Annie and I are international travel companions from way back: an August trip to Paris and London in 2006 and a spring break trip last April to Brussels, Paris and Amsterdam with her mom Louise and her brother Daniel. Annie's got a well-used passport, an adventurous attitude, a love of museums and a yen for sampling the finest ice cream in every city.
The trip was actually Annie's idea. Last year when we were in Amsterdam she looked at me and whispered conspiratorially, "For our next trip, Uncle Harold, I'd like to go to Italy. At Bertucci's they have a map of Italy on the wall, and it looks very interesting." Was there anywhere in particular she'd like to go? "Venice," she said. "Now that I've seen the canals in Amsterdam, I'd like to compare them to the canals in Venice!"
The more I thought about it, the better the idea seemed. Although I've traveled quite a bit in Europe since graduating college (numerous trips to Paris, multiple visits to London, one-timers to the south of France, Vienna, Budapest, Prague and most recently Madrid) I haven't been to Italy since 1976, when it was part of a 10-week trip including study in Greece and visits to Switzerland, Amsterdam and London. I was in Venice for only a few rainy hours back then. My friend and travel companion Jefferson and I had taken the train up from Florence hoping to stay for a day or so, but when we found out there wasn't a hotel room to be had, we returned to the train station and hopped an overnight train to Switzerland. I don't remember anything of that visit, and it may even be that we didn't even leave the Venice train station.
Well, the plans have been made and the homework done. We've got our plane tickets, we've rented a small one-bedroom apartment from Carlo, the Venetian businessman with a Brooklyn-born wife, I've read up on Venetian history, architecture and art history, ripped through the first two of Donna Leon's Venetian mystery novels and John Berendt's "City of Falling Angels." I've Netflick'd "Death in Venice," "The Wings of the Dove." We have tickets to see "The Barber of Seville" at the Fenice opera house, introductions to Mimi Toddhunter at her palazzo on the Grand Canal and invitations to the community Seder in the Ghetto. I've even tried to learn a little Italian by downloading the podcasts from LearnItalianPod.com. Now it's on to the packing lists.
I've also decided to make this my maiden voyage into the sea of blogging. Stay tuned!
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