The Briar Patch

 We docked and took a short walk to a gondola station. Today, we saw a bit of the island, but in general, it was just about the water taxi and gondolas, so this was a quick walk. Then we broke down our groups further, 4 per gondola. We went with our new friends from GP. This one had one nicer bench and one bench, probably for a family with kids. After a skill-testing game of paper, rock, scissors, they got the good bench. Honestly, probably better. I am not a big guy, but he is, and his sitting on the tiny seat would have been interesting. So yes, like the Bugs Bunny cartoons, there are gondolas with a singer; ours did not, and actually, I am okay with that. This is actually an art, passed down through generations. That kind of thing still exists. I guess "drivers" often are the children of drivers. The business is handed down, and an actual gondola is expensive to buy and maintain. I found it interesting that something like handing the business still happened. No corporate t...

 So this is another in a long line of blogs about our trip to Europe last year. It might be worth reading the others before diving into this! We had just arrived in the heart of Florence for our day there.  Our very first stop was a gold store. The owner gave us a brief history, but nothing that stuck with me, and then they let us browse the gold. There was a divide, for sure. Some of us had a quick look and knew we weren't buying. Others looked at less expensive pieces, and some looked at the top shit. The one thing that did catch my eyes was stretchy gold. You want to make a mint bring this to Canada, I only want 15% as a finders fee. It is genuine gold, but it pulls apart and comes back together tightly. Think of a woman's scrunchy, but made of gold and in bracelet form. I can see it taking off, so there you have it. I only want 15%, and if you have the funds, you can be a millionaire. In all seriousness, though, it was a lovely shop, and they do want you to buy something. ...

I can still taste the bitter defeat from yesterday. When a very under preforming USA defeat Canada in the gold medal mens hockey game. No sports is never about who deserves it, in this case its about who gets the most goals and the states did but they did not deserve it!! 4 nations USA was scary, they played well. Olympics except for maybe 3 minutes in the first period they did not look like a pro team. They looked like beer leaguers against an NHL squad. However in a single game Hellebuyck should have won tournament MVP. 41 saves and .976 save %. Any other day and Canada wins that 4 or  5-1 for sure. Stopping breakaways by McDavid and Cellebrini. That save on Devon Toews is iconic and his stick stopping that will go down as an all time great hockey pic. Also Mackinnon forgetting his is one of the worlds elite players and shooting on an open net like I do is going to haunt him for a long time!! Not going to blame them but the reffing was awful. I guess counting too many men is hard...

For all you right-wing retards..... It has never been the transexuals. They have existed across the entire planet for as long as humans have recorded history, without being violent or until recently thought of as mentally ill. It also isn't the guns, for you left-wing twats. Put any gun ever on a table, and see if it hurts anyone. Likely, it is just sitting there, doing nothing without a human hand behind it. Yes, this brief entry is all about the recent mass shooting in Tumbler Ridge, B.C., and the "trans" that did it. It shocked the fuck out of me when I saw Tumbler Ridge was trending, and it horrified me when I saw why. First, I am not getting too much into gun control. I have beaten that horse to death. Without a finger on the trigger, a gun is doing nothing. You could give every house in the world a gun, and nothing would happen without a human behind it. My only semi snarky comment is all the left-wing people usually screaming for gun control after a tragedy seem mu...

The Castello is at the top of a hill, and in every direction you look, there are lush green hills; it is incredible. The Castello itself does look like an old stone castle. Not a massive fortress a king might live in, but an old greyish brick building a lord might sit in overlooking his countryside. It looks like it has ramparts running around it, but I am not sure, as we never got up that high. When you come in through the iron gate, you step into a large and open courtyard. A few trees, different doors headed off in different directions, but not much else. We were greeted by the host for the evening, who told us the tale of the Pazzi, also pointing out that this courtyard is home to the only remaining legitimate Pazzi coat of arms. Then he started the tour of the Castello. One of the first rooms is the "conspiracy room," where all the planning of the failed plot was done. See my last blog for details of what I mean. The failed Pazzi plot. It is a large, drafty, old wooden r...

 So this is another entry in a long series of travel blogs. We went to Paris, then Italy and Greece. All these entries are about that. You may wanna read the others first but up to you. This one is a bit shorter, I didnt really have a good place to break things off that made sense. So I am going to wrap up Rome and get us to our hotel in Florence.                                                                    Where Caesar met his end I don't know how bus drivers manage to wedge themselves in, down by Vatican City, but they do. The lane ways are very narrow; you can tell they were made hundreds of years ago, or at least laid out before tour buses were invented. Here, we need to make things large enough for oversized trucks to maneuver; however, it does not seem that was a concern wh...