Bus By Boat

Clint and I took a little day trip to Murano island yesterday to see the famous glass factories. Immediately after disembarking from the vaporetto we were ushered into an old building (which looked like it might fall apart at any minute) to watch a "demonstration" of the glass blowing process. This consisted of watching three guys smoking cigarettes and casually twirling quasi-molten glass in varying states of completeness in very hot stoves. At some point we were encouraged to start clapping and thereafter we were ushered back out the way we came. I'm still slightly mystified by the whole event, but some of the glass pieces really were amazing.

On my last night in Venice I decided to ride the vaporetti on the canals at sunset/dusk, then have a nice dinner while Clint went out and had his own adventures exploring the island. During the preceding evenings I had figured out which of the cafe orchestras I liked the best in St. Mark's square, and I was planning to splurge and have a nice late dinner while listening to the music. As it turned out, I arrived at my chosen restaurant just in time for the orchestra to take a break, but the servers assured me that they would continue playing shortly. So I sat down and looked at the menu, which consisted of drinks and desserts. Deciding that dinner is generally overrated anyway, I changed my plans and turned this into a "dessert for dinner" event. I ended up sitting there for two hours, long after I had finished my very expensive dessert and hot chocolate, listening to miscellaneous classical selections, themes from musicals, etc. The evening was perfect, although I kept feeling colder and colder despite an outer layer of fleece. Around 11pm it was time to head back to the room to meet up with Clint, but I stopped by to give the orchestra members a tip and thank them for the lovely entertainment this week. The pianist was confused and thought I had a special request, so I tried to clarify that I just wanted to thank them, and mentioned that I'm a violinist. He thought this was great and invited me to come play with them. At first this sounded crazy so I started to decline, but changed my mind after a bit of encouragement. The violinist handed me his instrument and bow and the group played a selection from Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik with me, cold rusty fingers and all. Totally random, but one of the coolest things that has happened on this trip. A lady from LA even took pictures and hopefully she'll email them to me in a few weeks.

We made it to London today...finally! Even though the actual flight from Venice to London only took two hours, somehow it took us from 8am-6pm to get from there to here. Insert four hours of delayed flights and a few more hours of riding public transportation and there you go. But we took a walk and found a great Indian restaurant in Covent Garden, where Clint tried a plate of random Indian food...and liked it...and actually got full! Mostly I think he was just humoring me, because I really wanted Indian cuisine tonight, and I was fully expecting to stop by Subway on the way home to finish off his dinner. For those of you who know Clint, you may not believe the food that was consumed from his plate tonight. I really should have taken pictures. Oh wait...I did! Hooray!

It's funny how much I appreciate being able to read signs and use complete sentences in English again. The sequence of Germany, Italy, then England has provided me with a variety of opportunities to compare and contrast the different cultures and systems for doing things. Maybe I can expound on that more when I return home.

Finally a country that has chai and Dr. Pepper. I guess I am starting to miss home. :)

Actually I think three weeks of traveling to different places every few nights is a little bit long for me. Next time I might want to stay a bit longer in fewer places, but this has been an excellent introduction. We just have two more days of sightseeing left, and I have over 2 GB of pictures to download when I get home. Both Clint and I are losing steam on museums and touristy things (standing in lines for hours with tons of noisy clamoring tourists gets old pretty fast, and I mean, I can only digest so much art per week.) If we had more than two days in London I would probably be inclined to sit in a coffee shop for half the day tomorrow and continue reading To Kill a Mockingbird, which I have rediscovered on this trip. The usage of words and well articulated descriptions is delightful. Now I want to watch the movie. But since we're leaving Sunday morning, I think we will probably get up by 10 tomorrow and actually see some things tomorrow. Maybe we'll go to a musical tomorrow night if we can get tickets for less than an arm and a leg.

Two night owls traveling together actually makes for a nice travel schedule. We sleep in until somewhere between 9 and 11am, while all the tour groups are out standing in lines to see all the sights in their guidebooks, then we wake up in time for lunch, eat some gelato, and enjoy the cities later in the day when those same groups are tired and taking their afternoon naps. The only problem with this plan in Italy was that half the places in the city seem to close down between 1-4pm for lunch/nap/chilling breaks. It's a nice concept though, once you get over the fact that it means you can't do half the things on the list in the afternoons.

If I don't manage to post anything else from England, check back sometime next week for pictures (which I will hopefully post in a few days after I sort through them and recover from jet lag.) My journal is full of thoughts and activities and memories, so there will be more general recap blogging happening over the next few weeks. Thanks for reading. It's been fun to write!