DAY 1 5/31/07- And so it begins…after crunching in a few errands, and eating one last boloco burrito, I was off to logan airport to Venice! It was a longish flight, but fortunately there was no one sitting next to me on my connection to Amsterdam, and I was able to watch 2 movies from a wide selection on my own personal screen. I watched 'Romeo and Juliet' the 1994 version, which I felt obligated to see because I was going to Italy, the setting of the original, and Freedom Writers.
After a short wait in Amsterdam, where I was nearly driven crazy by first the price of a small bottle of water, €2.50! Second, because my departure gate was near the end of a moving walkway that kept on saying "Mind your step" whenever someone approached the end. I then connected to Venice, and waited several hours in the Marco Polo airport for Nisha to arrive. At first, I played a game of deciphering between who was a tourist versus a native Italian. This was mainly based on attire, sense of fashion, and tightness of the outfit. In the meantime, some random questions popped into my head. Why is it that a lot of older women adopt the short haircut style? Why don't public restrooms in airports have doors? Why does KLM always give me a gross egg sandwich?
Before I time to deeply think about these questions, Nisha arrived, and that's when our Italian adventure really began. Our Challenge? To arrive at CVN before they closed for the evening so that we could get the keys to the flat and had somewhere to stay. We caught a bus to the island of Venezia, and arrived at Piazzale Roma. From there we tried to catch a taxi to San Samuele, the location of CVN, but that was actually impossible since Venice is made up of numerous canals, making it impassible for anything other than feet and boats. So we bought tickets for the Vaporetto, the form of public transportation here, a large ferry boat that services the city. We hopped on the #1 vaporetto which is like the #1 bus to Harvard – slow, crowded, and stops frequently. Soon we arrived at the San Angelo stop, which the closest we could get to San Samuele, but unfortunately we were on the wrong side of the boat to easily get off. I made my way over to the exit, but as I turned my head to see if Nisha was still behind me, a crowd of people started pushing their way off. I became part of a roadblock since I was preventing people from getting onto the boat, but at the same time I couldn't get past the people pushing towards me. Really, it was a bunch of elderly Italian woman yelling 'Descender?!?' at me, and me being too freaked out to understand. They were asking, or perhaps yelling, for me to get off. The vaporetto man kindly assisted us in lifting our bags onto the dock after many confused looks, and we were still on our way to CVN.
We had no idea what time Italians stop working, but it was past 5, and we were worried that would wouldn't be able to find a place to sleep. After lugging our bags over bridges, we found the double green doors of the office, which is next to some really strange store. We made it in time though, and conveniently, the real estate office was right next door. After settling into our flat which was on the first floor in a neighborhood no more than 3 minutes away and complete with a bedroom, couch, bathroom, and kitchen, we went out to explore the grand city of Venice. We had a dinner of plain pizza in San Samuele square before passing out for about 13 hours. When we wake up it was 1:45pm the next day, which I originally thought was a mistake, but it wasn't!
Venice at last!
