I know that the concept of customer service is quickly becoming extinct, but my experience today was another prime example of just how bad its gotten. Before I get into my rant, I will admit some responsibility for getting myself into the situation that led to the rubbish customer service.
Today’s photo installment comes from what might have been my favorite day from the honeymoon. When we talked about going to Italy for our honeymoon, this is what I was imagining. I already told you about the time we spent in these places and I’m finally posting the pictures from the day.
Some more shots from the honeymoon. These are a from the first two hill towns that we visited in the Tuscan countryside, Volterra and San Gimignano.
Finally getting around to putting up some more of our pictures from our honeymoon trip. We took these pictures around the little town we stayed in, Radda in Chianti, while we were in Tuscany. These will give you a good idea how incredible the area is and how amazing the view from our hotel room was.
Last Friday my boss asked me to come to Chicago for work…Saturday. Even though the timing wasn’t great because I have been traveling more than I typically like recently, the work opportunity was too good to pass up. Since getting here I’ve realized a couple of things.
I’m so very over traveling right now. I would like nothing more than to wake up in my bed, throw on some sweats, move to the couch, and watch college football all day.
Even though this is my second time in Chicago, I don’t feel like I can actually say that I’ve been here. The first time was passing through with my mom on the way to her high school reunion in the small town in middle Illinois. We stopped in town long enough to visit one of the museums and then headed on.
This time, the only thing I’ve seen of Chicago has been from the back seat of a taxi between my hotel and the office. I’m not sure that counts as being to a place.
Cross your fingers for me that the rain doesn’t delay my flight tomorrow or that I don’t get stuck here.
A lot of people have been asking about pictures from our honeymoon and I simply haven’t taken the time to go through them and upload them yet. Given that there are somewhere between 1,200 and 1,500 pictures from the trip I’m not uploading them all. This first installment is a sampling of unedited pictures from our time in Florence.
I have to admit that when we were discussing the trip, Venice was the first place I was willing to skip if we needed to cut out a location. After making the visit I’m glad that we worked it in, even if it that is due to a few specific things we did there as opposed to the city in general.
First let me get a few negatives out of the way. More of an annoyance than anything, (and as we had been warned) the streets are incredibly difficult to navigate. The problem lies primarily in that they don’t have street names posted all the time, and the names of streets change constantly from block to block. In addition to them being extremely curvy, getting from place to place in the city is an adventure.
Venice might be the smokingest city I’ve ever visited. You couldn’t take five steps without inhaling a puff of someone’s second hand smoke. You would think as an island the wind would blow the smoke away, but given the close quarters of the street the wind can’t get in there so the smoke just hangs there for everyone to enjoy.
Public transportation costs a fortune. To take a regular bus boat one way is euro 6.50. Not exactly the most cost efficient way to get around. I’m sure that residents that use it regularly have some sort of monthly pass, but I would bet its extremely expensive as well.
Now the good stuff. St. Marks Basilica is truly amazing. Tons of domes, all done in Mosaics, with symbolism everywhere. They also had several impressive chapels inside done in marble with religious statues and paintings. My true “moment” was actually when we were leaving and a looked back into the church to try to take it in more on the whole. I just felt this really cool, sort of mystical power, thinking about that fact that the building has been around in some form or another since the first century. Truly amazing.
The Campanile, or bell tower in St. Marks Square, is the best way to view Venice. I tried to get a full panoramic of the city from the top to try to share with everyone. Be forewarned, though, that they don’t stop ringing the bells during the day, so check the time before you go to the top, like we didn’t, or you’ll have the bells ringing right over your head, like we did. Loud as all hell and I could feel the vibrations from the bell in my chest. I thought it was a pretty hilarious experience and made for a good story to tell after the fact.
I had my first opera experience in Venice, which I think is sort of fitting. Although, I’m not wild about the type of singing, I try to be open to new experiences like that so when Cris wanted to go I was game. The cool thing about the performance was that it was in three different rooms of a private residence. We watched three different scenes in three separate rooms. It was much funnier than I expected it to be, and Cris said it was very informal for an opera. The house was really neat as well, and has one of the best views down the Grand Canal to one of the more impressive churches in the city.
Best part of Venice, in my opinion, wasn’t technically Venice. One of the small islands on the North Lagun, named Burano, is really awesome and a must visit in my opinion. It’s a relatively small island, but it populated with a more artsy demographic. All of the houses are painted in veritable rainbow of pinks, greens, blues, and reds. It was also very clean and had a really nice breeze blowing through the town. I think if I were going to have to live in “Venice,” I would live on Burano.
The last bit I’ve been catching hell for and I’m sure I’m going to get some more, but I’m telling the story anyway. Although I really love Italian food, I needed a little bit of a break from cheese. So as we were walking around looking for a restaurant for dinner we ended up in a Chinese restaurant. Yeah, I had Chinese in Italy. I don’t care what you say, I needed a little change up. Anyway, I tell this story because it struck me as very funny that the Chinese waitress in Italy spoke and understood English much better than any Chinese waitress I’ve ever had here. That’s just not right.
On the whole the time in Venice was pretty good. I’m really glad that we went and saw the things that we saw. It was definitely worth the experience, but I have to be honest and say that I don’t think I’ll be going back anytime soon. When I think back on Italy, I would go back to rural Italy in less than a heartbeat, but I’ll have to think twice about going back to the Italian cities.
And we’re off to Switzerland.
Our travels today took us to Volterra and San Gimignano. These two communities are small towns in the Tuscan countryside that were perched up on hills for defensive purposes. Being that they are hill towns, the views of the surrounding countryside are truly beautiful, but getting this view takes some work. From my perspective, the work is worth it.
They both are historic little towns with a rustic feel, though they in many ways survive on the tourism trade these days. Narrow brick streets wind through centuries old buildings, many of them containing artisan shops, tratorias, and gelatarias.
Volterra is famous for Etruscans and alabaster. The Etruscans were an ancient civilizations dating back to BC times and there have been some significant archeological discoveries near the town. You can also look down from the city walls at the ruins of an ancient Roman theater just outside the city. Cris quickly fell in love with the alabaster shops, especially when they had the alabaster lit up and glowing. Volterran artisans are famous for working the often white stone into vases, bowls and a variety of other items. As a memento of our visit we bought a small alabaster vase to remind us of our time there.
San Gimignano, also known as the “medieval Manhattan,” is more well known for the centuries old towers that make up its skyline. At one point it had over 70 towers and now fourteen still stand. One is still available to go up to the top to get an amazing view of the surrounding countryside. I also really enjoyed the two central squares in the town where a lot of the visitors mill about. One of the more, we’ll say, interesting parts of the trip was the torture museum. Neither Cris or I can figure out why she wanted to visit this museum except for some strange holdover from law school and confronting questions on the legalities of torture.
Possibly, one of my favorite parts about our visit there is the main church, which dates from the 11th century and most of the artwork dates from the 1400s. The artwork was my favorite part of the church. On the top section of one wall it told the story of the birth of Christ from the time the angels came to Mary to the adoration of the kings and shepherds. On the bottom section of the same wall, with the panels ordered in the opposite chronology, the story of the crucifixion was told from the last supper to the resurrection.
On the day I collected a significant number of photos and Cris made some serious progress in the postcard department.
Okay, so the last week or so has been a complete whirlwind. I left DC last Wednesday for Missouri where we took care of the final preparations for the wedding. Headed up to St. Louis on Friday to pick up tuxes and spend a little time with my family, who were starting to come into town. Um, the rest of it is sort of a blur. I know we had an awesome rehearsal dinner at Fleming’s. My mom put together some really nice decorations for the room there and my sister and brother-in-law put together a really incredible little video of pictures of Cris and I through the years and they interviewed our friends and family and mixed that in.
I’m really glad that we’re going to have a lot of photos from the wedding days because I felt a little like I was driving through a small town and I blinked. What I do remember is that the weather really cooperated with us and gave us a beautiful day, we had excellent food, music, and cake at the reception, and Cris looked perfect. I don’t think I really could have asked for much more. We also stayed in a really nice B&B on the wedding night and had a great breakfast in the morning.
The blur continued starting our honeymoon. Our travel plans took us from St. Louis back through DC to Frankfurt to Florence. Despite leaving almost 45 minutes late from St. Louis, we were able to run, literally, and catch our plane in DC and made our red-eye to Frankfurt. The Frankfurt airport might be one of the stranger and yet most efficient flying experiences I’ve ever had. Even though it was a huge plane for a trans-Atlantic flight, we disembarked onto the tarmac where we were greeted by a shuttle for our transfer to our regional flight to Florence.
Since we were entering the EU we had to go through passport control. The shuttle wound through what looked to be a really big airport complex directly to the door for passport control where our armed “guide” walked us in and then out after our passports were checked. We walked out the door straight back to our shuttle which drove us straight to our gate and then after we went through the gate, our shuttle drove us straight to our plane on the tarmac again. As Cris put it, it was a funny play about German efficiency.
Our arrival in Florence was pretty uneventful. The airport in Florence is very small and easy to navigate. We took a taxi from the airport to our hotel and after getting our things set in our hotel room, we set out to start exploring the city.
I’m in Great Falls, Montana right now for work, and I wanted to share some quick thoughts on the area.
This might be one of the most picturesque places I’ve ever been to. It doesn’t top Scotland for amazing, but there is a little bit of the same kind of feel. I drove out of the city towards some of the mountains when I got in yesterday, and it had that same quiet, serenity to it that the Scottish Highlands did.
The wide open rolling land that runs right up to the mountains in the distance is just amazing. It also probably helped that there was the perfect level of cloudiness yesterday, which made the landscape all the more beautiful.
One sort of odd thing that struck me was the presence of the Missouri River. Its not strange that the river is here, but I just thought it was interesting that its the same river that runs through Cris’ home town hundreds of miles away. I must say that the Missouri here is much more clean and inviting looking here than it is in Missouri.
Switching topics, things are wonderfully rustic here. The aiport here is decorated with all wood inside, and I may have seen a stuffed game head on the wall. (I was exhausted when I got here so I’ll have to confirm this when I fly out). The hotel lobby has a two story, rough rock waterful with stuffed bears and a mountain cat on it. I’m really getting the urge to go get a shearling coat so I feel like a fit in around here.
I brought my camera with me up here and I’m hoping that I get at least a couple of good shots while I’m here. Once I get back home either Friday or this weekend, I’ll try to post them up for you guys to see.
