Dave & Meredith’s Travel Blog

With apologies to Bon Jovi.

This is how Meredith rolls. Or at least how she rolled in Venice.

(Yeah, it’s old news but I couldn’t resist .)

- Dave

We’re leaving for the airport in an hour to fly to Mongolia so I have just a little time to polish up some blog posts that have been sitting around in half-baked form and publish them before they become old news.

One of the things I always like to do after visiting a new destination is to compare it with my preconceived notions. (For example, one of the things that struck me when I went to East Africa was the prevalence of Coca-Cola, even in the most remote village.) So, in no particular order, here are a few items of that nature from Italy:

- The preserved colors in Pompeii and Herculaneum. I knew to expect complete cities with buildings, cooking pots, and mosaics but I had imagined it would all be gray like most ruins. There was plenty of that but the surprise was that the frescoes and mosaics still had rich and vibrant colors.

Above: a richly colored mosaic in Herculaneum

- The omnipresence of gelato. You saw gelato vendors more frequently than you see Dunkin’ Donuts in New England. There was a gelateria on every block and the restaurants on each block sold gelato too. People everywhere walked around with cones of it. So why was everyone there so thin? We saw tens of thousands of people there and I think only about 4 fat guys. And they weren’t the ones eating gelato. Hmmm, I may have gained back the weight I lost in South America…

- The exchange rate. We knew the dollar was terrible but it was truly painful. We saw a $35 hamburger one day (admittedly that was at a gourmet restaurant). If we got away with a lunch of pizza and drinks for less than $20, we were happy. Luckily the villas we stayed at have kitchens and we saved money by buying groceries.

- Before the trip, Meredith (the Art History minor) kept warning me that she was going to inundate me with churches and museums. Then one afternoon in Florence she said she was “art’ed out” and I wasn’t yet. A dubious victory, but a victory nonetheless.

- Breaking my little finger in Pompeii. The streets there are uneven rocks, they’re covered in dust, I wasn’t looking where I was going, and after I started falling, my instincts made me hold the camera in my right hand up in the air so I landed with all my weight on my left little finger instead of both hands. It felt like slow motion, watching it bend back and unable to stop. Of course, people were all around me including a group of school kids. I got right back up, dusted off, and walked away as if I meant to do that. When we were 20 yards away we took a look. It seemed ok but it hurt a lot. By the next day, it was swollen and red, black, and blue. The colors are gone now but it’s still a little swollen and hurts when it rains. We tried taking a picture of it but it didn’t do it justice. Yes, between this and Meredith’s accident, Italy is truly a dangerous place to have a vacation.

- We went to an Internet cafe to have them print a museum voucher for us. I gave them my USB key with the PDF on it. The girl at the desk put it in her machine, pointed to another file on the key and said it was a virus. That was pretty surprising since I’m pretty diligent about that stuff. I did some poking around my machine that night to see what was going on. It turns out the virus was copied onto my key 5 minutes after we entered the Internet cafe - about the time she put the key into her computer. Uh, yeah…if they discovered the virus on their machine later that day, I’ll bet they thought I gave it to them instead of the other way around.

- A few times we saw people popping other people’s zits right in public. A girl went to work on her boyfriend’s face right at a crowded bus stop where we were. Another time a girl was “helping” her friend in public view. Sorry, no picture…

- One of the more interesting day-to-day aspects was watching the mix of old and new. We expected this of course but some times it struck you in odd ways. There were Internet cafes with WiFi next to a 1500 year old church. And sometimes, instead of seeing everyday, modern people living around such amazing history, you saw it the other way around:

Above: Monks at an ATM in Rome

- The house wine was always at least good and was always cheaper than soda. There was that 8 Euro ($13) Diet Coke that one day…

- Dave

We were sitting in a small restaurant in Montepulciano and our waitress was fascinated by the electronic dictionary gadget we’ve been using for English/Italian translation (highly recommended by the way; worth the money). She asked me to translate the word “gelato” and the result that came up was “ice cream.” She pointed this out to her boss and he made a painful face of indignance. “Gelato,” he said, “is NOT ice cream!” Most people might think this is a case of someone being nitpicky because of cultural pride but he’s right. If you mix cream with sugar, thrown in some flavoring, then put that directly in an ice cream freezer, you’ll make ice cream. But if, before freezing, you also add egg yolk and then cook it on the stove as if you’re making a custard then, well, the food-science term for it is not ice cream but frozen custard. The egg yolks act as an emulsifier and the cooking breaks down the sugar crystals and thickens the mixture. (In addition, if you’re lactose-intolerant, the cooking breaks down the lactose so while you may not be able to eat ice cream, you can probably eat gelato. This is probably a blessing and a curse in some ways.)

We’ve eaten more than our fair share of gelato here. We didn’t really expect it but it’s part of the Italian experience. And as they say, “When in Rome, eat gelato as the Romans do.” Something like that. There seems to be a gelateria on every block and it’s hard to walk down the street without seeing a couple of people with a cone in their hand. In addition, when guide books describe a town, they typically mention the gelateria that they believe sells the best gelato. It must be an important topic: they don’t mention the best ravioli in town or the best pizza. Although we didn’t discuss and plan on this beforehand, we quickly hit an average of two cones of gelato per day so that we could compare our impressions with the guidebooks to see if we agreed. If you picked up on the word “average” then, yes, you’re right to infer that we’ve had a few 3-gelato days. There were one or two days when we had eaten too much over the course of the day so we decided to just have gelato for dinner and call it a night. Lately this has tapered off though. One reason is the realization that the pants are getting tight. The other is that the area considered to have the best gelato is Florence and we haven’t been there for a couple of weeks.

The flavors here are excellent. There are always the typical chocolates and vanillas but there are others such as pistachio (Mer’s favorite flavor), hazelnut, coffee, caramel, etc. The good gelaterias would make their own and typically had one or two uncommon flavors such as honey or caramel/pine-nut. There were always a lot of fruit flavors too although usually these were sorbetto and not gelato. Still very high quality. The usuals were lemon and strawberry but the best were ones like passion fruit, mango, and green apple.

Above: a cone of chocolate and pistachio gelato (the custom is to get two flavors in your cone)

We formed our own opinions as we went and, for posterity and for those who search on the Web while doing research for a future trip, here is our set of mini-reviews:

• Rome: We spent an evening and half a day seeking out the gelateria named il Gelato di San Crispino. Many people claim it is the best in Rome and it was mentioned in Eat, Pray, Love, a very popular, recent book. We thought the quality was great but the owner’s quest for purity (all organic, etc. etc.) meant that they didn’t flavor things very strongly. So we were psyched for things like honey/ginger but it just wasn’t an overwhelming taste sensation. For our money, Gelateria della Scala in Trastevere was just as good quality with better flavors. Here we are enjoying our cones there:

  

• Sorrento: In Sorrento, we agreed with all the guide books that Gelateria Davide was best. Our friends in Bassano up north also agreed. Davide also had the largest flavor selection we saw anywhere on the trip. Beware: there is a Gelateria David (no “E”) near the train station and they are not the same!
• Florence: The Florence area is supposed to have the best gelato in Italy and it did not disappoint. But while almost everyone claims that Vivoli is the best, we found it slightly grainy and otherwise nothing special. We tracked down a relatively newer one named Grom that was supposed to give Vivoli a run for the money and it our favorite of the entire trip. They’re tough to find (a very small street near Piazza Signore) but it’s worth the effort. Lots of gelaterias have creamy gelato with good flavor but Grom won because their flavors were a little more intense and, most importantly, not too sweet. The chocolate tasted like good dark chocolate and the coffee was slightly bitter. The caramel had a very slight scorched taste (in a good way). We went to Grom more than once. Ok, more than twice.
• Montepulciano: It doesn’t look like much from the outside (see someone else’s linked photo here) but Il Capriccio also gets points for being “non troppo dolce” - not too sweet.
• Positano: The town is pretty small and there weren’t a lot of choices but we found Buca di Bacco near the beach pretty good.
• San Gimignano: After Grom in Florence, Gelateria di Piazza in San Gimignano was next best. It was outstanding (and they make sure you know it by posting awards all over their shop). The line out the door almost all day is a testament to the gelato. Here was the view as we mulled over what flavors to try:

  

• Siena: This was tough. We found a place near the Campo di Fiori that had incredible presentation (name forgotten but something like Brevidi). Most gelaterias keep their gelato in mounds with a topping on them to look abundant but this place was mountainous (see picture immediately below). The quality wasn’t there though. We mentioned this to the people behind the counter at a deli where we had lunch and they felt the best was Antica Cremeria which is a 5 minute walk outside the old city. We tried it and it was pretty good but the jury is still out. No winner here yet.

  
  Above: Meredith chooses from the mountains of gelato.
  

• Corniglia: I stopped in this town during my hike in Cinque Terre. It’s a one-gelateria town so by definition, Gelateria Artiginale on Via Fieschi was the best. To be fair though, I had the local honey flavor which was great and the cinnamon was the best I had in Italy.
• Bellagio: We only tried Gelateria Lollipop on the waterfront but it was very creamy and was the first place we found with the caramel/pine nut flavor. Recommended.
• Bassano del Grappa: Our friends took us to Gelateria Il Tucano and it was very good. We tried the semifreddo (like a whipped cream texture) which was great.
• Bologna: Bologna has many choices but GelateriaGianni on the square with the two leaning towers was superb. Apparently, all the students hanging around outside all day agree. There were lots of flavors we saw nowhere else.
• Venice: We heard several different claims for which gelateria was best so, on the day I ran around the city without Meredith, I sampled three of them (I suffer so that our blog readers will benefit). There was one in Campo Santi Giovanni e Paolo that I can’t remember the name of but whatever: the “famous” gelato was completely forgettable. My next stop was Gelatone in Canareggio and for me was tied for the best in Venice. Their sorbetto was amazing too: I tried strawberry and green apple. I also tried Gelateria Nico which many claim is the best but I was pretty underwhelmed by that too. It wasn’t bad but certainly not amazing. Meredith and I both tried the one our guidebook and our gondolier preferred named La Boutique del Gelato. It was very good and the value was great since we bought small cones which looked like large cones. But a few doors down is another named Riva Reno which we felt was better. In fact, it was our favorite in Venice. Try the mango and passion fruit sorbettos there too. Excellent.

  
  Above: Meredith loves her some serious gelato.

- Dave

I’ve just posted three more galleries of photographs from our trip to Italy. It feels good to finally be caught up since we left Venice one week ago. So without further ado, the gallery from the Cinque Terre is here, the gallery from Lake Como, Ravenna, and Bologna is here, and the gallery from Venice is here. And of course, the Photo Galleries page has been updated with the same links. Any feedback is welcome. Enjoy!

- Dave

I think that “The Dolomites” sounds like it could have been the title for a bad Hanna-Barbera cartoon from the 1970s.  The Dolomites are a band of crime-fighting heroes.  There’s a strong man, a hot woman, a not-so-ambiguously gay teenage boy, and some mascotty-type animal that speaks gibberish, but all the Dolomites can understand what he is saying.  Especially at the end of the episode when he has the punch line to another crime well fought, and The Dolomites stand around and laugh at the mascotty-type animal while the bad guy sulks in a corner.

Anyway.  The Dolomites are actually beautiful mountains in northern Italy in an area that used to be part of Austria.  It’s very different here than in the rest of Italy - the architecture and people are more Teutonic, and most of the people who live here speak German.  We stopped eating pasta and pizza and started eating knödel and strudel. 

My friend Petra who lives in Munich drove down here to spend a few days relaxing with us.  We based ourselves in a town called Meran or Merano (all the towns have two names - one’s in German and one’s in Italian).

One of the most consistent things we read in our guidebooks about the Dolomites is how sunny it is for most of the year.  I’m not sure who we were supposed to speak with to order up some sun, but it rained pretty much the whole time we were there.  Therefore, we don’t have too many pictures, unfortunately.  But it was beautiful when we caught a few views of mountains through the clouds, trust us.

- Meredith

The doctor in Merano took my plaster cast off for good!  It’s been replaced by an air cast that I only wear during the day with a sneaker.  I’ll need to wear it for four weeks.  But, I’m quite happy hobbling around, and I’ve already ditched my crutches for most walking situations.

BTW, my left calf is noticeably smaller than my right calf after only 2 and a half weeks!  Don’t you think that’s amazing?  Too bad I didn’t have my stomach in a cast all this time. 

I’m going to see my doctor in Boston next week when I’m home to talk about next steps.  We’ll see what she says about whether I’ll be ready to go riding horses and camping in Mongolia in a week and a half.

Thanks for all your comments and emails with well wishes!  I’m feeling better and better every day.

- Meredith

Here is the view from our apartment in Merano:

- Meredith

Venice has been praised and put down by so many people.  I think it’s the kind of place you have to experience yourself and make up your own mind.

The Cons

It’s touristy, expensive, and it’s hard to find a good meal at a remotely reasonable price.

The Pros

It’s beautiful, over-the-top, and fun to explore on foot or boat.  If you accept that you’re going to spend a lot of money here and submit to a little bit of cheesiness, it’s quite a romantic setting.

Venice doesn’t feel like other places in Italy.  As cities go, I personally preferred Rome over Venice, but I’d certainly like to come back to Venice and see more (hopefully on foot next time!).  Our guidebooks say that Venice’s biggest attraction is the city itself.  I agree with that.  As a city built on water, it’s so different than any other place I’ve been, that it’s a little bit exotic.  It’s cool that our hotel is right on the water, and I can hear gondoliers passing by while I’m in the room.  But it’s not totally exotic, because there are too many tourists, and too many shops and restaurants that feed on the tourist drug.

Venice must have been very exotic through the 18th century or so, but I suspect that as the city’s power declined, tourism grew, water levels rose, and property became more and more expensive to maintain, visitors today experience a less authentic Venice than in the past.  Still, it’s quite beautiful.  Here are some pics of the city:

 St. Mark’s Basilica

 Rush Hour on the Grand Canal

 Rush Hour on a Smaller Canal 

 Rush Hour on the Rialto Bridge

 The Rialto Bridge at Dusk

Palazzos and Gondolas lining the Grand Canal 

 Gondolas Jousting

Yesterday, we visited the islands of Murano (of glass fame) and Burano (of lace and colorful house fame).  This was one of my favorite days on this part of the trip.  It felt a little more relaxed, a little less touristy, a little less over the top, and a little more authentic.  When you come here, don’t miss these islands.  Here are some pics from the islands:

 A Glassworker on Murano Heating a Vase in a Furnace

 Canal in Burano

 A Few of Burano’s Colorful Houses

 Reflection of Burano Houses in the Canal

Speaking of canals, about 1 in 10 gondolas that pass by our hotel are carrying tourists that want their gondolier to sing “O Sole Mio” because it’s the only Italian song they know.  Unfortunately, “O Sole Mio” is a song from Naples, not Venice.  I’m sure the gondoliers are used to it (and well paid, and should be because they are seriously working it out there), but when you come here, don’t ask your gondolier to sing “O Sole Mio.”  I think you’d be doing a favor to yourself, as well as to the girl who is stuck in the hotel room all day putting her foot up and listening to gondolas go by.  Not that I don’t like the song “O Sole Mio.”  It’s just more appropriate that you ask an accordionist to play it when you’re in Sorrento or Naples, that’s all.  We took a gondola ride on our last morning in Venice (I know you’re supposed to ride in the evening but we sort of ran out of time).  Here’s a pic our gondolier took of us:

And here’s a pic Dave took of us in a mirror the gondoliers use to see what other boats may be coming around the corner:

- Meredith

Let’s have a little quiz. Where are we in this picture?

Oh, wait. You can’t tell. Because there are no clues in the picture. It could have been taken anywhere which means it’s not a great vacation photo.

I find it very tough to get someone else to take a picture of us on a trip that I think is good. But there we were one day in a great photo spot. While we were enjoying the views, a group of photographers traveling together came along loaded down with gear and they started clicking away. One guy we struck up a conversation with seemed pretty diligent and was very much invested in his hobby. His camera body alone costs $8000. He had all the high-end lenses, tripod, etc. Here is a guy, I thought, who can take a great photo of us. So I asked him and he willingly obliged. He handed back my camera and moved on to wherever the next stop was for him.

After he was gone, I looked at it on the little screen on the back of my camera. I was half surprised and half amused. Meredith couldn’t believe it. Sure, you want a people picture to emphasize the people but the background should at least indicate where you are. At a minimum, zoom out and put us off to one side. Also, he chopped of Meredith’s head with barely any neck showing. It’s not like this guy didn’t care and thus rushed it. He seemed to linger a bit to get the shot “right.” I wonder what the rest of the pictures that he did for himself look like.

For the record, in this picture, we were in the town of Siena in Tuscany, on top of the Foccionale (sp?), a wall of a never-completed addition to the Duomo. It offers the best views of Siena outside of climbing the bell tower. But you’ll have to trust me on that one.

- Dave

First, let me start off by saying that I’m not looking for pity by writing this post.  If you’ve heard enough about the ankle incident, you may not want to read further.  Although, it’s not really about the ankle, so much as it is about the experience of having limited mobility.  This is a blog after all, so I think it’s a good opportunity to write about my observations over the last couple of weeks (by the way, sorry if there are run-on sentences in this post.  I’m writing this during the “Big Day Off”, which for me means staying in the room with the computer, a book, and a bottle of wine, and for Dave means total freedom to go explore on his own, unencumbered.  Anyway, the wine sometimes makes for bad grammar, though I promise to proof read it while sober, before posting).

I think it’s easy to take mobility for granted, and I’ve had some interesting experiences while being on crutches and in a wheelchair.  I don’t know what it’s like to be permanently impaired, because I know that at some point in the near future I’ll have the ability to walk around again.  But I’ve had a small taste of what it must be like for someone who is bound to a wheelchair.  I think these folks must have a lot more patience, humor, strength of character, and strength of mind than I do.  Also more patience.  I know I said that already, but it’s clearly key.

So, here are my thoughts and experiences, categorized:

1. There’s No Dignity In This

• When we got back to Riomaggiore at 3 am after being in the La Spezia hospital for 7 hours the night I hurt myself, we had a problem getting into town.  Literally, they close a gate and if you don’t have the key (or in our case, don’t know where to use the key), you’re out of luck to get into town.  Dave stopped the car at the gate, tried for several minutes to figure out how to open it, came back to the car, put the hazards on, and told me he was going to try to find someone to open the gate.  While he was gone, a car came up behind us, and since we were blocking the gate, I got out of the car to try to get them to help.  Except, I couldn’t walk, and still didn’t have crutches yet.  So imagine pulling up to a gate at 3 am, and a car is blocking it.  A woman gets out of the car, hops up the hill toward you, saying something that remotely sounds like “help” in Italian, and then starts to tell some story in English about hospitals, and her boyfriend is trying to get help to open the gate, and can you help, and oh, by the way, she says she can’t move her car because it’s a stick, and can’t use her clutch foot, so in addition to opening the gate, could you also drive her car through the gate, etc.  When Dave came back with instructions for opening the gate, he found that the car had not only moved, but some strange guy was driving it.  Also, because I didn’t have the crutches yet, Dave gave me a piggyback ride down the hill to our apartment, which wasn’t as much fun as it sounds.  At least it was 3 am, so not too many people saw us.
• Thank goodness for bidets.  Being an American, I never learned *exactly* what they’re for and how they’re used.  I mean, I’m not an idiot, I know *generally* what the deal is.  But the faucet mechanism seems to be a little bit different for each of them, so questions remain.  Anyway, being in a cast that can’t get wet makes you get a little creative when it comes to getting clean.  It’s quite a lengthy chore to shower with a garbage bag and rubber bands while keeping your foot out of the shower propped on a little stool (and potentially dangerous, to boot!), so sometimes, it’s the bidet.  I’ve used it to wash my hair, wash my face, shave my good leg, shave under my arms, soak my good ankle in hot water, and soak my good ankle in cold water.  Of course, I didn’t jump in all at once.  At first, I used it for shaving, because that seemed pretty safe.  But after a while, you stop caring about these things, and all of a sudden, two weeks in, you’re washing your hair in a bidet.  Oh well.
• One day at lunch, I went to use the facilities.  It was pretty dirty in there, complete with urine-floor.  Crutches and urine-floor do not mix.  I slipped.  Fortunately, the bathroom was so tiny, it wasn’t possible for me to fall down.  I hit the wall with my shoulder.  But unfortunately, my bad foot hit the urine-floor for about 0.3 seconds.  Bad foot has a cast and a half of a sock.  That sock went right in the lavanderia pile, let me tell you.  After I used the bathroom, one of the workers at the lunch place went in there.  They came right out, and went in with some bleach and a mop.  I just *know* they thought I was the cause of the urine-floor, but I wasn’t.
• I’ve actually gotten pretty good with stairs.  I get a bit tired, but generally, I can manage them with crutches.  However, the stairs in the place we stayed in Venice were quite small (depth-wise, I couldn’t fit my whole foot).  I was okay going up the stairs on crutches, but coming down on crutches was impossible.  So, I crawled down on my butt, every day, twice a day.  I did mention there’s no dignity in this, right?
• Speaking of crawling, do you realize what must be done to get on and off a train?  How about a water taxi?
• It’s hard to be discreet about giving yourself an injection when you can’t wait to get to your hotel to do it because it’s too far, or you’re driving that day, or whatever.  What do people think I’m doing, heroin?  No, it’s anti-coagulant.  Mind your business.
• In Venice, we had a process for crossing bridges.  Dave wheeled me up close to the first stair, folded the leg rests of the wheel chair in, and then I got up on my crutches and crossed the bridge while Dave carried the wheelchair across.  At the bottom of the steps on the other side, Dave would unfold the wheelchair and make a beeping sound while I backed up to the wheelchair to sit in it (like the sound a truck makes when backing up).  Seriously, you guys, if I had any dignity to begin with, it’s all gone now.

2. Why Can’t I Be More Patient?

• I’ve had a couple of very low moments when I [nearly] lost it.  I’ll spare you the details, but suffice it to say that I apologize to our Garmin GPS, the City of Bologna and its lack of parking spaces near our hotel, our hotel in Bologna for not being near any parking spaces, the shipping companies, stores and restaurants I wanted to ship from/shop in/eat at, but that weren’t open when it was convenient for me to do so, and Dave, who for some reason, is still staying in the same room as I am.

3. People Can Be Cruel

• In Venice, Dave was wheeling me toward the entrance to the Doge’s Palace one morning before St. Mark’s Square got too crowded.  We passed two 20-something girls, one of whom looked at me, pointed at me and said loudly to her friend, “THAT WOULD SUCK!” as they went by.  Thanks.

4. People Can Be Clueless

• I’m not saying I’ve never been clueless.  But it’s interesting how many people don’t see me/look through me when I’m in the wheelchair or on crutches, and therefore bump into me or rush ahead of me impatiently, nearly knocking me over.  I wonder if people don’t want to think about having a handicap, and their minds are tuned to ignore people who do.
• I don’t know if people in other countries expect that those around them don’t speak and understand the same language as they do, and therefore it’s okay to say anything, but I actually became a curiosity on an English-language tour at one point in Venice.  We had just arrived and were on our way to rent a wheelchair.  Our hotel and the wheelchair place were fairly close to the hospital in Venice.  I’m not sure why the hospital area was on this tour, but the tour leader was talking about the hospital, and when she passed me, she said, “Ah, now, this poor woman is coming from the hospital, I’m sure of it, with her broken leg…” and the people on the tour all looked fake-sad for me as they gawked at me struggling down the street on my crutches.
• There’s lots of gawking in general.  I think most people don’t know they’re gawking, which is why I put this observation under the “clueless” category instead of the “cruel” category.

5. People Can Be Incredibly Kind

• Everyone we know in Italy has offered to help me, going so far as to call their doctor friends and ask them what I should do, who I should ask for as various hospitals, which names to drop, etc.  So nice, and definitely above and beyond what I would expect.
• At museums, churches, and on the vaporetti in Venice, I was treated so well.  People helped us over bumps and onto boats, took us around special ways to use elevators, gave us priority to enter or board over other folks, and generally made me feel comfortable and well cared-for.
• Baby-boomers are wicked nice.  Most of the people who struck up conversations with us while I was on crutches or in the wheelchair were baby-boomer Americans, Brits, Italians and Germans.  So nice for someone to talk directly *to* me instead of indiscreetly staring at me and talking *about* me to their friends.  I worry that good manners are becoming a lost art (not that I really have them - just ask my grandmas how many written thank-you notes I’ve sent in return for years of fabulous Christmas and Birthday gifts).
• I know that they’re just trying to get my business, but male Italian shopkeepers are so great.  Since I’ve been going around in a wheelchair, several of them have called me “Princess”, which I am in danger of getting used to. 

- Meredith