Swompdonkey

Where to begin? Where did I leave off, for that matter? The last couple of days have been hectic to say the least. I am currently sitting in an internet cafe in Nice, France. A couple of days ago, I was in Siena... but then, you already know that, don't you? The morning after our second night in Siena, Emily and I decided to move on. It wasn't that we hadn't enjoyed the city... as you may have gathered, I'm basically ready to move there... it was that we both had to adjust our schedules to accommodate Venice. In order to do that, we decided to catch a mid-day train to Florence. That turned out to be a crazy decision...

Before leaving, we decided to check out the Church where Saint Catherine of Siena took her vows. It isn't every day you see the mummified skull of a Saint, but there was Catherine, or rather, there was her head, in a little chapel inside the church. I still can't decide what to make of this bizarre holy relic, but it certainly had an impact of everyone there.

We walked out to the train station with our heavy packs... Emily, always the trooper, had a pack that looked bigger than her. Nevertheless, she soldiered on. We realized that our afternoon trip to Florence would be rushed, but we wanted to go to the Galleria dell'Academia to see Michaelangelo's David before bidding farewell to Firenze once and for all.

As it turned out, we managed to rush to the gallery, spend an hour there, and rush back... but I have to admit it was a bit stressful... we only managed to catch our train by a couple of minutes and we had to run like mad to do it. Still.... I have seen David. Massive, magnificent, beautiful, sublime... he was everything I imagined and he was definitely worth the headache. All other sculpture pales in comparison to this masterpiece.

Arriving in Venice that evening, we trudged wearily to our accomodations, but all fatigue disappeared when we went for a walk along the canals. Venice, long past its era of glory, is now delapidated, shabby, and even a bit vulgar. We even heard that barely half of the buildings there are occupied. Still, there is something magical about the place. We wandered the narrow alleys and along the waterways. Every corner was a postcard picture. I almost started to get used to it!

The next morning, we discovered why they call Venice the most expensive town in Italy. It was highway robbery at every cafe, usurious prices for every service, and plain pickpocketing at the souvenir stalls. For the first time since I arrived in Italy, I found myself genuinely annoyed at the temerity of the hawkers and chiselers. There was also an element of contempt about the place. The locals kinda made you feel like you were the scum of the earth. Somehow, we managed to not get fleeced too badly. By suppertime (where we met back up with David, yet again, and a nice Aussie couple who happened to be friends with a friend of Emily's from Melbourne... small world!) we decided that we would be out of Venice the next day, notwithstanding the fact that we hadnt gone for one of those Gondola rides!

So... yesterday was a travel day... a long tortuous trainride from Venice to Milan to Genoa and finally, here I am in Nice... but more on Nice later. I have to get to Barcelona now!

I have good memories of Venice... the Accademia Gallery and Saint Mark's square were particularly impressive, but sadly, the place will always just seem like a novelty and a giant tourist trap to me... a sad fate for the city that was once known as the Most Serene Republic and was considered a world power among the nation states of the earth