The Briar Patch

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...

 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. ...