I woke up earlier than usual this morning and headed to the train station. My plan was to go to another favorite city of Italy, the incredibly aquatic Venice. I had been here before on that bromantic vacation and certainly knew my around a lot better than I did before. I bought a ticket, then saw the train was going to be 15 minutes late (surprise, surprise.) So, I did what any Italian would do; I went to a cafe and had an espresso. I got to the train and two hours later, I was walking out of Santa Lucia station.
Believe it or not, Venice is incredibly walkable, provided one has a map. There are a lot of dead-end streets that converge on canals, but there is usually a bridge or walkway nearby. With this in mind, I headed over to the Church of the Frari. I put on my headphones and let Mr. Steves be my guide.
Formally known as the Santa Gloriosa dei Frari, this wonderful Venetian gothic church, built-in brick, was begun in 1231 and finally consecrated in 1492. It was the project of many Doges, the rough equivalent of a duke, that was given a lifetime appointment to run the affairs of this city-state. To take one step back, the idea of a unified country was very alien in Europe at this point. There were many different areas and city-states that would later become unified countries, with Italy being unified under King Victor Emanuelle II in 1871. Before that, each area had their own political hierarchies and customs. While Florence was a Republic for a time, in that there were elected officials that represented their people’s interests, Venice was ruled by Doges.
The church, although smaller than what I was expecting, was magnificent. Not only was it the final resting place of many a Doge, but it was also for the famed artist Titian, a fellow Venitian. It also featured a lot of his work, with the magnum opus The Assumption of the Virgin at the head altar. On the way there, there were many elaborate tombs of those that were buried there lining the walls; massive amounts of marble, intricate details, and even a pyramid. It was a sight to behold.
After the church, I headed to the picturesque Rialto bridge. Honestly, the railing looking over the water is polished smooth by all the people leaning against it to take a selfie, and I was no different. I then continued my journey to Saint Mark’s Square, ready for a new tour.
Unfortunately, silly me thought the tour was going to be of outside of St Mark’s Cathedral. I was wrong. I was not really interested in paying the exorbitant entry fee, so I found a little bar/restaurant on the square. I went to sit down at one and the waiter pointed to a sign saying that there was a 6€ music fee, which in the minute I was there equated to a shitty cover of My Heart Will Go On (why was this song haunting me?) So, I got up and moved to another table at another restaurant and ordered myself a glass of Fernet.
As I was sitting there alone looking at the happenings of the square, a mother and son sat at a table behind me. They were American based on their accent and the son had a lot of questions that the mother answered with both care and patience. It was nice to eavesdrop a little.
After my drink, I headed to the water and watched the gondoliers try to attract tourists. It was hot and I was feeling a little drained, so I headed back to the train station and headed back to Florence. I had some dinner, did a little work, and watched Hannibal Rising, an interesting origin story of Hannibal Lecter. It was interesting because, as the story goes, his family were well-to-do Lithuanians from Vilnius before World War II and the horrors he was subjected to during the course of that war made him the monster he became.
The next day, I met an Aussie from Perth named Hannah and then headed to the Leonardo Da Vinci museum. As it was deep in the tourist season, the line was long. After waiting for 45 minutes, I was finally allowed to enter. It was a very interesting museum. A lot of it was virtual. After putting on a headset, I was whisked to the fantasy world of Renaissance Italy, where the sketches of Da Vinci’s notebooks were made real. I had the pilot seat of his flying machine, worked the rotors of his helicopter, and even drove his “tank” with cannons and “machine” guns. Although they were never constructed, it was an interesting synthesis of the beginning of the scientific revolution the bleeding edge of technology today.
I walked around the museum some more, but it was very crowded. Before leaving, I saw a virtual representation of Da Vinci’s famous The Baptism of Christ. Before I left New Orleans, I attended a lecture of the famous historian and biographer Walter Isaacson at my alma mater. He covered many brilliant luminaries from Benjamin Franklin to Albert Einstein and I became acquainted with his attention to detail with Steve Jobs. Professor Isaacson’s lecture was discussing his new book regarding Da Vinci. One of the details I remember was that he mentioned little Leonardo was fascinated by the swirling pools in a small creek behind his house when he was growing up. Apparently, he would sit there for hours, watching them, then eventually sketching them. He said it was this attention to the natural world that really compelled Da Vinci to become an inventor and abstract thinker. But as his skills and knowledge of the world ever increased, he always remembered those little pools. If one were to look closely at the feet of Jesus during his baptism, one can see those little swirling pools that were such an inspiration to him.
I left the museum and went back to the hostel. After lunch, I figured it would be science day, so I headed down to the Galileo Museum which was on the Arno. It was not what I was expecting. I thought the museum was going to be more about the man, the one that went against the commonly held view that the Sun went around the Earth and his proposed heresy for sharing that information. It didn’t. It was just more about the instruments he used. However, the museum took a more bizarre twist on the second level as it focused not only on chemistry but obstetrics for some reason. Although, there was an armory as well.
Since it was a long day of broadening my mind, the next logical course was to have a beer. I headed back to the hostel, made some dinner, whipped up a Tom Collins and headed to the roof. I met an interesting but strange young woman by the name of Claudia that was half Italian and half Albanian. From beneath her raven-colored, Uma Thurman from Pulp Fiction-esque bangs, she told me about her life. She was 23, a Scorpio, fancied herself a writer, hung out with mafiosos, had a friend that was raped by a father/son team for six years in Albania, admired serial killers, and was in the middle of having an affair with a married man that came to the hostel to see her. This all came out in the course of five minutes. My face did not betray my what-the-fuck internal monologue. I politely finished my drink, looked at the time, and excused myself.
The next day was an admin day as I had a lot of work to do for my various clients, now including my sister. After a full 8 hours, I headed up to the roof and did some drawing, which I am getting much better at. I saw Claudia, but she seemed disinterested, which was alright by me. I walked around the city some more and decided I was going to have some more adventures and was going to take the next day to plan them.
I got up, had brekie, and planned my tours for a few days hence. I then walked around the city some. I went to the central market, got a sausage flatbread, and took another truncated audio tour of Florence. I then hung by the pool the rest of the afternoon. When I tried to make dinner, there were no forks. So, I helped myself to one from the restaurant and got in trouble for it. So I had to go to the front desk and told them what was going on. They said that the lazy people here would rather just throw them out than wash them. They said I could use one from the restaurant as long as I cleaned it and returned it. I headed back up to the room where I ran into Claudia again, although she should have moved out by now.
As my next few days would be jam-packed, I relaxed at the pool listening to my book and reading that a perv billionaire got suicided. I got some food, then started preparing supplies for my trip to Cinque Terre.
I tried going to bed early, but again, the mental hospital in which I was currently a resident would not allow me. Two of my drunken roommates returned to the room and promptly passed out. Except they forgot to turn off their phones that were incessantly beeping. A few minutes later, there were police in full tactical gear in my room questioning the guy above me. Apparently, one of their friends got super drunk, stripped naked, and jumped into the Arno and he had not been seen since. Another drunk Englishman wandered into the room with some McDonalds and offered it to the guy sleeping above. Then they started explaining what was going on. I piped up, put some extra bass in my voice and told them that if they were going to keep talking to go do it outside. They all shut up. Except for their phones.
6:30 am rolled around and I got dressed, got my stuff, and headed for the jump point, which was back in front of the train station. There were a lot of people, which was OK. We took a charter bus to La Spezia where I thankfully napped, then we took a train to Marinola.
It was here, where I made use of the train restroom. They had not moved from the station. As I was relieving myself, I saw a notice in Italian, then in little words at the bottom, that said do not use the toilet at station. I looked down and saw that it was just a hole in the floor. I could not believe that this was a European country.
After climbing a lot of stairs, we got the next train at Corneliga. It was here that some of the group decided to go get lunch when I decided to break off and go get some of my own. I found a nice little place that had wifi, sat down, had a coke and some pizza while going through my phone. It was here my heart sank.
Before my voyage, I had been seeing a girl for about two years. She was a medical resident which meant that a lot of her time was spoken for. We made it work. Nights were often in, watching travel food shows (a lot of the places I subsequently had visited.) She was trying to get a fellowship, an extra year or more in a specialty, which required her to beef up her resume. This included a lot of travel. This was not really a problem for me. I followed her to Houston, to Alexandria, LA, even up to New York City. When she could, she was my date to holiday parties and family functions, including my cousin’s wedding, which I officiated. It was less than a week after that, out of the blue, she put the things I had at her apartment into a trash bag and ended our relationship. Looking back on it, there were a lot of red flags; the biggest being that I was never introduced to her family when they came to town on multiple occasions. But my foolish pride in being the object of affection to a doctor blinded me to them. Growing up, I knew doctors, especially surgeons, were a different breed of person. I ended up being a sacrifice on the altar of her career. I guess her callousness angered the Gods; she did not get the fellowship. She had fled to California to the first place that offered her a job facing down her almost million dollars of debt. Still, after all this, I was not prepared to see her with someone new. Social media can be quite the curse.
The next part of my tour was a hike through the narrow path connecting all the five cities of Cinque Terre together. I was angry, but even though I was hiking out my feelings, I still marveled at my surroundings. I stopped at a little bar halfway and peered through a portico out to a seemly endless blue sea. I sipped my beer, quickly used their restroom, and continued hiking. I had actually beaten one of the guides and she commented she had never seen anyone hike the trail this quickly. I reconfirmed with her where we were meeting and continued on, downhill. I got to this beautiful beach and as if the hike excised those bad feelings, I felt at peace.
I then met my group and we took a boat back to our starting point after I got some fried anchovies, a delicacy of this part of Italy. I took my seat on the boat and passed each of the five cities until we got back to the train station. We got our bus and headed back to Florence.
The next day, I hung at the pool. It was great and very much needed. I finished my book on the Medicis and even re-read yet another infamous book from a Florentine native son The Prince by Nicolo Machiavelli. I went back up to my room where I had a new roommate, a very cute but taken young lady from England. Her family is Scottish, so I asked her about some of the most picturesque places of Scotland for a project. Since she just got there, I told her all about things to see and do in Florence. I told her I’ll be going to the Pizzale Michaelangelo later if she’d like to join. It was then the rest of my loud roommates from Australia would show up. Thank god they were leaving the next day. I said my goodbyes to my new friend and headed out.
I walked around Florentine night making my nightly lap around the city. The Duomo, the Piazza di la Signoria, the Uffizi, the Arno, crossing the Ponte Vecchio, the Piti Palace, then to the Piazza di Michaelangelo. I then headed back to my room, took a shower, and settled in for a restful night.
That lasted about 10 minutes. While nestled in my cocoon, some voices woke me up. On the other side of the room divider, I heard two people in hushed tones speaking, a man and a woman. I could tell by the voice it was one of the Australians and probably a British woman. Before I really knew what was going on, the speaking turned to lip-smacking, then some moaning and rhythmic thumping, ending about 30 seconds later in an apology.
It was everything I could do not to laugh, but I held it together, gave the dude a mental high five as they both got up and left the room. Having been a silent partner in a tryst was nothing new for me having gone to college with loud neighbors and thin walls. So, I settled back into bed.
What occurred next was so bizarre, I still could not believe it actually happened. Before you judge me, think about what you would have done in this situation. I woke up to the sound of more lip-smacking. Only this time it was two guys with two girls in the bunk bed next to me. Then the third and the fourth Aussie returned with “dates.” The guy next to me whispered something to his paramour and she said in a rather thick accent, “OK.” There was then rustling, thumping, and moaning. Then the others took it as their cue. Suddenly, I am an inadvertent, nonparticipant in an eight-person orgy. My thankfully unattached bunkmate came back and one of the girls got self-conscience. So, the guy next to me jumped out of bed, stiff dick silhouetted against my sheet divider, and set up his own. What happened next could only be described as the sound of someone running through a zoo’s primate house in flip-flops. They were going so hard, plaster is starting to come off the dividing wall from where the bed repeatedly slammed against it. He finished, and she went to clean herself while the other boys and girls were going at it. She returned and he put his jaw to work while she is writhing in pleasure. They then went back to coitus, but the guy above me told them they are being too loud, so the show got taken to the toilet. They continued to fuck loudly for about 10 more minutes. I had enough. I yelled out from behind my sheet wall, “Either invite me to join or go the fuck to sleep.” Then my English friend walked into the room and saw what was going on. “You were shagging ON MY BED?” she yelled. She had taken the one twin bed in the corner that had since been commandeered. She looked at the girls and hissed they should all be ashamed of themselves. The sentiment crossed the language barrier. As if a spell were broken, everyone got dressed and the girls left, dejected. We all then settled in for the night.
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