Venice Vun

17-09-2011

So myself and the lady friend are just back from a trip to the wonderfully magical city of Venice. A place that people really should get to visit at some stage in their life I reckon.

Now I ain't going to go into all the ins and outs of the trip, because it was five days that we packed a hell of a lot of things into. Just strolling through the thin streets and alleys, looking at the ancient buildings and staring at the intricate details of some of the masks would take up an entire rant.

Thankfully a few funny things happened on the trip, which will be chronicled here. Rather than all that culturally important stuff :)

I can't ask for a bill in Italian:

Both myself and the lady friend like to not go with the approach of the English nation and just assume that everyone speaks English. We will try, as much as we can, to at least attempt to speak the language of the place we visit. In Paris herself had good French. In Berlin I used my dreadful German skills. But neither of us speaks Italian. So I pocket phrase book was brought along. Even if we are just asking does the person speak English, we feel the attempt should be made. My first experience of "speaking" Italian was when we had just had lunch on our first day.

The lady friend had managed to order the entire meal and even point out that the food was a little cold and asked for it to be reheated. All from a phrase book. So I figured I would go ask for the bill. I looked up the right words, practised it once ore twice, went up to the little Italian lady that spoke no English and asked for the bill.

Satisfied by her reaction I returned to our table and said the bill was on the way. Out trundles the little old lady with two cups of lemon tea.

To this day I have no idea how I managed to order this as I neither said the words for 'lemon' nor 'tea'. But there you have it, you can't learn eveything from books it would seem.

I was mugged by a pigeon:

In Saint Mark's Square one of the "tourist" things to do is feed the flocks of birds that walk around like they own the place. A bunch of winged "Good Feathers". One day we decided to bring along a roll of bread from the hotel to feed the birds and snap some photos.

The lady friend feed the birds first and we got some great pictures. She then handed me the rest of the roll and got ready to take pictures. As she turned around a pigeon flew into my hand and head butted the roll out of it.

A hundred birds descended onto the spot where the roll landed while the pigeon in my hand looked at me and bobbed its head twice, almost as if to say "Fuggetabouit!"

American's are illiterate when it comes to pictures:

I've been to many a museum. I've been to many historical building. I'm also a bit trigger happy with a camera when I visit these spots. But I am used to going to a place that doesn't allow Flash photography, for fear that the bright lights will damage the artwork and historical objects.

This is never a big deal because with most cameras you can turn off the flash and still get some nice pictures based on the lights in the building at the time.

However, as I've seen in a few historical churches, they don't allow photos to be taken at all. Or even videos. This isn't so much a preservation thing as it is a respect thing. Respect the Holy building and what it represents by not making light of it and snapping pictures. Since not everyone in the world speaks the same language a simple sign as been created to tell you not to video or take photos. It is an image of a camera with a big red circle around it and a thick red line going through it.

Most of the churches we visited in Venice had this sign up, along with a request that you take off your hat upon entering. The amount of Americans that apparently can't read pictures is staggering. If I had of been bold enough I would have took a picture of the best example I had seen.

The basilica in Saint Mark's Square has a fabulous altar in it. There are three signs indicated no videos or photos to be taken, right in front of the central pedestal. An American walked up, stood in front of one of these signs, held up a massive telescopic lens and started to snap away. A security guard came up to him and said "No Foto".

The Yank looked taken aback.

"Well you should have a sign up saying that," he said.

Three signs, one of which he stood in front of. Short of clubbing the idiot over the head there was not a lot more that could be done to indicate that you don't take videos and photos.

The lady friend punched a nun:

Yep, you read that right. She bunched a nun. She has gone and earned herself a one-way ticket to hell.

To be 100% honest here she accidentally punched a nun. Although how you can turn around in the middle of the street with your fist ready to punch something, said something being a ninety year old nun going about her Holy Business, I dunno. But it was accidental.

Apparently.

Anyway those are the main funny things that happened on the trip. Now it's back to the grind stone.

Stupid working to pay for holidays abroad :D

Blue_jester




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