July 4- Arrivederci Italia

If anyone ever asks us if they have a Fourth of July in Italy or Austria, we can say for sure that they do. It comes between the 3rd and the 5th. There’s no fireworks, though.

Like yesterday, the girls liked watching the birds as we ate breakfast. We sat out on the terrace of and little birds would come and look for food that had been dropped. A few actually flew inside to the where the buffet was served, but the staff seemed used to them. They had heads that looked like chickadees but they were bigger. Finches maybe?

Garda is in a resort area where there are numerous amusement parks, including “Gardaland” and “Movieland.” The advertisements along the road (along with the sunshine, palm trees, greenery and mountains) gave this stretch of the road a very California feel. Anna was the first to notice that. The last two days have been pretty grueling without too many rewards for the kids, so we thought we would do something just for them. We decided to go to a waterpark called “Cavour,” which was only a short drive.

After checking out from the hotel, we made our way through the Italian countryside to the waterpark, and it truly was a trip through rural Italy. We drove through little towns where old men in Capri pants were talking on the street corners. At one point the road was so winding and narrow between old buildings, there was a traffic signal that controlled which direction the one-way traffic could go. We drove by many vineyards, and could see the fat green grapes on some of the closest vines. There were many other fields, of various things we couldn’t identify, and the waterpark itself was right in the middle of these farms. In fact, the parking lot was actually in a field of strange little fruit trees that were being irrigated by a dripping hose. We think the fruits were kiwis. They were so close that the car bumped a few on the branches when we left.

Of course, Anna and Emma had a great time in the waterpark itself. They started out in a large wading pool. They had a good time there, though it was oddly lined with small stones instead of sand, which made it a little rough on their feet. They then went to the waterslide areas. There was a very large waterslide that Anna immediately went down, and continued to go down several times. There were smaller slides that Emma tried too, especially when her big sister helped at the top and Mom was ready at the bottom. Emma said she almost drowned, but really, she just didn’t like the big splash at the end. Both girls enjoyed looking for the little lizards that were running on some of the stones and sidewalks.

Julie was in her swimsuit and was in with the girls. Dad took videos and watched the Italian women go by. Julie noted that ALL of the women were wearing bikinis, even though many of them shouldn’t be. Scott said at least some of them should.

We knew that we had a long drive ahead of us, because we were leaving Italy today and going to Salzburg, Austria. We weren’t sure how long it would take, but we knew it was going to be at least 4-5 hours. We let the girls play at the waterpark for about three hours, so that they could enjoy themselves (and get good and tired).

Driving away from the park, we went over what appeared to be the ruins of a fortified bridge. We had come that way, but on the way in, we hadn’t noticed the picturesque ruins of a castle that sat just above the bridge. This was near Váleggio. It was so beautiful that there was a wedding party getting pictures taken there.

We stopped at McDonalds for lunch. It may seem like cheating to eat at an American place like that, but since we’re traveling with children, we’re starting to appreciate the predictability and reliability of the chain. Even so, there are differences, so it’s still a cultural experience, right?

Europeans love traffic circles and seem to have them at every single intersection here. The one we had to use after lunch was the worst one that we have yet encountered. Like a flat cloverleaf, there seemed to be loops upon loops upon loops, and it’s impossible to see how anyone would think this was a logical traffic flow. We got turned around and headed the wrong way on the expressway, but realized it in time.

Once headed north, the Alps came back into view. We watched the architecture change back to the Alpine style, and saw the German language creep back into the signs. We even saw several castles on the mountainsides. We crossed into Austria at the Brenner Pass (Passo del Brennero in Italian), drove through Innsbruck, and ate a cafeteria called Rosenberger in Vomp (We think it’s pronounced “Whomp.”) It seems to be a regional chain specializing in Tirolean food (and gifts).

We passed through the corner of Germany to get to Salzburg, so if you’re keeping score, that’s four countries in four days so far. The plan is to slow down over the next two weeks, and while we’ll still be doing a lot of site seeing, our drives will be much shorter for a while. Our hotel outside of Salzburg is a gorgeous Alpine style building with an Austrian restaurant on the ground floor. We’ll be here for a couple of nights.

July 3rd- Venice

Anna was very happy that we found time this morning to use the hotel pool. It was very deep, so Emma didn’t try to go in. It was also being shared with some old Germans in speedos. There’s a busload of German speakers in the hotel here. It seems that Garda is a resort town for the Germans (and probably Austrians and Swiss) who come here for a southern vacation. The signs in the hotel are in Italian, German and English.

We had to get some stuff after breakfast at the hotel this morning. We found a gas station with an ATM next door, and followed a sign to a “Supermarket.” It soon became clear that there is at least one person in Italy who has no idea what a “Supermarket” is. The sign took us down a very narrow one-way residential street and into someone’s driveway. They may have been selling fruit or something out of their garage, but we weren’t going to find a Tops or a Wegmans there.

So we headed on to Venice, about an hour and a half drive from here. We could have driven onto the island of Venice and parked the car there, but Julie wanted to park on the mainland and ride the train in. We’re not sure why. We expect that she was more interested in the challenges of riding Italian trains then the challenges of parking in the little Italian parking spaces. We saved a little money in parking, but used the savings to buy train tickets.

We rode across the causeway and lagoon to the station in Venice and waited in line for vaporetto tickets. The vaporetto is the bus-like boat that can take passengers up and down the Grand Canal. It really is bus-like, unfortunately, and while we appreciated the (relatively) inexpensive ride to the main attractions, the view was very much like looking out of bus windows. Still, it was made more interesting by the Rick Steves tour we had with us. We had downloaded the tour onto our mp3 players, and he has starts and stops in his narration that sync up with the stops that the vaporetto makes. It’s about a 45 minute ride, and he points out many of the interesting details in the buildings that line the canal. The architecture is so characteristic of this city, and it’s immediately recognizable as Venetian. We chugged under the Rialto Bridge, and got off the vaporetto at St. Mark’s Square. (Even though we planned for enough earphones and mp3 players, the girls weren’t that interested in listening to the tour. As a result, we didn’t use the other tours that he has for other parts of Venice today.)

The day was very hot and hazy. The stone tiles that pave St. Mark’s Square make the heat even worse. It was early afternoon already, and we wisely decided to get some food. “Sandwich Row” is a nickname Rick Steves uses for a nearby street because of its many little affordable (relatively) restaurants. We found it and ate while watching 1980s videos on the TV , in a shop that otherwise would have been very atmospheric. The Italians seem to love American music, judging from what we find on the radio, and their favorites seem to be from the 1980s. We were watching Wham, Tears for Fears, Michael Jackson and Boy George.

After lunch, the touring began. We went to the world famous St. Mark’s square. Our families would recognize this as the place that the Italy area of Epcot is based on. It was also used to design the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas. We can now say that we’ve seen the original and can be confident in all the criticisms we can make of the copies. Epcot, for example, is much smaller - naturally- but it also reverses a couple of the details. The Doge’s Palace is on the wrong side of the square and the bell tower isn’t in the right place. We had to keep Emma from chasing the pigeons, but we couldn’t stop the pigeons from chasing us. One flew right into Julie, and they almost seemed to be laughing as they flew over head.

The church of St. Mark’s is right on the square. We waited in line to go in, but when we got to the door the guard made Scott take the day bag we wearing carrying to the bag check. That wasn’t unexpected, but he couldn’t figure out where the bag check was. There were many other confused looking fathers who were lugging backpacks around the same area, and no one seemed to be successful. Scott decided to wait outside and let the girls see the inside. The façade of the church itself is pretty amazing with lots of gold leaf mosaics and statues. Julie says the inside of St. Mark’s is dark and grayish, and not as bright as the Duomo in Milan (which was pretty dark itself). There were also a lot of security guards around.

After that tour, we went into the Doge’s Palace together. Part of the very large building is used to display historical columns and capitals from the building’s restored exterior. Part of it was used for modern art exhibits that rotate. There is a large central court yard with marble statues. The main attraction is the “Doge’s Apartment” which also includes the important meeting rooms of the Venetian government. The rooms are designed to impress and awe the visitors that may have been called there. Many of the walls are decorated with massive paintings by Renaissance masters. There is no doubt that Scott would have loved more time to drink in the content of the paintings, as the were filled with the mix of allegory and metaphor and history and references that he finds fascinating. The little girls were happier to go through each room rather quickly. The room we liked best may have been the one with two gigantic globes in the middle and maps of the world that the Venetian’s knew on murals all around the room.

We also went over the famous “Bridge of Sighs” where the Venetian government sent its prisoners to life in dark dungeons. However, the outside of the Bridge of Sighs looked a bit odd today. That side of the Doge’s palace and the connecting prison was covered with scaffolding, and the scaffolding, in turn, was covered with a gigantic advertisement. The bridge appeared to be suspended in the middle of this ad, connecting one side of a billboard to the other. It may be better then seeing scaffolding, but it certainly looked out of place.

After one more time around St. Mark’s square, we decided to walk back to the train station on the far side of the island. Rick Steves always says that walking away from the main tourist sections of Venice is a great adventure. “Get as lost as you can,” he says. “Just keep telling yourself, I’m on an island and I can’t get off.” Unfortunately, that’s what Gilligan said too. We did have a hard time finding our way through the maze of back streets and squares. But it certainly was a different view of Venice. It was hot, and we really didn’t want to be lost. We wanted to be heading towards the train station.

Still, we got a chance to enjoy some gellatto. It has “3 times the sugar of American ice cream.” We may have never believed it before, but after watching Anna and Emma eat some there is no doubt in our minds that it is true. They ran, danced, jumped, skipped and giggled all the way back to the train station while Mom and Dad (especially) were starting to drag. We also got a chance to use the “Dov’è… “ trick again when a kind local woman saw us staring blankly at our map.

We got to the train, had a quick bite at McDonald’s, got our car and made our way back to Garda, an hour and a half away. We arrived back at the hotel about sundown. Emma was so hot that she said that she was going to splash water on her face when she got back to the hotel. Daddy said that there was a special little sink that was just her size for her to do that. Anna laughed hard at that because she already knew what the bidet was really for.

July 2- Milan

Scott was the first one up this morning, and he jumped out of bed with an “Oh My Gosh!” You see, he had his heart set on seeing the sunrise on the Matterhorn, and it was already light out. Mark Twain had written about he and his roommate’s misadventures while trying to see the sunrise on the Alps in his other travel book, A Tramp Abroad. First they accidentally slept all the way through the day and when the alpenhorns woke them, they actually watched a sunset for several minutes before they realized their mistake. We weren’t that bad, but the clock wasn’t set right. Scott and Julie went up to the terrace on the rooftop in their jammies (actually, the shorts and t-shirts they brought to sleep in) and went out in the cold hard stones in barefeet to see what the situation was. Even though the reds and oranges that are supposed to be there at sunrise were long gone, it was still pleasant to see that the clouds from last night were gone and the peak itself was brilliantly lit in the sunlight. Eventually, we brought Anna up to see it too.

We had breakfast at the hotel, and finally got our Swiss cheese. We went outside and ate our Toblerone chocolate in the square in front of the church, where the Matterhorn peak could be seen. It was still lit beautifully and the peaks and ridges of the surrounding valley were also catching light. We lugged our backpacks through town to the train station, and made the pleasant ride back to our car.

One plan for today was to take the car-train from Switzerland to Italy, but when we finally got to the station, it was going to be about a two-hour wait until the next train. Julie decided that she was up to driving the winding mountain road through the Simplon Pass. As it turns out, the drive was very pleasant. There were lots of scenic views as we drove, and interesting bridges and tunnels. Up near the top, we passed real Swiss cows that were standing so close to the side of the road, that there were two young cow herder girls (cow herdesses?) chasing them back from getting in front of the cars. Naturally, we stopped and took pictures, and Emma had her stuffed cow that she got yesterday to hold. (Watching us, you’d think we had never seen cows before.)

We crossed to Italy with almost no stop at all. The guys that we assumed were the border guards simply said “Buon giorno” and waved us on. In the backseat, the girls were learning to play the game of Auto Bingo that we brought with us.

We descended into northern Italy and followed the signs to Milano (the town that English speakers call Milan). Of course, just as we had figured out the Swiss way of labeling signs, we now had to deal with the Italian way. Worse, we discovered that we didn’t have a good map of the city of Milan. We drove around for a long time trying to find our way to the center of the town and the cathedral there. We used a trick of Rick Steves’s when we asked a passer-by “Dov’è Duomo?” (Doh-vay doo-oh-moe), and then watched her hands to see where they pointed as she gave the answer in Italian. Our progress was also slowed when Emma woke up in the back seat of the car with a bloody nose. She gets those sometimes, but we hadn’t planned for that and couldn’t find a napkin or anything to clean her nose with. Julie sacrificed a pair of her clean underwear for Emma to wipe up with, a fact that has caused the girl to giggle more than a few times today.

We finally parked, though it was farther from the Duomo than we would have liked, and walked quite a few blocks to the building we had come to see. Again, Mark Twain had directed us here. It was one of the sites that he truly admired. He called wrote, “What a wonder it is! So grand, so solemn, so vast! And yet so delicate, so airy, so graceful! …It was a vision! --a miracle! --an anthem sung in stone, a poem wrought in marble! However you look at the great cathedral it is noble, it is beautiful …They say the Cathedral of Milan is second only to St. Peter’s at Rome. I cannot understand how it can be second to anything made by human hands.”

The inside of the building was quite, quite large, but also surprisingly dark. Enormous dark stone pillars stretched to a very high roof. While there are stained glass windows, they don’t bring in nearly enough light to make the church a cheery place. The image that came to mind first was the image from the Lord of the Rings when the mines of Moria provide a similar view. We strolled through and around the cathedral, without trying the audio tours.

After seeing the inside of the building, Scott somehow convinced the others to pay the small fee to climb the steps to see the roof of the cathedral. That was certainly the best part of the building, though we were all hot and sweaty when we had finished climbing the stairs. From the roof, you get an up close look at the spires and statues that the building has in abundance. The girls laid on the large marble slabs of the first level of the roof and Scott continued up to the second level.

The sun was bright and the temperature was very warm. After our climb, we were all sweaty, tired and hungry. It was 3:30 and we were lucky no one was sick. We were very ready for the Burger King nearby. Then we walked the long way back to the car and tried to find our way out of Milan. That was harder than finding our way in, and the area that was originally so hard for us to find, now seemed to be something that we couldn’t get away from. We found our way out of the city to the south, instead of the east, like we were trying to do. We fought through traffic jams and accidents, through what must have been Milan’s rush hour traffic, and kept a shocked but watchful eye on the crazy motorcyclists that were darting between cars. Traffic laws seem optional for most Italian motorists, but completely irrelevant to motorcycles. It seems incredible that you don’t see more of them splattered around the pavement. How do they ever get insurance?

After too long of a drive, we finally got to the resort town of Garda. Though small, it was even a challenge to find our hotel here, and Anna was very disappointed that the pool was closed for the night. We checked in and went out for a late dinner at an outdoor table at a nearby restaurant. The girls split an order of spaghetti with meat sauce. Julie had a real Italian pizza with cheese and onions. Since Scott is too much of a chicken when it comes to the possibility of finding tomatoes in his food, he ordered spaghetti with garlic and oil. Everyone enjoyed their meal, and had fun watching Emma learn to twirl her noodles on to her fork instead of using her fingers. We all giggled when one slapped her in the eye. The breeze was cool and the night was beautiful. When we finally returned to the hotel, it was after ten.

All in all, the verdict is that we spent too much time in the car today. While there were certainly good spots, the traffic hurt our overall experience. That’s partly our fault for trying to cram so much in, but the traffic and signs of Milan didn’t help matters.