I came back to the hotel early in the morning to do my final goodbyes and help with the check out for those departing. It was my last task. Frank and I said goodbye as well. He told me it was the most fun he's had with an contingency contractor so I'm taking that as very hopeful.
I hadn't really slept but was feeling pretty pumped up. I've got a shindig tonight to host.
I have been part of an online community for travel in Italy for about seven years. It is a group of people who prefer to travel as I do, i.e. "slowly" - meaning renting an apartment and staying put in one place rather than doing a tour and unpacking every day in another city. Kind of the opposite of what I've been doing the past month but that's okay.
It's a repository of information where you can search on restaurant recommendations, apartment rentals, itinerary questions of all shapes and sizes. There are people from all over the world asking questions and people from all over responding to their queries. While they have sections for destinations all over the world, I participate on the Italy board. I'm a Venice expert, of course. The website has a travel calendar where people can post where they are traveling to and the dates so that people can contact one another for a meet-up they are in the same place at the same time, if so inclined.
Every so often there will be a call out for a GTG - a Get Together lunch or dinner in a city, whether overseas or for the people living in a certain area (and those who may be visiting that area as well.) I have gone to Bay Area GTGs every summer for the past five years. It's fun to meet these people you interact with. In Florence in 2005 the hub-unit and I met up with a large crowd for lunch, which is how I found out about Boccadama, a now-favorite restaurant of mine.
For the past two years a huge GTG has been shaping up. It's actually more than a GTG, it's a destination trip. People are coming to spend a week in Venice and a week in Florence. Most of these people have met before at other GTGs in the US, but there are some folks coming from Canada, England, Spain and Sweden. Pretty cool. I had thought I would be able to participate last year, but things changed for me, obviously. Thankfully, when this contract came up I realized I would be in Venice for two days at the start of the trip so I could at least go and have a meal with them. They have tours planned that people are opting to join in on certain days and activities here and there, but it's pretty ad-hoc.
I was going to be able to join them on Monday night for a winetasting and welcome mixer and we had been corresponding fast and furiously as people were starting to arrive in Venice over the previous couple of days. I have been theweathergirl for the past month, giving them details when I'm in Venice of what it's like. Reading the temperature online is one thing, having someone who is there and complaining about the gorram mosquitoes nipping at you is much better info to have.
The person in charge of the winetasting had some bad news late in the evening on Sunday for us - the cantina we were supposed to have the winetasting in had to cancel on us, so we were trying to figure out either another bar to hold it in, or someone's apartment. I offered my place, since I knew it could hold at least a dozen people in the living room and kitchen downstairs. Piece of cake. We had plenty of room to spread out in on the upstairs floors as well. I offered to start us off with appetizers and antipasti if everyone else could help me out. Bring a dish (even if it's store bought, just contribute) and bring your own dishes, silverware and glasses. Yeah, I could have easily gone out and bought plasticware but this made it an adventure. A moveable feast, so to speak. Plus, since we were winetasting varietals handpicked by a professional sommollier it was probably better to taste it in an actual glass rather than a plastic cup.
This was Saturday that this all came out. People agreed and we kept the meeting time of 5pm. Appetizers, then the winetasting and lesson from Nan, then dinner. So on Monday morning I struck out for the grocery store 3 minutes away and loaded up on bread,coldcuts and cheeses, and planned to make a marinates antipasti of olives, peppers, mozzarella balls and mushrooms. I also was doing a roasted artichoke salad and veggie crudite tray. Oh, and a frittata of potatoes, shallots, herbs and pancetta. Piece of cake.
I have only met one of the people coming over; she was one of the folks at the GTG in Florence years earlier but I didn't really remember her. But everyone else was definitely known to me through their posts on the boards.
I got things tucked away and set up in a timely fashion. People started arriving at five. Glorious food crowded the table, more bottles of wine than we knew what to do with, on top of the selections we were going to learn about.
We had an absolute blast. There were eighteen of us and we fit into my house just fine. There were six from CA, three from MA, two from NY, one from London, one from Galicia Spain, one from Sweden, one from MS, two from MO, one from New Orleans LA.
One group of people had been in Italy for a few days already, having gone to Sondrio near the Swiss border north of Como in order to look up his family. This is a tiny town and the family had no idea they were being sought after. Chris just knew the name of the town and that there are people there with his last name. He knows his great grandfather's name that had come over to the US in the early 1900s and it was a whim to go see his family's homeland. It turns out they were able to find family in the town. There are a couple of businesses run by his distant cousins and when he saw the proprietors' names on the shops outside he used the only Italian he knows to go in and say "Sono Spini! Siamo famiglia!" I am Spini! We are family!"
And they were welcomed with open arms., So cool. He got to meet his family and seeing the pictures it was kind of scary. His cousin looks dead on like Chris. Same hairline, same nose, same build. SO all night long we all kept shouting out "Siamo Spini!" We're all Spini! We are now a family after this adventure together.
After we cleaned our plates up and packed everything away, we struck out to the vaporetto together en mass. People wanted to see where other people were staying, so we all went to the farthest point in Cannaregio where Shannon and Kim were staying and we walked them home, then on to the n
ext closest place and walked them home. We stopped for a while at a bar for some drinks (why? we only have another 5 bottles to kill off at my place, but we were being festive...) and so on until Anne and I were the last kids standing. She is staying at the place I usually get down the street in Campo San Barnaba.
The best part was coming back on the vaporetto at midnight. We still had eight people and it was the last boat before it turned into the Night boat line. The water was smooth as glass, there weren't a million boats on the Grand Canal and just glided from stop to stop, with the occasional outburst of Siamo Spini to be heard by the passers by on the fondamente.
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