Venice is lovely. It is a peculiar city
because it exists for tourism and tourism only. Slightly over half of
the population is tourists, and the residents of Venice all work in
tourism, whether it's driving watertaxis, cleaning hotels, selling
plastic gizmos by the Grande Canale, or manning the many gift shops,
restaurants, and Rialto market stalls.
You can't go into Venice hating
tourists, as so many people do. You can't “beat the tourist traps”
and try to find the “real Venice,” because the real Venice exists
for tourism, and if you are going to Venice, you're a tourist, too. I
find it marvelous to listen to the babble of different languages
around me, the different cultures and fashions and faces. People from
all corners of the Earth have come to admire the beauty of one common
thing, and that makes my little humanities-loving heart feel warm and
fuzzy.
All that being said, I believe we have
succeeded in escaping the tourist-traps of Venice as much as
possible, in all the right ways. We're staying in a monastery which
is far cheaper than any hotel in the city. We seem to have the place
almost to ourselves, including the roof which offers a view of the
neighborhood, the skyline of churches and palaces, and a bit of the
Canale di San Marco. The desk clerk didn't even speak any English, so
we got by speaking some motley stew of French, Italian, and Spanish.
(Linguistics is awesome!) We're right next to Garibaldi Street, where
the shopkeepers don't speak English either (unlike the Rialto
markets) and there are actual grocery stores that sell cat food and
other household necessities for the few who live and work in Venice.
Since Venice is famous for having overpriced mediocre food, we took
advantage of this. My favorite meal was our rooftop dinner of meat
and cheese sandwiches, salad, and chocolate pudding, bought at the
grocery store and assembled and eaten with a view of the city below
us.
Of course, we did take advantage of the many gelato shops around
the city. The lemon gelato wasn't quite as good as the lemon gelato
in Heidelberg, but their hazelnut flavor made up for it.
I guess there were opportunities we
missed. We didn't tour the basilica of San Marco, the famous church,
as we didn't want to wait several hours in line in the sun.
We didn't
take a gondola ride, as we saw them meandering through the narrow
canals that we were exploring on foot through the cobbled streets on
the inside, so we were pretty sure we weren't missing out on much.
We
also took the vaporetto, a water bus that took us from the station to
our hotel, that gave us a lovely tour of the canals and was far
cheaper and less over-romanticized than the gondolas. I loved that it
was basically a subway on water. Our method of seeing Venice was just
to explore on foot, since it isn't a large city.
I'm sure there's so much in the city
that you could spend a week in there with a tour guide. But for
practical purposes, you can do Venice in a day. You need to walk
through the San Marco Square and through the Rialto markets, but
after that you've pretty much seen what you need to see. We arrived
late on Thursday, took a vaporetto ride, and left my very feverish
brother and my exhausted mother in the monastery, while my dad and I
went to find dinner. The next day, with the exception of Alex who
spent the entire day sleeping off his illness, we explored Venice on
foot. By noon we felt like we had seen everything we wanted to. We
traded in my mom who had a heat-headache for Alex who was slightly
more alert and got paninis. The afternoon was too hot for all of us
so we took a siesta until it was cooler out, at which point we did
some more walking to show Alex what we had seen in the morning and
finished with rooftop dinner and gelato. And that is how you do
Venice in a day.
Then we took a train to Sanremo, a
smallish Italian beach town. We lost a day in transit, as the trains
were neither direct nor speedy. That night we ate real Italian pizza:
a pesto one with pine nuts, one topped with grilled veggies, and one
with cheese and mushrooms. My dad complained of the creaminess, but I
found them far superior to Domino's. Here's the view from our hotel:
The next day we spent at the beach. I
can't recommend Mediterranean beaches at all, except for the fact
that they're beautiful and the water's warm. Unlike in California,
Italian beaches are not all public, so although we could see miles of
beautiful beach, only a very small portion was public, and the 23
steps of shore were packed with squalling children and cranky old
people. My dad sat down in a chair to take off his shoes, and was
immediately yelled at by an old Italian lady because you had to pay
for use of the chairs. So we moved our shoes to the area without
chairs, and started playing catch on the shore with the frisbee we'd
brought.
(By the way, this is the frisbee my team signed for me!)
We had to inch out of the free beach a little to get enough
space, but figured no one would mind. Pretty soon the same Italian
lady was back, though not because we were on the wrong beach: “No
no no! Ees dangerrrous forr zee bamBINI!”
That's when I knew I'd turned French. A
year ago I would've placated her: “I'm very sorry ma'am, we'll be
going now.” But I threw up my hands and said “Yes, yes ma'am,
whatever you say, ees verry dangerrous forr zee bambini!” with a
mocking look. Not that it did any good, of course – this response
isn't necessarily better than the one I would've given a year ago.
But in France they would say I'm finally standing up for myself and
saying what I think.
So we came back 30 minutes later in
swimsuits this time, as the day had warmed up quickly, and this time
we played catch in the water, far enough from shore that they didn't
mind. The water was warm and lovely, and shallow enough that we could
still stand and deep enough that we could dive for the disk. That is
how we spent a significant part of the day in Sanremo, and will be a
fond memory even though Italian beaches are crowded and full of
grumpy people. The Pacific is unfortunately not warm enough to play
frisbee in.
That night we ate at the hotel
restaurant, and made the mistake of ordering their special discounted
3-course meal. One course would have been more than sufficient. It
started with a pasta course, but the pesto sauce was so creamy that
all of us had trouble stomaching it, and I was the only one who ate
more than half of my plate (being, of course, accustomed to fatty
European meals). The second course, the meat course, had so much cow
on it that any one of our plates probably would have been sufficient
for the four of us. It was good, but we were already full. Europeans
don't believe in doggy bags, but we played the uncouth Americans and
asked to have it wrapped up (which they did with paper plates and
foil, since they don't have styrofoam boxes). We ate it for lunch the
next day in rolls, and then for dinner in pasta. I guess we got our
money's worth. For dessert we had tiramisu and lemon mousse, both of
which we managed to finish off despite barely making a dent in the
meat course. My dad claims he will never be able to eat pesto again.
But at least we can say we experienced a fancy Italian meal.
The next day was another day lost in
transit: a train to Menton to rent a car, and then the 5 hour drive
to Méribel. It was a relief to find myself back in a country where I
speak the language, where I am not afraid to ask for directions or
talk to strangers. I did survive the most embarrassing shopping trip
of my life, however, as we stopped to get groceries before driving up
to the apartment in Méribel. First of all, we had missed the machine
in the produce section where you are supposed to weigh and identify
your produce and print out price stickers for them before you go to
the checkout line, so we had to run back with our basket of produce
and weigh it all while our checkout lady stalled. Then we discovered
they didn't take visa, and I had to run to the car to get more cash
from my brother, since we were almost clean out. The lady's smile was
getting more and more strained with every delay, and I always feel
bad for perpetuating the stereotype of rude clueless Americans. I
feel responsible for my family when we're in France, as I have to
translate for them, and so I felt bad for the checkout lady and the
line behind us.
But once we arrived in Méribel,
everything was like what a vacation really should be: relaxing,
unstressful, with exactly what we want for food and sleeping
schedules and activities. After so many meals in restaurants or with
makeshift sandwiches or leftovers, it is lovely just to cook
ourselves spaghetti with leftover beef, spicy tomato sauce, and lots
of parmesan. We've spent our time going on hikes up the mountain –
my dad hiked high enough up to find the soggy patch of snow we could
see from our balcony – as well as reading, cooking, and playing
catch with the frisbee I'm so glad I brought with us. The mountains
are green, unrecognizable from what I saw in winter, but
breathtakingly beautiful.
There are just a few people around,
construction workers doing repairs and some mountain bikers, but
mostly we have the woods and the mountains all to ourselves.
Yesterday on a hike some friendly horses came right up to the edge of
their enclosure and shoved their noses in my hands looking for
treats, but we all jumped back in terror when one or the other of us
touched the electric fence I hadn't noticed. It took me a moment to
figure out what had happened – at first I thought someone had
thrown a rock at my elbow, maybe the owner of the horses who didn't
like me touching them. I don't know why I felt the shock mostly in my
elbow, since it couldn't have been my elbow that brushed the fence.
But after looking wildly around for my assaulter, I realized it had
been the thin wire between the horses and me, and that my eyeballs
were buzzing with electricity. Enough shock to scare a horse is
definitely enough shock to make a human hurt, and I felt it in my
elbow and my eyesockets for an hour or two after.
This is me right before touching that wire you can see by my hip:
That's about all I can say about our
adventures in Méribel. It was lovely and relaxing if uneventful. On
the 27th we drove to Paris (technically, to Roissy, the
little city where the airport is) and checked in at the airport hotel
for a night, which was far more luxurious than we would have
expected. We also went to a Chinese restaurant, the first one I've
seen in France. In the Vendée they aren't really big on ethnic food.
Or ethnic anything. There's little to no diversity in the population,
in food, in language, in culture... but at least in Paris there are
plenty of immigrants. So we had good Chinese food, including one dish
that seems Chinese-French fusion to me: fried frog legs. Despite the
stereotypes, the French do not actually eat frogs very often. So this
was the first time I had eaten frog legs, and
it was from a Chinese
restaurant in Paris. In this case, the stereotypes are absolutely
true: frog legs do taste just like chicken!
Unfortunately,
I had to take a different flight back from the rest of my family
because my two-way ticket had already been reserved a year in
advance, so while they had a convenient non-stop from Paris to San
Francisco, I had to change planes in Reykjavik, Iceland, and in
Boston. I left three hours before my parents and landed four hours
after they did. I figured out the CDG airport without difficulty and
got through the passport check in Iceland. The guys ahead of me in
the line were clearly very proud of themselves when they said to the
security guy that they'd been in Europe for a month. What world
travellers! But when he asked me how many of the past 6 months I'd
spent in Europe and I answered 10, he was startled and had to verify
my visa. Hah. That's what it's like to really be
a world traveller.
The
Boston airport was slightly more problematic. My flights had nothing
to do with each other and I even had to go through customs and then
go back through security, changing airlines. The problem with this is
that I couldn't find any way to get from one terminal to another, and
it was the 5th
person I asked who actually gave me good directions. Once I got to
the other terminal (on a hard-to-find shuttle) I wandered around with
another woman looking for the same flight since we couldn't even find
departures, only arrivals. We had to find a hidden staircase and go
up a floor before getting to check-in, security, and our gates. Now
that is a badly-designed airport.
Taking
off in Boston felt like finally leaving. I've already left so many
times – I left high school when my parents came, I left France
nearly a month ago, I left our friends in Germany to go touring on
our own, I left France again in Paris... but now taking off in Boston
was the last time I would have to leave, the last goodbye to my year
abroad. The real end. So I wrote a poem, because what else can you do?
Where to now?
A midnight sun on a sea of clouds
Where to now? Where to now?
Heartsick laughter and euphoric tears
It's been so long, so long.
Where to now?
The cows are laughing and cooing
goodbye
The pigeons moo hello
Hello Stranger. Hello.
On wings of metal we chase the sun
Across the sky and the ocean wide
To see a bridge on the other side –
I am here, but who am I?
It's been so long, so long.
The other sights are still the same
Boy meets girl and goes to school
The seagulls caw, the smell is sun,
And on the other side the children play
too
Sing songs, chase balls
And
life goes on. It's been so long, so long.
No comments:
Post a Comment