The Briar Patch

No food or drink is as tasty as airport food and drink on the departure side of the airport.... Unless it is departing towards home, it is slightly less tasty then. Ah, ready to go again! I guess this is kind of a travel blog, but not in the series I was doing. I am almost done with that one, and soon enough, I will have all new things to write about. Doing a very similar trip to the last. A weekish on a tour and then a weekish on our own. This might be the new norm for my life. Every two-ish years, do a big trip somewhere. Hoping I got at least 30 more years, so 15 more amazing places?? I have done more looking into things this time. Last trip, I knew I wanted to see Paris, Italy, and parts of Greece, so I didn't dig too much, just let it come. Spain and Portugal, which we are doing with a tour group I don't know much about. So yes, I did some googling, and it did get me excited. Spain looks pretty damn nice. We will see Barcelona, Madrid, Toledo, and Seville. Then some time i...

So the States are liberating Iran. The fact is, its not a bad thing. Not a lot of good ever comes from there. The regime of the last 40 some years is actually awful. Lets not kid ourselves about it though, the only reason this is happening is the Epstein files. Chump doesn't give a shit about freedom or helping these people. He wants the world to move on, what better way than trying to be a hero. Also that is going to lock a lot of votes in for his party. Him saying servicemen may die it happens in war is terrible. It does look like Lord Farquad in Shrek. Trumps have never served once, in fact they have dodged the draft. Don't see Barron running out to fight. Remember a couple years back when chump said Obama would create a war with Iran to improve his poll numbers... Ya good times. Or when he said he wouldn't create new wars.... Keep in mind this wasn't him being a good human. This has dragged on! I wrote that the first day the war started. Now its been dragging on and...

Another in a long series of travel blogs, you may want to read them first.... Or dive right in! The morning was the same as any, up early, shower, and go down for buffet breakfast. It is funny, I can picture the room for breakfast, but they all kind of roll into one. Same foods, mostly the same automated coffee machine, same seating, eating, and getting the hell out to the bus on time. Florence was the only one that seemed like a nice place for breakfast. When we got to Paris, I hated the Nescafé instant coffee in the rooms. By this time, I was having one with a single sugar in the rooms before breakfast. Either way we ate and left the Soviet prison looking hotel for the highway. We rolled into Verona late morning, pushing lunch. This was also a beautiful sunny day. I am not sure if the shopping district has a name, or if it was actually a shopping district or just downtown. Where we got off, there was an opening in the sidewalk that looked down. Under the current sidewalk, beneath a s...

Again, this is another entry in a long series; you may want to read them before you hop into Venice here. We are such tourists. We saw Hotel Canada and had to point it out to each other. When we were in Paris and saw the Canada pub, we had to comment on it. I don't know if every tourist is like that, but every Canadian on our walking tour noticed it. Not sure why I just remembered that, but anyways... I think I left off that we had just gotten free time and went back to the square for lunch.  So we sat down at the first place we saw with a free table in the square. I do not remember what the issue was, and it was nothing bad, but we left before we even ordered drinks. We walked across the square to another place, and unfortunately, a pigeon flew by and shit on the guy from GP's shirt. Earlier, he had offered to clear the square of these birds, and maybe it was their revenge. Seriously, though, he handled it pretty well. I could tell he was extremely pissed off, but he went to t...

 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...