The Silliest Place on Earth

We're in Venice now. Everyone who goes on and on about how beautiful it is is right, but you really can't get to that conclusion without first asking who in their right mind would decide to build a city in the middle of the water like this? I know Manhattan is an island and all, but there aren't rivers every 6 blocks that you have to cross over bridges or take a boat to navigate. It's just plain silly. When the British built Jamestown, VA and it sunk into the swamp, they just tried somewhere else, they didn't spend centuries trying to manage the swamp. I can't explain it.

We had a very very difficult time getting to the hotel. If you're ever going to Venice, my suggestion is that you not drive, and if you do, don't bring any luggage, and if you do that too, take a water taxi, not a bus, and do not go anywhere without asking directions first from somebody official (apparently it's considered sport to fool the tourists).

We got dropped by the water bus about 100 yards from the hotel, but someone had given Ronnie bad directions and we had to lug our huge heavy bags over a big bridge that's all stairs. Just picture us with 4 rolling bags, me with the 2 big 75 pounders, and I'm going up one step at a time. Fortunately, a Belgian man offered to help and carried one of them most of the way. We got across the canal and asked a policeman where the hotel was and he pointed back across the bridge. Again I was lucky and a German guy helped me carry.

By the time we got to the hotel we were tired and sweaty and pissed off and it was around 6 already so we stayed in and ordered pizza.

We were already in a bad mood upon arriving because we'd gone to Padua to see a frescoed chapel by Giotto. We got into town and none of the streets were on our map and once we parked there were no directional signs or coherent street markings and EVERYTHING was closed on Sunday and we wandered around semi-blindly for half an hour before we finally got to the place. Then it turned out that just getting there was the easy part.

You buy a timed ticket to see the fresco and you may not enter the exhibit until 5 minutes before your time. At that point you enter what I can only describe as an airlock. You sit in a little sealed room for 15 minutes while the the previous 25 people go in the chapel. To keep you occupied while you're sitting in the airlock, you can read about why you're sitting there (Short version- preventing atmospheric pollution in the chapel). Finally they open the door to the chapel, expel the other people into a different airlock, open the other side of that airlock and release them into the wild, then they close that door and let you go from your airlock into the entry/exit airlock, close all the doors, and then open the entry side and you go into the chapel. And no, I'm not making this more complicated and frustrating than it actually was.

The chapel was small and gorgeous. A lot of the painting was almost sculptural, which I gather was pretty unusual in 1302. It was a pretty straightforward Jesus narrative on 3 levels, culminating in a scary last judgement scene at one end. The atmosphere in there seemed okay to me, but I guess that was the point. After 15 minutes a game show-type buzzer goes off and you are herded out. By this time we'd been in Padua for an hour and a half, had spent 15 minutes doing what we'd actually came for, and now had no idea where we'd parked. Through as much luck as skill we found our way back in about 10 minutes and couldn't get out of town fast enough.

The only good thing on that whole part of the trip was the one town on the way from Padua to Venice that was open, a cute little canal town called Dolo where we had lunch- a really nice kind of chef's salad. They put corn in their salads here, and its sweetness is a nice complement to the acidity of the vinegar.