Day 5: Canals and Chianti

From Munich, we traveled south, out of the Alps and the rain and into Italy, where the weather reminded me of SoCal: Hot, without a cloud in the sky. Ahhh...I had been missing sunshine and was sick of wet sandals. I would've worn shoes, but I fucking HATE shoes. It took us most of the day to get to Venice, but the scenery was goregous, vineyards as far as the eye could see.

Before I left for Europe, I was most excited for Venice. The idea of a city built on water has always intrigued me. And all in all, it's an amazing sight. This was clearly a city that was the center of the world at one point. The place reeks of age, although to be fair, it may have been really dirty water from the canals. It's interesting being in a place where the city itself is the main attraction. Had I been alone, I would've been content wandering around the narrow streets for hours, but were were only there for an evening, and I really didn't want to get so lost that I couldn't find my way back, which would've undoubtedly happened. Instead, a bunch of us tread the beaten path, seeing a few sights and eating copious amounts of gelato. On one of the main bridges that overlooks the Grand Canal, some clever soul had scrawled "ASSFACE" onto an old brick building.

We all reconvened for a evening gondola ride, most of us bearing bottles of wine, myself included. It is my belief that there are some things in life that one must do, and drinking wine on a gondola in Venice is certainly one of them. As romantic as the city is, it was kind of a bummer to be drinking the wine without the company of a lovely woman, but after the bottle was finished, I wasn't too worried about it. The windows of crumbling buildings stared out at us as we floated by, vacant and abandoned, as if imploring us to remember what they looked like in better days. Our gondolier was dressed in the classic striped shirt, but the magic was a little spoilt by his being on a cell phone for the entire time. Venice is eroding, in all senses of the word.

Afterwards, a group of about 5 of us found a affordable restaurant that wasn't too crowded and had a proper Italian dinner while the evening settled around us, taking our time, and enjoying more wine. Kirk had mentioned something during dinner about wanting to buy a suit of armor, and on our way back from dinner we passed by a shop that appeared to sell things of that ilk, so I tried with all the big-brother persuasiveness I could muster to get him to at least buy a sweet medieval helmet, even though it was over 350 dollars. I assured him that he would get plenty of use out of it in college, but his stubbornness (read: cheap) won out in the end. MJ the tourguide had assured us that the boat back to shore would not wait for late people, so we made our way back to the meeting point with plenty of time, although we were slowed down considerably by people hawking fake designer purses. They're everywhere, with their shitty merchandise clogging an already crowded walkway, and although I knew it was the wine, I was severely tempted to kick a couple faux-gucci handbags into the sea.

Looking back, I wouldn't say that Venice lives up to the hype. This isn't to say it's a crappy city, or that I didn't like it, because I did, but I guess I just bought into the overly romanticized reputation it has a little too much. Maybe I'm just hard to please.