Our OTHER memories of Italy

Coming back from Italy has kind of sucked.

I know it's not fair to compare but...

Two weeks ago: Romance, kisses, priceless works of art, wine, gelato ever day

This week: 15 hour work day on Tuesday, tutoring, scrubbing sticky floor, meetings every day

Today, I remembered how two weeks ago I ate the most scrumptious dish of lassagne ever. I'm usually not a huge fan of heavy pasta dishes, but this one actually tasted light and fresh- subtle spices in the sauce, homemade noodles, ricotta cheese- and was so delicious, I actually took a picture of it:

Why did I remember that meal? Well, here was today's lunch:

Not. The. Same. Thing.

I know, I know, poor me! Isn't it funny how when you get back from a vacation, your brain puts on those rose-colored glasses and plays a slideshow of only the happy parts?

Gondola ride? Check!

Seeing the David? Check!

Me blowing the fuse on half a floor because I ran my hair dryer on high? Uh... nope, this memory did not make the cut!

As promised, here are a few other memories that also didn't make it into my slideshow:


1. The Suitcases: My unbelievably generous parents lent us two roomy suitcases for our trip. As we were tromping down a cobblestone street for hours trying to find our hotel the first night, I heard Dan yelp, "Sh**!" and turned to see that he had accidentally broken the handle off own. Six days later, he was carrying the other suitcases and I suddenly heard a snap! I turned to see him desperately trying to jam a piece back on before I would notice. Yup, the handle on that one had broken too.

Oh, and we also lost the book my Dad had lent to Dan to read on the plane.

My parents just loved us when we returned.

2. Wrong train: I fell asleep for three hours on Dan's shoulder only to have him hiss, "Wake up! We're going to the wrong city!!" and hurriedly had to exit at the next stop, dragging two broken suit cases and sporting bedhead. Sloppy Americans= Us.

3. The hostel stay: The night that induced new-mom-with-colicky-baby-level exhaustion. Except there was no baby- just four grown, snoring men. Read all about it here.

4. The most expensive metro ever: After dinner on our first night in Rome, Dan and I decided to metro over to the Colosseum to see it at night. We settled on buying the most expensive metro tickets (around 15 bucks total) because the stub said that it was good for 24 hours and we figured we'd use it the entire next day. After seeing the Colosseum and gorging on gelato, we came back to the metro around 12:30 p.m. When we slid our tickets into the machine to enter the terminal, a big red X flashed. Our tickets were no longer good! We went up to the attendant and began vehemently explaining that "the tickets have a 24 on them! Aren't they good for 24 hours??"

With the patience of a kindergarten teacher, the attendant explained to us that Italy was on the 24 hour clock (duh!) The "24.00" stood for 12:00 MIDNIGHT.

We paid 15 bucks for a two minute metro ride.

5. Sexy Wine:
Dan and I read that if we put our Rick Steve's guidebook on our table at a certain restaurant, we would receive free glasses of "sexy wine", a drink that the owner makes from homegrown strawberries. Being a sucker for any sweet drinks, I eagerly slapped the book down as soon as we were seated. No sexy wine ever came out. Then, when it was time to order, I nudged the book to the edge of the table, hoping the server would catch on. Still nothing. Finally, I tried taking a direct approach.

"Excuse me, signoire, but we have the Rick Steves guidebook with us. Could we have our free glass of sexy wine?" Blank stare from our waiter. "You know, the one made from strawberries. The one you all call 'sexy'." He shook his head and silently walked away. I was starting to think that maybe you had to talk to Mr. Sexy Wine Maker himself, so when the owner walked by, I flagged him down and opened the book to the promise of this drink "Hi, could we try your sexy wine?" (Thinking that the word "sexy" was being lost in translation, I maaay have even done a little shoulder shimmy...)

"No," he said shortly and walked off.

I was getting pissed. "Let's just leave, Dan," I whispered. Dan reached to pay the bill. At the top of it, he saw the name of the restaurant.

We were at the wrong one.

Cheers to our dumb ass moments!

Feel free to chime in with your own travel blunders! Or am I the only one? :)

Hostile at the Hostel

As mentioned on my previous post, not everything went perfectly during our trip to Italy. While you'll get a full list of what dumb asses we were soon, I thought I'd share one lesson we learned:

Staying in an eight person hostel bedroom to save money is NOT worth it.

Originally, we had the same philosophy of our accommodations as a yo-yo dieter: indulge and then starve. We would splurge on beautiful rooms for the first part of the trip and then, to pinch a few pennies, we would stay in an eight person dorm for two nights.

Now, the first six days of the trip we stayed in some wonderful places:

Night one and two in Rome were spent here:

Then, Siena, where we stayed here:

Florence had a romantic room and terrace:

Venice's room looked like this:

with a view of this:

We were living large!

Then, we got to night seven and dreaded moving to our hostel. After shlepping our suitcases to the hostel, though, we were surprised, however, to find that it was clean, comfy, and colorful! We met the owners, an American hippie couple, who have thoughtfully decorated with bright artwork, supply homemade soaps, and even have a cafe in the morning where people can "pay what they can". Score! we thought. This won't be so bad after all!

Little did we know that our worst night's sleep would not be caused by the actual hostel...

Then, we met our roomies, most who were from Switzerland. For the purposes of the story, we will refer to the three men as Hans (Swiss guy), Deiter (Swiss guy), and Beard (creepy guy from Milan with three inch beard who stared all the time). There were also three women.

Here's how our night went:

11:00- Lights are supposed to be out. Hans is still reading with the clip on light, which is pointed in my direction. Trying to sleep with this on is kind of like trying to relax under an interrogation lamp.
11:30- Lights actually go out.
11:35- Beard started breathing heavily.
11:40 Beard starts snoring at a weed wacker volume.
12:00- I get up to grab my ear plugs. Deiter starts to join Beard in snoring.
12:15- I realize earplugs will not work because A. I can still hear snoring and B. I'm a side sleeper and they are getting pushed too far into ear, jabbing my ear drum.
12:30: Hans starts snoring too. Am I on Punked?
1:00- Dan is flopping around, making mattress squeak. I give a little nudge with my foot through one of the holes in the springs.
1:15- Dan falls asleep and is f@*&ing snoring! I karate kick the mattress above me, he snuffles, sighs, rolls over, and continues to snore.
1:30- I try to cover head with pillow.
1:35- I consider smothering all four guys with pillow. What would an Italian prison be like?
1:40- Wasted Italians outside on busy street start screaming songs at top of their lungs and shatter glass bottles. Mama mia!
NOTE: I found out the next morning that one of the girls had opened a window, which is why we got so much noise from outside.
2:30- Things have slightly quieted down. I doze off for about half an hour. Am awoken by...
3:00- THE FREAKIN' STREET SWEEPER WHIRRING AWAY OUTSIDE!!
3:15- Beard wakes up, leaves room.
3:25- Beard returns, smelling like smoke, and takes five minutes of tossing and turning on the creaky mattress to get comfortable. TAKE YOUR TIME, BUDDY.
3:30- Deiter leaves room and inadvertently slams door on way out.
3:35: Hans is rustling in bag. I think he's eating a granola bar. Who can't wait until the morning to eat??
3:40- Eee eee eee ee- that's creaky springs. Dan is awake and flopping back and forth above me. I can hear him sighing, indignant at the two men still snoring. Pot, meet kettle.
4:00- I try my iPod. Coldplay, usually so soothing, has a back-up orchestra of snoring and, now, one of the girls blowing her nose at elephant trumpet volume. Kill me. Kill me now.
4:30- I join all the noise with my whimpering.
5:00- Dan stalks out of room in a huff.
5:05- I join him on the couch downstairs in the cafe, where we are giddy with exhaustion, holding each other and cracking up at both of our murderous thoughts. We toy with revenge plots (let's torture them by fake snoring tomorrow night as loud as we possibly can!) but then settle down and try to sleep.
5:25- Can't sleep. We decide to take our showers.
6:20- We leave for breakfast.
1:00 p.m.- Hours later, I nod off listening to an audio tour in the Vatican museum until Dan nudges me sharply.
3:00 p.m.- After Vatican museum and St. Peter's Basilica, we scour the city for cheap rooms, finding twin beds at a place that usually rents to train conductors. We can't get money back for second night in hostel, which we pre-paid for.

In closing:

Savings by staying a night in a hostel? NONE.


Stay tuned for more travel fun coming soon!

Just do it # 9: Go to Italy

I'll admit, this is by far the biggest of my "just do it" challenges. In the past, I've had smaller, fun items like "make Dan breakfast in bed", "do some good", "cook a meal for 8", "try Bikram yoga", and "go to a movie by myself", but visiting Italy has been something on my ultimate life's list, well... all my life. When I was a kid, I had a reoccurring dream of floating down a canal in Venice. I checked out a Fodor's travel books on Italy years ago, long before my husband and I had even started a fund for going there. For the past three years, I've Googled Tuscan villas and Renaissance art and even poured over copies of Travel and Leisure magazine just to check out anything about Italy. Seriously, it was my version of porn.

This past week and a half, my husband and I finally got there! It was the most wonderful, intense, frustrating, hilarious, draining, beautiful, delicious trip I've ever been on. We realized what dumb asses we can be when we are in a country where we don't know the language (I'll fill you all in on all the dirty details in a future list!), that some money saving techniques just aren't worth it (sleeping in an eight person dorm room= never again), that Italy is as romantic as people say, and that we can eat our weight in gelato.

I won't bore you all with every detail. We did all the usual tourist stuff (the Colloseum, the Renaissance art, the throwing a coin in Trevi fountain). Here are some of my top ten experiences:

10. Eating gelato. For nine straight days. 'Nuff said.

9. Happy hour in Florence. We stayed in a sweet hotel in Florence, and right outside of our room (seen below) was a huge door right out onto their breezy terrace. Dan and I bought a bottle of wine and drank it while enjoying the awesome view.


8. The meals. We took so many photos of our swoonworthy meals, it is ridicuous. Here's the fancy cannoli we had in Siena.


7. Seeing incredible works of art (with a man who makes me laugh inappropriately). We saw so many beautiful works of art: Birth of Venus, the Sistine Chapel, the Discus Thrower. They all took my breath away. Then, Dan took my breath away by making me laugh hysterically. Here he is with the discus thrower:
We got many dirty looks. Then, when we were checking out the David (which really was fantastic), Dan whispered loudly, "Let's go check out the ass". Sooo embarrassing. Just when I though he was done parodying this amazing sculpture, Dan found this apron with the David's famous appendage on it:
I don't think Florence misses us...

6. Nighttime walks in Rome.



5. The view in Florence.


4. Walking around Sienna, a small medieval town, and seeing all the amazing small details: flower boxes, quaint churches, even laundry out to dry.

3. Discovering squares. In each city we went to (especially Florence, though), we would be walking along and then, bam! We'd be in some gorgeous medieval square, perfect for picnicking or pigging out on more gelato.

2. The un-touristy part of Venice during the day (the canals didn't have any kind of horrible smell like everyone said they did, but perhaps they stink worse during the summer's heat...)
Which brings us to my final top ten experience:

1. Venice at night.
Yes, Venice was choking with tourists during the day, but by night when all the tour groups have left, it was quiet and peaceful. One of my absolutely favorite moments was when we took a gondola ride through dark, sleepy canals lit with the occasional ribbon of light, kissing under bridges, and getting an intimate peek at palatial buildings from the 15th century. Then, when I didn't think it could get any better, we walked to St. Mark's Square and were treated to music from the dueling orchestras and danced right there under the stars. Seriously, a magical moment.

Is anyone still reading? I know that hearing too many details about another person's trip can be about as exciting as listening to someone ramble on and on about a weird dream they had, so I'll wrap this up. In short, it was amazing and I feel so blessed to have experienced it, as well as to check off my "Just do it #9" from my list.

Stay tuned for the gory details about some things that didn't go as well... some very funny stories!:)

Until then, arrivederci!