nightswimming: trip day 14

Trip Day 14: last day in Venice.

On our last day in Venice, Violet checked off her 4th European city on her running list. We had a good run, even if we went in a bit of a circle because I steered the wrong direction. My bad.

Remember I mentioned that the place we stayed felt a little haunted. There was a weird statue of a lady in the stairwell that could have been from a Scooby Doo episode. She was definitely a ghost. The street sign on our building read "Calle De La Morte" and I didn't need a degree in Italian to translate that. Since we got to sleep in a bit on this last day and Kennedy and Alayna took their time getting to our building, I had time to look some things up...

I thought it was funny that the photo used on the website was the same photo I just had Violet take of me. So yeah, lots of people were executed behind our building. Not unsettling at all.

It was time for coffee at what had become our regular spot. The barrista already knew my daily order and I was thrilled to have a sticky note put up on their cooler.

It was Sunday morning and after my coffee, I noticed that the door on Vivaldi's church was open. I didn't want to be disrespectful, so I peeked in and saw it was empty. Again, open doors, right? And even if there were humans who didn't want me to come in, everyone is welcome in God's house, right?

I'm so glad I went in. It was amazingly beautiful.

I left some money in an offering box just to make sure I wasn't crossing anyone, but come on, why do I have to go to a boring church? Where are the skulls and crossbones in American churches? Get it together Christians!

I am a dog person. I do not like a cat. You likely know this. I was relieved to discover this true sign of the cat cult. If there was ever any doubt about all cats being evil, this should put that to rest.

Remember that we, as a group, refused to plan anything. Our "plans" for the day included going to the island of Murano to see all the glass. Murano is the glass blowing island and it's filled with factories and furnaces. So much so, that the tiny corner of sand and pebbles near the lighthouse, the "beach", is covered in tiny pieces of multicolored glass. Without a plan, we hopped a boat and arrived in Murano in just a few minutes.

I was here two years ago and I was disappointed to see that they had expanded the vaporetto station and covered the tiny corner of "beach" near the lighthouse. Now there was no beach for picking up sea glass. We decided to look among the big rocks at the base of the lighthouse and we did still find some glass. It was a lot tougher than before, but we still found enough to make people happy.

We walked through a good number of shops and noticed yet another restaurant selling french fry pizzas. These baffled us. This is not an American thing and I really don't think it's an Italian thing. I had the feeling someone just said, "hey, Americans love french fries, let's just throw some on a pizza". I needed to know if it was good. It was not good. You don't need to try it.

Then we were off to do more shopping. We had reached the part of the trip where we only had to pack one more time and we didn't have to worry about not checking bags on the trip home. We also had some Euros we needed to burn before going back home. All four of us made sure we had souvenirs for all our people at home.

The glass is so pretty. I want one of these crazy glass chandeliers. None would fit in my suitcase. We decided we wanted to see a glass blowing demonstration so I asked a guy who was good to see. He told me to go to the end of the street and see Gino.

We went to the end of the street and low and behold, we saw Gino.

We knew it was Gino because his giant photos were up in the shop. We paid to see a demonstration and sort of listened in while the group ahead of us got a professional demonstration buy a dude who was not Gino.

But when it was our turn, Gino followed us into the furnace room. He narrated the whole thing and even participated. It was cool to see the "master" work. Also, going back to the whole Americans ruin everything idea, there were no safety glasses or gloves. Dude was wearing shorts. There was zero protection for the audience. The guy in the blue shirt even intentionally exploded a giant glass ball just a couple of feet from my head. It was great.

This guy made a glass horse in about 2 minutes. It was crazy.

I was well-practiced in asking for selfies. I caught Gino and asked nicely. He was happy to step in.

We were pretty much done except for a couple more photos. Then the ladies bought some mystery bags on the way to the boat.

When we arrived back in Venice, we decided to try to find the world's most famous book store. It felt like that anyway. There were tons of people there. It was packed inside with books and bodies and there were lines waiting to take photos in Insta-famous places.

We waited in a long line to take a photo and then realized it was just a photo of you sitting in a gondola. We did that already in a real gondola. We decided to just step in front of the door and get our photos there. We can tell you some funny stories about the people in front of us taking a very long time to do a lot of strange poses while a bunch of impatient people watched.

Meanwhile, Alayna, who loves rubber ducks, found a rubber duck store and we headed there next. And then...

We turned a corner and saw a Swatch store! I LOVE Swatches. I have a collection. I think I mentioned that Violet and I both got Swatches from the Biennale gift shop. Still we had to go in and look at the bigger selection. It paid off when Alayna found a Queen Elizabeth Swatch. She loved it and found out it had been discontinued after the Queen died AND this was the last one in Venice. She bought it fast.

We walked in search of a place to sit down for a while. We passed the bigger church on the water that claims to be "Vivaldi's church", even though we knew the little church around the corner was his actual first church. This one was having a Vivaldi concert of the Four Seasons during our trip and we tried to get tickets but couldn't. Well, the door was open, so what do you think I did? The rehearsal sounded pretty good. Then I left before I was ushered out. We sat in a park near our apartments before dinner and people watched.

The people watching was good.

The Tomato Gang all bought new watches on the trip. OK, I wasn't actually wearing mine, but still. And, by the end of our trip, Kennedy had purchased her own Swatch online.

The last night in town featured a big group dinner at a restaurant just outside our apartments. Our table had to get calmaris (yes, it's plural on every single sign and menu).