and a couple of rudimentary tools! Amazing!

Master Glassblower in Murano, Italy

The finished product! A little Glass horse

Master Glassblower making a vase in Murano, Italy

We spend 4 magical days in the rainy, cloudy city of Venice (I'm so thankful for the lack of heat and crowds, i can't complain about weather) and we were off to the area of Tuscany. Now many of you don't realize that Tuscany is NOT a city. You can't buy a ticket to "Tuscany". It s a region, like the "South" of the United States. You can't get on Orbitz and put in "South" as a destination. Tuscany is considered the region of mid Italy which includes Florence (its major city), Siena and literally hundereds of hill towns around the area. It is of couse, famous for its wine region (Chianti), food (olives, cheeses) and amazingly well preserved hill fortresses and towns. To get to the Tuscan region, we chose to stay in Florence, the main city. Once again, to save money and months on our lives, we decided to take a train from Venice to Florence rather than fly. The train was only 2hrs long and because it was a intra-Italy train, we had no security, no lines, no hassle...or so we thought. The train system in Italy was much better than the one in Denmark or Sweden by a long shot but it was still a pain in the ass. Mostly because you had no idea of where to get on the train. We could easily find which train but finding which car on the train we were supposed to sit on was a whole 'nother issue. Also, there is no common sense in boarding a train. People would get on from either direction, pushing and shoving. There were no signs and it was literally impossible to find you "assigned" seat. Despite or rocky start, we made it to Florence relatively easily. We also met an awesome couple from North Carolina on the train, Kathy and Randy. (hi, yall!!!). Had a great time talking to them and it was nice to meet someone from back home since Americans had been very few and far between in our journeys thus far....

FLORENCE and TUSCANY
Florence is so similar but so very different from Venice. Florence was more "hip" and "young". Evidenced by all of the much younger people in town. We were told that Florence is the home a huge university and thus, you have a much better night life and more diversity. For our first time since being in Italy, we found a non-Italian restaruant! It was still a little like finding a needle in a haystack but we found one. Our plan for Florence was to hit at least one famous museum and then to use it as a "home base" to explore the Tuscan countryside. Our first day in Florence, we decided we were going to go to the famous Uffizi Gallery. Now, like I said, we are not big museum people but we knew we had to do this one. Not only does it house some of the greatest classical works like Botticelli, Rembrant, Rafael and Michealangelo but it also had and amazing collection of Roman and Greek works from BC! The galley is so popular that hotels and tourist chains sell "reservations" to the museum. Its just like going to a movie! You have to get there at your assigned time to get in. You pay and extra $10 euro for the service but if you could have seen the line, you woulda paid too!! We spent a couple of hours in the museum, saw the big impressive paintings like Botticelli's Venus and several sketches by Leonardo di Vinci but then we decided we were museumed out. We figured this out when we found ourselves, tired on a bench staring at a huge marble statue of some Greek god trying to figure out how does one find the correct instrument to chisel an ass crack....:)
Ok, time to leave the Uffizi!

Intricate ceiling paintings inside of the Duomo

City of Florence with the Duomo in the background

TUSCANY HERE WE COME!
The next day we planned an all day affair in the famous Tuscan countryside. Our one goal was to visit a couple of vineyards in Chianti and small hillside villages where we could sample some local, traditional Tuscan cuisine. When planning a tour around the Tuscan countryside you have several options: you could rent a car and make it on your own with maps, you could do the huge tour group with a big bus or you could spend the xtra $$$ and hire a private guide. Now, this is not a "splurge" vacation, contrary to popular belief. We have a strict budget and we saved the money for the entire trip before we left. Because it is not a splurge we cannot buy things-no souveneirs,no clothes and our meals must be chosen wisely, etc. However, because we both wanted to enjoy this region, we splurged and hired a private tour guide. That turned out to be the best idea we've had! We chose to go with a small, solo tour outfit called Tours Around Tuscany. Gianni was the owner, operator and our tour guide extrodinare! Gianni had a intimate knowledge of his country becase he was born and raised in Siena, the largest and most populous cities in the Tuscan region, outside of Florence. Gianni was probably the best tour guide we have ever had and well worth the money. After picking us up from the train station in Siena, he immediately gave us an orientation of the area, including a discussion of the climate and history of the area.  The benifit of going with Gianni was that we were with a native, we were able to make it to smaller, off the map villages and he was horribly knowledeble about everything about Tuscany. Our first stop was an amazingly well preserved village called San Gusme. The place looked like something out of a movie. Only 100 people lived there, there were no cars because the streets were cobblestone and narrow and quaint. There was no supermarket, no tourist shop, no pharmacy. Just locally owned businesses and small storefronts. It was breathtaking. Even more amazing, we were the only ones in the village. There were no big groups of tourists, no bus parked outside, just us and Gianni, walking around the village on a quiet day. The best part of the village was our opportunity to visit a local vinter. This man was 84 years old and had spent his entire life making a bottling Chianti Classico wine. His "winery" was a little warehouse with bottles stacked everywhere! It was unreal. While we were marveling over the tiny warehouse with wine eveywhere, the little old man comes out with an apron on, muttering and cursing about something in Italian. When he sees us, he smiles, then continues to chatter, opening us a newly sealed bottle of his newest vintage, a 2006 Chianti Classico. The wine was smooth and full and probably one of the best i'd ever had! The kicker? The man was actually bottling the wine while we were there, we were probably the first people in the WORLD to try that particular wine!! Oh, you want better? How about the bottle was a horribly expensive $6!!!! I love this place!!!!

Bruce inside of the small, family owned winery

Learning about Chianti Classico grapes from our guide, Gianni

After having a wonderful wine tasting experience we were off to learn about more history of the Italian countryside. We stopped at several other villages, each smaller and cuter than the last. In fact, the first village we went to was the "biggest" with a robust population of 100 people. The subsequent ones had 50 and then 30 people, still living within them! It felt like we actually went through a time warp!

Small Tuscan village town of Gaiole in the Chianti region

We got the opportunity to visit an actual castle which was still inhabited by the original family since the 1400's!!! Who lives in a castle?! It was amazing and of course, because it was a castle, it had an amazing view of the rest of the countryside.

Entrance to Castle di Brolio

In front of the private residences of Castle di Brolio

We stopped at several other vineyards, sampled more amazing Chianti Classico wine then stopped for lunch at a local spot. Now you know, when no one in the joint speaks English, you KNOW the food is gonna be good!!!! We had the biggest, best lunch i've ever had! We started with two fresh homemade pastas as the first course and the second course had to be the best ribs i've ever had in my life!!! Now you know, me being from the South, saying that those were the BEST ribs ever is HUGE! But they were!!! No sauce, just bbq meat goodness!!! GOD, i LOVE this place!!!

BBQ, Italian style! MMM!

The best thing about our day in the countryside was the fact that we learned so much about Italy, its history and its food but even more, we didn't feel like tourists. We never saw a trace of any other tourists and the day was beautiful. I really appreciate our tour guide, Gianni for showing us his country and making us feel at home!

Bruce and I in the Brolio Vineyards in the Chianti region

I know this is a long blog, but I had to include a couple of closing thoughts about Italy:

Like most places on this earth, no where is perfect. There were several things that I gotta tell you about:

1) NEVER, NEVER, NEVER go to Venice or any other "tourist trap" city during the summer peak time. Most places don't have air conditioning and besides that, the crowds are horrific. Imagine the worst crowd you've ever seen, then cram them all into a street that you can only get thru while walking side by side, then take away deodarant from half of them, add humidity and heat and then you can imagine Venice in the summer. I thought we had it bad with the "mini throngs" of people but I would never change my time in Venice, even though it rained and was cold for a sunny day in June! Remember people, off season is your friend!
2) Bells are not your friend. Italy is a very Catholic country. We knew that. What we did not expect was the sheer number of churches. There were churches on every block. Some very ornate and beautiful, some very plain but no less historic. The problem is the damn church bell. It was really cute, the first couple of times we heard it, very awe inspiring and beautiful. But that beauty gets really old at 6 am when the damn bells are ringing six times to remind you that it is 6 oclock. Does the church know that i'm on vacation? It took me two months of traveling to NOT wake up at 5am like I was going to work! Not like there is any reason to wake up that early anyway! Not like you can get breakfast around here! Stop ringing the damn bell before 8 AM!!!!
3) Italians have one of the most widely spread and most imitated cusine in the world. I have been to the most random spots (Boracay, Philippines) and seen an "authentic" Italian restaurant. They are a little paternalistic about their food. So if you do not like Italian...I mean LOVE Italian--like you could eat it breakfast, lunch and dinner--then Italy may not be the best place for you. We walked all over Venice and could not find more than one or two non-Italian restaurants! I don't know if its illegal to open something different or what but you will die if you don't like Italian food.  Bruce acually said "I'm tired of eating Italian" and Italian is one of his favorite foods!!! We went on the eqivalent of a scavenger hunt, trying in vain to find something other than Italian food. Don't get me wrong, Italy is more than just pizza and pasta but the seasoning for meats, fish, and pasta are very similar in certain regions. After three days of Italian food for breakfast, lunch and dinner, we had a mini-breakdown and went on a hunt for some sort of alternative. What did we find? A Burger King!!!
I was embarassed to go in, but after smelling the sweet french fry grease and the sizzle of the flame broiler I didn't give a damn about what Italians thought about our "horrible" American cuisine!!!

I enjoyed our time in Italy and I am lucky that we got the opportunity to go (off season!) when we did. From the tight little alley ways in Venice to the rambling cobblestone squares in Florence and the horrible church bells that start at 6am, it was an amazing experience in history, culture and FOOD!
Ciao!!!!

I can't explain how beautiful the country is but take a look at all of our pictures from Italy