Christmas Day in Venice! Venice! A city I had spent my childhood only imagining about. So mysterious, so fantastic, so unreal - and I was finally here!
But first with a stop at Bologna.
Also, Venice was cold.
So the morning started ridiculously early considering it was Christmas and I wasn't used to waking up early on such a day, but we had to put our luggage out so the porter could take it to the bus. Darn. The usual morning went by, breakfast, grab our bags, hop on the bus and off we were on our way. The streets were literally empty. No cars. Absolutely nothing. We stopped for a brief washroom break, some more vicious fist-fighting with my brother occurred, and then back on the bus. Next stop: Bologna.
We didn't stay very long in the city, and it was also quite empty--which was fine because it made walking around a lot easier. I apparently didn't take any notes on where we actually went walking, but I know we did go walking around. I remember a tower being mentioned and I know some people in our tour group decided to run up said tower despite our tour guide saying it would take a good half an hour. Oh. I remember a leaning Christmas Tree, and I also remember a man who had dressed up as a dog stuck in a garbage can who kept "whining"--it was slightly disturbing more than interesting. I think I would've freaked out if I saw him as a kid, he was already making me nervous as an adult!
I'm trying really hard to remember what our tour guide was telling us about Bologna. I remember walking past a couple of cafes that looked like they were selling really delicious chocolate, I remember talking about arches and how the covered walkways where actually made by the homeowners (since those were actually private lands) and being elevated made it easier for people to navigate because who would want to walk on the street during the medieval ages? That was a terrible run on sentence right there, I'm sorry. Anyway--what else was there worth mentioning? I remember a few more comments about how the higher the tower the wealthier the family, but eventually all the towers were made the same height except for this one tower (the one people in our tour group climbed). Etcetera, ectera. I want to say our stop was a bit more interesting, but it was Christmas. The town was dead, I was dead and it was also a lot more chilly than in Florence.
But anyway - the tour ended, we had about 20-30min of spare time and we spent that time just walking back towards the bus and then off we were to... lunch! At around 1:00PM we stopped at a pit-stop on the highway that had a cafeteria where we could eat lunch--it was super expensive though. We stood in the line and for some reason everyone wanted pasta, but me and my family got tired of waiting and just skipped the pasta line and moved on to the "main course" section where we got three plates of chicken wings to share, potatoes, fries, and a huge 6 euro bowl of salad. It was an alright lunch, mostly because we actually got quite a bit of chicken wings and potatoes provided the starch for me to feel full. Also salad had olives and I love olives. Then we went off to Venice.
We arrived at the docks, got off the bus, took a ferry across and there we were. Our hotel was very close (almost beside) the Venice train station and therefore very close to the docks--barely a 5minute walk away. Venice was cold. Not temperature wise but the humidity just made things so much worse.
Our hotel was quite fancy, a converted palace or something like that but the problem was that they only provided wifi on the lobby. This became quite hilarious later on because they actually had a sitting area in the lobby and you could see our entire tour group filling up the seats in the lobby because everyone was using wifi. Especially the kids in the group. Ah, the modern age.
After stopping at our hotel and getting a bit of rest, and a bit of luggage, we met up again to go on a classic Venice Gondola ride--complete with singing! It was very enjoyable and it felt surprisingly short even though we were told it had been a 45min ride. The gondoliers were also super skilled. There are some really tight corners that they have to turn and I remember for one, I was watching the corner as we turned and he managed to time the amount of drifting and paddling to such a perfection that the boat literally just wrapped around the corner without touching any of the walls. It was insane. Respect. I must admit though, I giggled a bit at first though-out because if anyone has read the Stravaganza series and particularly The City of Masks all the "mandoliers" in that book are supposed to be super hot men--sadly this was not the case in Venice but oh well. Also, apparently these guys make butt-loads of money. Get me in on that family business.
No, but in all seriousness. Before the Gondola ride we actually went up the Grand Canal on some rented water taxi's and that was nice because our tour director was actually born in Venice and you could tell how passionate he was about the place. I was honestly just.... I loved it. Our boat had a section at the back with no roof so we could stand up and look out and it was just so great standing there, wind blowing at my face, looking and observing this city build on water. Hell, even walking through the city later was just crazy for me. The entire time I felt a bit like I was having an out-of-body experience, this entire city was just so mystical and magical to me. So other-worldly. I couldn't believe I was here at last. With all this being said and with all my admiration... I would never want to actually live in Venice. It seems like way too much of a pain to get around.
But moving on. After the gondola ride, and feeling like I was freezing to death, we made it back to the hotel and got a bit of a rest before heading off to Christmas Dinner.
Now, the lunch we had yesterday was huge I think I might have mentioned? The dinner we had tonight was gigantic to the point of traumatizing. By the time the main course came out I couldn't even eat it. It was really hilarious because my siblings opted to share one plate of the main course and they couldn't even finish a single thing. I must say, I was proud of the fact that I managed to finish a piece of beef and some potatoes. I was also, later, able to eat an entire slice of panatone (Italian Christmas Cake if you remember).
So the details of our dinner. It started off with the antipasti which was a huge plate of assorted cold meats. Four different kinds. I was in heaven since I love cold meats and these were delicious. I pretty much devoured it instantly. Than came the pasta and this was more worrying. The pasta was huge and there were two kinds, risotto and penne. To be honest, I already had a hard time finishing the pasta and I didn't. I didn't manage to finish the pasta at all. Then we got a small palette cleanser, which was a very refreshing and light lemon sherbert, and then came the main. If you thought the antipasti was meat heavy, our main consisted of a slice of beef, chicken, and pork, as well as a huge portion of, what I learned is polenta but, what I have personally nicknamed salty oatmeal, and potatoes. I finished the slice of beef, my mom nibbled on bits of my plate but really didn't touch much (we were supposed to be sharing), and had a few bites of the polenta but that was it. We really had to give up by that point. Dessert was also not small. They gave each person a gigantic slice of panatone. I managed to finish my own slice by slowly nibbling and ripping pieces off but it was a difficult and long process. We stayed at the restaurant for quite a while though because my siblings were talking and my parents were a bit tired, but eventually we left at around 9PM-ish, and our dinner was quite early at about 6PM-ish.
Tried to use the internet at night but it was being very terrible and so I began re-reading the Stravaganza series because how could I not? It was these books that initially made me so fascinated with Italy. Anyway--due to the bad internet and the reading, didn't exactly get an early night, but the day tomorrow was starting a bit later as well so all was good.
All in all? I'd say a pretty good Christmas.
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