Italy, part one: Venice

12/12/07 to Blog by Alex

Yo, we went to Italy. That's where they speak Italian! Here's what we learned how to say: Vorreimo una caraffa de vino rosso. That means "get us drunk."

There are more pictures available on Flickr.

Italians apparently don't approve of sex, because they kept giving us two twin beds that we'd have to push together and I'd end up in the crack in the middle halfway through the night and then the next day when we got back to the room the maids would have separated them again. Stop judging me, Italian maids!

Here's what we did when we weren't offending Italian maids:

Days 1 - 3: VENICE
Venice is dying. Many of its buildings aren't even habitable anymore, because they've sunk so deep their whole first floors are underwater, and the rest of the buildings are too expensive for normal people. The result is that there are way more tourists in Venice than Venetians, and sometimes you feel a little like (as Kirs pointed out) you're in Disney Land for pretentious people. That can get depressing, honestly. But it's still a magnificent city, and I found myself missing it for the rest of the trip.

• I knew Venice had canals and stuff because I saw the Italian Job, but I don't think I really got it until I got there. There's CANALS. There are little alley canals! They're so awesome! And no cars! No cars is great.

• The canals are a deeply unnatural green. They do not smell, though. I was warned they would smell. Much of Italy smells like pee, but not the canals.

• We did not take a gondola ride because those are for bitches. They cost like €90, which is like $130, and for €1 you can ride the water taxi service down the same canal.

• St. Mark's Basilica is wildly ugly. It's an absolute abomination. I was blown away by how fuckin' ugly that church is. It's got like ten different colors of marble just thrown all over the place willy-nilly. It looks like it was designed by a 6-year-old with ADD and too many legos from different sets. There may even have been some space legos in there.

• The square outside of St. Mark's is awesome though. I fed pigeons! They sit all over you on your head and stuff but they're really polite and gentle, not at all like Boston pigeons, which are assholes.

• Sometimes the square floods, and it did for us on Day Two. That's pretty eerie. It's the biggest square in Venice, a major tourist attraction, full of hundreds of years of history, and under two feet of seawater. Way to build a city in the ocean, dudes. But honestly, it was pretty cool wading around barefoot. I probably got diseases but whatever, I've waded in the Piazza de San Marco and you haven't.

• You know why I probably got diseases? Because there were dead pigeons floating in the water. There are dead pigeons everywhere in Venice. Each one has a neat hole poked in its chest from a seagull who ate its guts. It's as gross as it sounds.

Here is a list:
TOP FIVE MOST ANNOYING TOURISTS
5) Italians! Yes, even in their own country. They are annoying because Italians are really good at being in your way.

4) Germans! Germans are fat and they wear sandals.

3) Brits! Like Americans, but even more pleased with themselves. In Venice we had the misfortune of being seated next to a table full of drunk Brits who, as a birthday surprise for someone, had secretly arranged for a fucking accordion player to show up and serenade them with fucking "That's Amore." We left, of course. I wish we'd had the presence of mind to film it, but we were so horrified that we didn't realize it was funny until we were two blocks away.

2) Americans! You know what kills me? When an American goes to a restaurant and says "Hi, table for two." Motherfucker, you couldn't even learn how to say "hi" in Italian? Make some effort! It's incredibly insulting to just assume people are going to speak English.

1) Asians! Asian tourists suck ass. Here's why: they stand in front of things - pretty things, that I might want to look at! - for ten minutes filming them. They don't even look at them! They just film them. Forever. So any time you're in a museum and you want to see a Bodicelli or something, you can't because there are thirty Asian assholes in front of it filming it. I hate people who live through their viewfinders, and I hate people who don't think about others. I have real live Asian friends and I was like hey Asian friends, what's up with Asian tourists sucking ass? and they were like yeah, we know, sorry, it's totally embarrassing.

I think I'm gonna chop this up into parts so it's not so annoyingly long to read. Next: Siena and Florence! And in part three, we'll visit Rome and its creepy-ass pope.

Comments (3)

a) Your mom has an ass pope
b) Oh yeah, that's what I need: fashion advice from a woman who knits her own skirts.

Rome has an ass pope?

That "badass" picture of you on flickr would be more badass if you weren't holding a manpurse.

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