Headed home from Italy

We are on the plane from Milano.Linate to London Heathrow now. We'll be landing in 30 minutes or so, going through London's tight security, then to our next flight, bound for Seattle. This morning started with an early wake up and quick packing job, followed by arguably the worst breakfast, possibly the second worst food overall behind the super expensive lunch we had at the cafe in St. Marks square in Venice, that we have had in Italy, period (or "dot" as Giovanni would say).

Hotels in Italy "include" breakfast which is continental style, with various fruits, cereal choices, yogurt, toast, pastries, eggs, etc. Our Milan hotel, Hotel de la Ville, which is a very high-end establishment seems to favor being expensive while providing lackluster food. The fruit was clearly not fresh, tasted of preservatives, and there was some sort of salami sausage which was barely edible. It took 30 minutes to get someone to bring coffee as well. Overall, not satisfied and still a bit hungry. Our first hotel, Capo La Gala in Vico Equense had the best breakfast of this trip.

Once we got to Milano.Linate airport we recovered a bit in the BA Lounge while we waited for our flight. Self serve bars are cool. ;-). Lunch on the plane wasn't too bad, a chicken breast on risotto. With some crackers, jello, and blue cheese. Not being a blue cheese fan, the crackers were a little bland, they were clearly designed for use with cheese for sure.

I'm very ready to be home and am not particularly excited for the 10 hour flight coming next. But overal British Airways is a nice airline to fly, even for coach passengers so it could be worse. Unfortunately, it looks like we are in a holding pattern for now as we wait to land at Heathrow.



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Venice in a day!

The morning of our one full day in Venice we woke up a little later than we had hoped and headed down to breakfast. Breakfast in the hotel turned out to be reminiscent of an American or British hotel breakfast. Even the jam was imported from Essex, England rather than being sourced locally (the complete opposite of Capo La Gala in southern Italy where the jam, butter, meat, etc was all local and fresh.) One thing I do really like about Palazzo Stern Hotel was that you can get an Espresso or Cappuccino anytime you want, in your room, the hotel bar, or the canal terrace, at no charge.



We had a tour pre-arranged for St. Marks Basilica and the main parts of Venice scheduled for 2pm so we decided to go out, camera and cash in hand, and get lost. Getting lost is both easy and necessary in Venice. If you only visit St. Marks square you miss all of the interesting parts of Venice, as well as the reasonably priced, good tasting food. Everyone told us the best food is in the Jewish Ghetto but we never made it there in our short time in the city. If you have the time/inclination, you should check it out.

As we wound our way through small walkways, over bridges, and along canals we ran across some really interesting shops
and caffe's. As we got closer to St. Marks, we started to see Gucci, Prada, and other stores you'd see at any high end mall. The same cheap little glass items slowly increased in price until finally we were in the square.

Everything in the square is oversized, like the hotels in Las Vegas, it's bigger in person than it looks in pictures. The Venetians built the structures in part to instill a sense of power so that others would not attempt an attack.



Okay, before I go on, I should tell you what we were told about Venice by other Italians. Essentially, Venetian shop keepers are not nice. There are so many tourists that a single shop can turn away hundreds of sales and still there will be more. Second, as you get closer to St. Marks, the food gets more expensive, and lower in quality, simultaneously. We were further advised to never eat at any place that has pictures of their food. Having already been warned, we experienced this whole picture of Venice in pretty short order and confirmed all of it to be true.

First we found a shop, right in the square, that had a couple items we liked. Specifically they had Murano glass Christmas ornaments. Since they were piled in baskets on the bottom shelf of a cabinet in a dark corner, it was hard to see them so we asked the woman running the shop if she could take the baskets out of the case. First she asked which size (by price) we wanted to look at since each basket held a specific size. But Devon wanted to see the glass patterns and colors, regardless of size/price so we asked to see all three baskets. The woman balked, and pressed us on which size/price again, but we just didn't know since we cared about the color patterns more than the €2 price difference. Finally, as she went to open the case she stopped short and said "this is a real problem for us you know, getting all of them out," hoping we'd give up I suppose, but we just stayed silent at that point and she got all 3 baskets out, which took approximately 5 seconds. In the end we bought a couple things despite her attitude and we just shrugged it off since we knew to expect it.

Right after leaving that shop, we decided to have a quick snack so we found a seat at a Caffe right on the square. The menu was small, the food was horrible (worse than the train food) and the prices were ridiculous. Water : €10, Cappuccino : €8 (where everywhere else we'd been barely charged €2 for cappuccino. Devon had a pizza, 4 very small slices that was actually pretty horrible, far worse than any frozen pizza at home. It was pretty sad actually. Anyway, we had to eat on the square at least once just to do it, so again, no biggy.

We still had a little more time before our pre-arranged tour so we walked up the canal to see the church that Vivaldi was involved with. For €3 each, we were given a laminated sheet with a description of each painting and were allowed inside to look around. Back outside we headed toward the meeting place for the tour, paid to use the toilet and we were ready to follow the group, wireless earpieces hanging on our necks.



Venice travel tip: don't carry a backpack. A messenger bag is better for two reasons. 1.) the busses require you to remove backpacks and carry them by hand and 2.) The Palace and Basilica don't allow backpacks inside. There is a little place nearby where you can check a bag for one hour but if you carry a messenger bag, you avoid the hassle.


The tour was 2 hours and talked about how Venice was formed, history of the city, current issues, etc and I felt better about Venice as a whole after. What I realized is that even though Venice is in Italy, it is not really an Italian city. It's actually more Byzantine and European. True Venetians even use their own Venetian language.


After the tour we walked around and spent more money on gifts, went back to the hotel to change, then headed back to Rialto area to find a quick bite to eat before we had to be at Chieso de Vidal for a live Vivaldi concert put on by Interpreti Veneziani that we bought tickets to earlier. The cafe we finally chose had good food, and overall the service was good, despite a gruff "we'll get to you when we get to you" greeting from one of the waiters. Paying out check was a hassle because just as we were trying to leave a big wind came through the area, knocking over tables, destroying dishes, and taking down a few umbrellas. The entire wait staff was embroiled in getting everything they could put away and brought inside as fast as possible while all of the patrons looked on from the inside eating area.

The Vivaldi concert was great, and they returned three separate times after applause for encore performances. After that, we again headed back to the hotel to pack and sleep as we would be heading to Milan at 7:45am.


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Venice is not Italy

We are in Venice!

On the recommendations of our tour guide in Cortona, Tripadvisor, and a further affirmation from our Hotel, we made dinner reservations for 8pm at Le Maschere restaurant, which is part of Hotel Splendid. Then we sat down on the terrace for a drink. Watching the canal with a spritz in hand does feel great!


After that we purchased a 36 hour "bus" pass at the Acadamia station nearby and hopped on the bus for Rialto. To clarify, the bus is not really a bus, it's a boat, but it is called a bus, operates much like a bus, with several different routes like a bus system, and makes many stops like a bus. But it is a boat, and the stops are actually floating docks along the canals. Digital signs at many of the docks tell you when the next bus arrives and the route it is on. Less busy docks just post the routes and timetables.


Venice is very busy with lots of tourists. There seem to be 2-3 cruise ships in port at any given time which adds 10 to 15 thousand people during the daytime to the already big crowds. Since this is the shoulder season, it wasn't horrible, but we were told later that the summer time has 4 times as many people and you cannot even see the ground as you walk. Thank goodness we are here now rather than in the high season. Venice is also very big, not as a city, but the buildings are more imposing. Especially in the S. Marco area where the Basilica and Palace are huge.

There are tons of street merchants but you will quickly notice that they are all selling exactly the same thing as each other. Worse, they are only feet apart from one another, very strange. Then there are the East Indian men walking around selling little toys in various Piazza's and Courts, every one of them selling the exact same toy. And finally the African (possibly Nigerian) men selling knock-off purses. Please don't take this as any sort of racial profiling, it was simply that clear cut in my observation. I don't really understand why it ended up that way. Buying or selling fake purses is illegal in Italy so be careful. Even the buyer can be fined €1000 by police.

Around 7:30 we made our way to our restaurant which started out somewhat embarrassing. We walked in through the marked door and found a desk with a computer where a woman was sitting. We assumed she was a hostess, and after staring at her for a bit, feeling a bit annoyed at being ignored, she looked up and asked if we were waiting to use the Internet station. After apologizing to her we walked into the restaurant where there was no host/hostess but we were instead seated by a waiter. Le Maschere was okay, but nowhere near worth the money in my opinion due in part to unimaginative food and service issues. Plus they processed our credit card in USD rather than Euro's without asking, adding a high currency conversion fee of their own that we could have avoided since our VISA card has a low conversion fee. (Nordstrom VISA charges only the minimum 1% that VISA requires, most other banks add an additional 1-3%, check with your bank)

You can read our full review of Le Maschere on Yelp.


After dinner we took the bus back to the stop by our hotel, headed up to our room, and crashed.

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Cortona to Venice

Today we got up early, but not as early as we had planned. The plan was to start walking down to the car at 7:30 but we really didn't get up until then, so we made it out closer to 8. We dragged our bags down the steep "Via" to our car, loaded up, and started down the hill, following signs to Firenze and the A1. After a really cool drive through curving country roads we got to the A1 and were cruising north toward Firenze at the usual 135kph.

The plan was to follow our printed map to the Europcar to return our rental, take a taxi to the train station, then hop on the high-speed train to Venice. All was well until we drove past where the exit was supposed to be, but never saw it. There was a lot of road construction in the area and it looks like they closed (permanently or temporarily, we aren't sure) the exit we were looking for. So we took the next major exit to Firenze, paid the €6 toll, and pulled over to find a new route. After consulting Google Maps, we decided to brave the side streets that went sort of through but mostly around the city core.

Wow, traffic in Florence is bad, and we didn't even get to the center of the city. The "navigator" missed a turn which sent us on a very wide loop into the same traffic we had already gone through, but in the end we made it to the Europcar office. Calling for a taxi was amazing, the Europcar guy just pushed a button on a little box, and it told him which taxi number (10) and how many minutes away (4) it was. So we walked out to the street and just about on time he was there (a fairly new Mercedes wagon).

We rode over to the Florence (S M N) train station where it turns out trains are vastly simpler to get on than it may appear.


The station was very busy, with an outer ticketing section and an inner waiting area with platforms for each rail. Several large electronic signs show arriving and departing trains and associated information. What was strange is that no one ever checked our tickets (we've had them since we left home.) Further, there was absolutely zero security to go through with your bags. You can literally walk off the street, straight onto a train, with no checkpoints of any kind. Even once we were on the train, still no one checked our tickets.

Another thing, the departure/arrival signs are somewhat misleading if the trains are off schedule. For example, our train was scheduled to depart at 11:25am and at 11:26, the departures sign still showed departure time as 11:25 with no delay. However, the arrivals sign showed the incoming train arrival as 11:35, clearly later than planned, however still the delay field was blank. It gets a little worrisome when your train was supposed to depart 10 minutes ago, you still haven't seen a platform number, and no delay has been noted.



There is no organized boarding/departure process for the train either. While people are disembarking from their coach, all of the passengers waiting to board are crowding the door and slowing down everything. Meanwhile, two guys are grabbing bags to help people get aboard quicker, but after you get on board they put their hand out waiting for a tip and stare at you. This is, in fact, the first time I've ever seen anyone even so much as indicate that they would like a tip in Italy.

The seats on the train are very comfortable, better than the plane by a good margin. It's smooth and quiet and fast. Food on the train, however, is pretty expensive and not all that great. We had first class tickets and were seated in Coach 1, which we have forever renamed as American Class, since the entire coach was filled with American tourists. The couple behind us was from Austin, Texas and were on their honeymoon. Others were older, closer to retirement age, many of which had taken a transatlantic "repositioning" cruise and were winding their way through Europe before flying home.



2 hours later we arrived in Venice and found our Pre-arranged private water taxi, and off to our Hotel, the Pallazo Stern.





After checking in around 2:30pm and unloading our stuff in our room, we took a nap. We'll go out in the evening before dinner and check out the sights.

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Tuscan Wine Country

I'm very upset! Something went wrong with my Garmin file for this tour and now I don't have a map...


Friday was wine country day, although it didn't involve as much wine as I would have liked. But, given my current pregnant state, that's probably okay. Plus, I'm actually glad to feel like we have something new to look forward to on our next trip: a dedicated wine tour. Our tour yesterday was more a general tour of the wine country area.


We started off the morning at Altesino winery in Montalcino, Tuscany. We took a tour of the winery, and I finally started to understand a few of the concepts I realize I was supposed to have learned in my college wine class. Apparently, Italian wine was crap until about the 70s, when the government stepped in and started regulating it. Now, it's heavily regulated, more or less so depending on what kind of designation you want your wine to have. In general, certain designations denote better wine than others.

The highest designation is DOCG: Denominazione di Origine Controllata e Garantita. This is wine is generally a specific variety (or it can be a specific blend of varieties) of grape, with strict growing rules (for example, no irrigation allowed, even if it makes for very bad crops one year), and it's tested by the government to ensure all the rules have been followed.

Then there's DOC, which is the same but it's not Garantita, which is to say it's not all tested by the government, but the same rules apply.

Then there are IGT wines, which can be just about anything, as long as all the grapes come from the same region.

There are also certain rules to call a wine Classico or Riserva.

At Altesino, after the tour, we got to taste one of each kind of these wines that the winery produces. I must have bad taste, because I thought the cheapest wine, the IGT wine, was the best.

From the winery, we visited the towns of Montalcino, Piensa, and Montepulciano. These are all fabulous little medieval towns in Tuscan wine country. Actually the square in Montepulciano is where they filmed the Italian portions of New Moon, so I got this photo for Adi in the same arches the bad guys were found to be lurking in the movie.

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Location:Montalcino, Italy

Italy Travel Tips - Ensuring an Excellent Meal

Italian food.. that is, food in Italy, is generally exceptional. I still can't think of an Italian restaurant at home that compares to the quality of even a basic cafe here in Tuscany. That said, there are a few rules you should follow when dining in Italy. Before I go through the rules, I think I should give a little background.



Most restaurants in Italy are family owned, small, and unique. Big chain restaurants are few and far between. Italian restaurant owners think of their restaurants like their own home kitchens. The goal of a restaurateur/chef is to create memorable food, and that's all. Ambiance and service are secondary if not tertiary to the food quality when it comes to overall experience.



Now, think about how you might treat a friend or family member at their home who has offered to cook dinner for you. Would you berate their food? The service? Would you ask for everything to be cooked in just the way you like it or would you allow your host to cook it in the way they think is good? This is how Italy works -- the chef is your host, and the restaurant their home, which they are sharing with you. If you act accordingly you will do fine.

Okay, the rules....

1.) First, request your courses in the correct order. Vini, Antipasti, Primi, Secondi. Insalata (salad) comes after the main course and is optional. Asking for your Insalata out of order is a surefire way to receiving bad service.

2.) Don't ask for any modifications to the dish you are ordering. The chef has spent time and energy thinking about how to best prepare the dish and any modifications you ask for mess that up. Asking for modifications is the surest way to receiving inferior food.
An example of this occurred next to us at dinner the other night. We had received our bread, wine, and water as desired, while the group from Atlanta, Georgia next to us were waiting for theirs. The women ordered steak, rare, as well as salad to come before the steak. Not only did the waiter "forget" their bread and water, it's clear they received an inferior cut of meat as well. There is only one way to order a meal, the chefs way! Remember this!



3.) Never complain about the food. In the same way that you would not complain to your friend that he/she overcooked the meat, do not tell the chef his/her food needs fixing. Complaining about your food is the next surest way to more inferior food.

4.) Never complain about the service. Italians view service differently from Americans. In the US, we treat quality of service, and quality of the food, as separate things. In Italy, the quality of the food is directly related to service. A chef believes that he/she has provided you with exceptional service if the food was excellently prepared with fresh ingredients. You will also get service, at a pace that works for your restauranteur and his wait staff, but it may not be brisk, and it may not be extremely cordial. An Italian restaurant has succeeded when it has provided good, fresh, well-prepared food. Period!

5.) Service is interesting in Italy. As I mentioned above, the primary definition of good service is good food. The wait staff is available, and you'll get you want you need/want, but they are not falling over you like some would in the US. When it comes to paying the bill, Americans will think about the service they received and decided whether to tip 10%, 15%, or 20%, depending on the level of attentiveness they experienced. The general rule of thumb for tipping in Italy is.. don't. Italians themselves never tip.. And I'm serious. Everyone is paid to do a job, and they do it, and no tip is required nor expected. Tipping by Americans is expected in a way, since we have a habit of it, but no one will feel bad if you don't tip them. As Giovanni put it, no one in Italy pays their bills with tips. 10% is a very large tip!

Okay, to sum up, order what sounds good on the menu, trust the chef, and you will have a great culinary experience in Italy. I hate anchovies, and tripe sounds strange and gross, however both were SO good in the hands of our talented chef at Ristorante Ambrosia in Cortona.

Another thing, reservations are very important in Italy. Normal dinner time starts around 8:30pm and dinner usually lasts 2-3 hours. Also, many restaurants only turn their tables once a night. Ie: if they have 8 tables, they will only serve 8 parties all night. Be sure to make reservations early in the day or the day before or you may not find an open table come dinner time.



Always order the dessert (Dolci) since it is usually fantastic.

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Free Day In Cortona No. 2

Today I did what I normally would never do on a vacation with things to do and places to see: sleep in until 11. (Actually, normally, I wouldn't even have been able to sleep in that late in the midst of exciting adventures.). But, I'm still quite sick, so I think the sleep was much needed.

My goal for today is to shop, buy a few nice things we can remember our trip by. And not the cheap tourist stuff - I have no use for a keychain or a cheap wine opener that will break sooner rather than later.

So, I've discovered that you have to walk off the beaten path a bit to find the nice stuff I'm looking for. But this morning on my way to coffee, I may have found it down a long, narrow alley. A gem of an art shop off the main drag. I'm excited to do some shopping there this afternoon.

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Now we've finally found reliable Internet at the Irish pub in the big square. Unfortunately, we couldn't sit outside because there are at least 120 8-year-olds swarming the gelati shop next door. While this is a great time of year to travel Italy due to good weather with lower tourism, this is also apparently the time that kids take trips with their schools, and you'll run into giant, unruly groups of kids everywhere. But, once the kids leave the immediate vicinity, you almost have the area to yourself again, so it's worth it.

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After shopping this afternoon, we ended up back at the pub. We had eaten a very late lunch and weren't hungry enough for a full four-course dinner, but finding just a light dinner was impossible because the cafes were all closing. Alternatively, we tried to find a place that just served dessert, but that also proved to be impossible. Even the pub didn't have any dessert, so we had to get ice cream from next door and bring it back to the pub for dessert.

Tomorrow is our wine tour. I'm excited! (Don't worry, I'll be strictly moderating!)


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Location:Cortona, Italy