Monday, 16 February, 2009

We woke up incredibly early to pack up for Florence. It’s for three days, so my laptop roller carry-on is plenty sufficient. I cooked breakfast for us all, we cleaned up and away we went, slogging through the back streets of Venice to the train station. Luke in his amazingness had gone out exploring by himself the night before and made his way to the station, bought tickets for us and made his way back to the house on his own in the dark and without a map. Yay Luke!

There was nobody out since it was not even 6AM, but it felt great to be able to walk without bumping into people in a crush. The train didn’t leave until just after 6:30 so we had a few minutes to kill before we could get on and settle in. This is a Eurostar train, which gets you into Florence in 2 hours 40 minutes with only about 5 momentary stops along the way. The seats are reserved/assigned so at some point in your journey the chances are likely that someone will come up and say you’re in their seat. Everyone then compares tickets and all is right in the world eventually. It’s happened every time I’ve been on the train.

About 45 minutes into the ride, we were in a quad seating with our little table between us and just chilling out – I was reading, Charlene was writing and Luke was watching the inside of his eyelids, and we hear music coming from the opposite side of the aisle. The teenage girl in the grouping across from us had started up her ipod a little too loud and it was bad pop music. Song after song we were being forced to listen to the shoomp shoomp budadada of crappy music. Why don’t people realize that earphones are supposed to be for your listening pleasure only, and not your neighbor? I couldn’t hide my distaste and my facial expressions kept sending Charlene into snickers of laughter. I did turn to the girl and gape at her a few times but she was oblivious. If I had caught her eye I could have mimed “earphones, music, lower” and given her the cross librarian stare down, but she wasn’t looking at me. Oh well.

As the train was pulling in to Rovigo the dance pulse was at a fever pitch, we all began tapping our hands on the table in unison along with the beat when we all suddenly burst into laughter. That kind of uncontrollable, tears rolling down your face, can’t stop-can’t breathe laughter. Gigglefits. I looked over the girl, (who had her eyes closed) rolled my eyes heavenward and said “oh dear lord, why?” which sent Luke & Char into another fit, making me go into another fit. We also began the chair dancing from the waist up, imitating Mike Nelson’s technobeat dance moves which kept us cracking up. It was obvious at this point that her “music” was the impetus for our behavior. We even threw some “whoop whoops” and hand waving in the air. The train took off again and suddenly the music wasn’t audible to us anymore. Looked like she got the hint. Maybe. For the rest of the trip we only heard snippets momentarily – a song would start and suddenly it would go quiet. Except for when she began singing out loud. The power of the words of the song lyrics compelled her to sing out loud, even if it could have meant the derision of the weird “old” people across the way. Too bad it was Avril Lavigne’s pop masterpiece “Complicated” that she was so compelled to sing for us.

We left the train and made our way through the station and out onto the street. After being in Venice the noise of Florence and the cars and buses was throwing me off. We got down to the Pizza del Duomo and I gave a mini-synopsis to them about the history of the buildings and the contests for the Baptistery doors and the dome.





They went off to climb the steps of the dome and I went around the corner to check in at the apartment. After meeting up with Gabriella and dropping everything off I went back out to meet up with Luke & Char in the piazza. As I looked up at the dome I saw Luke’s white-blond hair at the top. Charlene in her black cap was right next to him. I took my red & black scarf and began waving it, trying to catch their attention, to no avail. But I did take a photo of them from the street. We met up a bit later and I told them about my scarf waving – turns out they were wondering if they’d be able to find me down below as well. But they didn’t see me waving. Oh well.



(the red circles are Luke and Charlene, as seen by me down below in the street.)

Luke and Charlene came down from on high and we went inside the church so they could see what they had just climbed up, around and over. I then took them on the quick overview tour of the outdoor sights of the city center: the major piazzas, orienteering them down to the river and over to the Ponte Vecchio and back. We decided it was time to eat lunch and off we went to Trattoria Za Za near the Central Market.

The menu there is extensive and all plates are excellent value. It’s an interesting and kind of funky place, with the heavy dark wood interiors interspersed with local student paintings, heavy chandeliers and pictures of famous people from around the world who have dined there. We had a great time commenting on the music playing overhead, and the menu stated that they were selling (after great interest and many requests) the compilation of songs heard on CD at the San Lorenzo market. I have to get one – it’s more memorable to me now than most of the “This Is Alice Music” collections…

For food I selected a chicken breast in truffle sauce with roasted potatoes, Luke had a primo piatto of spaghetti carbonara and for his entrée roast pork in sage and rosemary sauce with tuscan beans, and Charlene had the beef tenderloin escalope with secret herb sauce and rosemary potatoes. My mouth is watering just remembering it! And the house red wine. We all thoroughly enjoyed our food and shared bites to see who had made the best selection, which never came to agreement on. And the bread to sop up the remaining sauce on our plates. Traditionally, tuscan bread is made without salt – a harkening back to when there was a revolt on the taxation of salt a few hundred years ago. Rather than pay the tax, they just made it without. It stands out and you know something is different, but it’s easy to get used to and it doesn’t taste bad after the first piece.

We started talking about American Idol of all things (probably in part to the Italian pop music in the room) and we waxed philosophically solving the world’s problems through music for over an hour after finishing our meal. One thing I adore about the Italian culture is that there is no rush when it comes to meals, in public or private. The saying goes that one never ages while at table, meaning the longer you stay at the table eating, conversing, enjoying each others’ company, you never get older and time stops all around you. I appreciate that – this is the place where I really do slow down. I eat at my desk most days at work, at home I make dinner and we usually eat in front of the tv out of habit. Here it is perfectly acceptable to keep a table at a restaurant all night, they don’t anticipate turnover three times like back at home. So lingering over the table talking about nothing that is truly truly important and earth-shattering (like American Idol is in the grand scheme of things) was fun. We are on vacation and not in a rush. It’s a great feeling to let go and just flow with it. No agenda and no timetable.

After we finally left Za Za I walked us around the corner to the grocery store (stopping first to make a copy of my passport for the landlord, which I had forgotten earlier.) I picked out some breakfast items to cook in the morning, along with the makings for a huge pot of minestrone to have on hand. As I said before, I love soup and on cold and intemperate days there is nothing better than heating up a bowl of comforting food, like soup. No – I do not work for the Soup Council and this isn’t a commercial. I just love me some soup!

Luke and Charlene were elsewhere in the store while I was on my mission to find all my ingredients. Luke came back and reported they had found the greatest bottle of wine. The lettering on the label looks just like the kind on the original Star Trek series. I walked over and saw it – it did indeed look like it – it is Rubicon sangiovese (the Sangiovese was the typeface with the intergalactic theme) It was a 1.5 litre bottle (is that a magnum?) Anyway, it’s twice the size of a regular bottle at home. It was also just under 5 Euros. Well that has my name written all over it. I love wine in Italy because it doesn’t have the added sulfites that you have to add in order to export it to the States. So the sulfites are a preservative essentially, and they are what cause people likely to get migraines from red wine to do exactly that. The sulfites are also one of the causes for people having histamine issues and hangovers. Not having the sulfites allows me to never regret having that last glass the night before, on many levels. Also cheap red wine in Italian grocery stores has many times been way better than $15-20 bottles I’ve had back home. I am by no means a wine snob when it comes to grocery store wine in any Italian burg. We happily carried the bottle of the newly christened “Star Trek wine” and chilled out in the apartment for the remainder of the day, alternately writing, reading and listening to the radio with the bad pop music selections in multiple languages.

I am still waiting to talk with the bank about the card situation and how I will access money. But that must wait until Tuesday morning, pacific time. Mark called to tell me that the bank wanted to verify some charges with me. I saw it as a ray of hope that I could find out more about the blocked card situation, but when I called back I found out they were only verifying that I was indeed the one who was attempting to charge on the card (at the money exchange place in Venice.) Well honestly, if they didn’t accept the transaction why are they checking after the fact that it was me? Ugh. I took the time to ask in detail if they realized what was going on and if the card transactions were blocked because there were a lot in quick succession – was that the deal? Unfortunately the verifying service is a third party and they don’t have the reasons or answers I was looking for. I still was going to need to call the bank itself on Tuesday morning, pacific time.

The agent did suggest that there have been times when the client could check the atm after speaking with them and the card was cleared for transactions. I went out and tried at the nearest machine after getting off the phone. No luck. Damn.

Tomorrow is another day. Back to the Star Trek wine for now.