The Wacky World of a Lazy Pig (AKA Simon)

Eurotrip Day 19 - Pigeon Attack and Cheap Gondola ride

The day starts early, mainly because it was kind of cold in the hostel and the other two girls in the room were moving about. No, they weren't that good looking, but one of them starting talking to Steve while we were packing our things back into our backpacks. The girls spoke spanish, wow, what a world. We introduced ourselves and so did they.

Within 30 minutes, we had vacated the room and placed our bags in the main lobby storage, which was basically under the huge dresser. We weren't planning on staying another day in Venice as we were already strapped for time and had already reserved a night train to Munich which passed through Austria. This did cause a problem since we didn't have Austria as one of the countries we were crossing on our Eurail pass. This meant that we had to pay a little extra (around 50 euros) to pass through. An unexptected cost, but better than making a huge loop through switzerland again.

Before we left, the hostel receptionist handed us some breakfast vouchers for the small little cafe just outside the main door. This was a nice freebie despite the fact that Venice had the most expensive Hostel. Our break fast consisted of a coffee and our selection of a pastry, which turned out to be really good. Though coffee is not my thing, it was still something good enough to start the day.

The daytime is so different in Venice. There is more noise and people running around the street and selling things. No matter where you are, there are small stores setup right in the middle of the street, mostly selling fresh fruit and vegetables. The fish market was also full of people and stores. Food definitely wasn't cheap here in Venice. Fruit especially was expensive compared to the seafood. Coconuts were also very popular amongst the vendors. Vendors would place sliced pieces of coconut on a fountain like shelf to keep the coconuts moist and fresh.

I had never actually tried one of these before. We had a lot of opportunities in Rome, Pisa and Florence to have them but it didn't appeal to us then. They weren't much, 1 euro for 2 pieces. We both took a piece and took a bite. Dissapointing. Then again, I was expecting to taste something like coconut milk. Also, the more I ate, the more my mouth and throat itched. Not that this reaction is unique to coconuts, some fruits do that to me as well. Steve wasn't too pleased as well. I remember him saying that it wasn't what he was hoping for.

Knowing that we would travel a lot during the day, we purchased a day pass for the public boat transit for 11 Euros, which is still quite expensive. Our first destination was St. Mark's Square. A place I hadn't really heard of nor really knew. In fact, I let Steve do the main planning for Venice. While sitting on the boat, we passed by a lot of beautiful churches. I think the fact that they are right beside the water also enhances the beauty of the churches.

The river(s) in Venice are connected to a much larger body of water the resembled the lake in Zurich. It was not surprising the see regular motor boats on the water, but to see a small man powered gondola on the wavy waters was kind of scary. You can literally see the boat moving up and down, left and right because of the waves. The gondola did not seem the least bit safe. What if it had flipped? It would be hard to get that to any shore.

As we passed by St Mark's Square, we could see the large number of people walking around the area. I also noticed a lot of birds hanging around the area, I thought they were just there for a bit and would leave. The pigeons in Canada like to move around and never really stay in one area for a long time. Here? Total opposite.

Once we had docked at the boat station, I could sense some excitement building in Steve, though I didn't know why. In fact, I had no idea why this area was so popular until later. We did take some pictures at a familiar and famous location around the St. Mark's Square region. It was like a back alley, but it was more like a back river. Small boats would navigate through this narrow alley. Getting a picture here with just ourselves was luck as there were so many tourists at this one spot.

The most evil thought crossed my mind as we walked to the open area on the left of St. Marks Square. What would I have done? I would have brought Christine here blind folded and just throw some of the corn seeds at here. But then, that would be so mean and she would probably break up with me and kill me. So the thought of it was good enough.

Anyway, the ground was overpopulated with pigeons. From the boat, it didn't seem like a lot, but I was totally wrong. There was probably 10 times more than i was expecting. One of the first things I saw was around 50-80 pigeons flying into and possible attacking 2 young girls. They screamed to the top of their lungs with their heads down. That's right, heads down. probably to prevent any bird poo from going into the mouth or even eyes. It was actually a scary site. The feeling of pecking on your skin is similar to getting pinched really quickly.

The smile on Steve's face was really noticeable now. He asked me if I wanted to try and I shook my head. What was Steve thinking? He walked over to the man sitting down in front of what looked like a small ice cream cart. He bought a small bag of corn seeds and came back. Man, he was brave. Steve asked me to take pictures and a video as much as possible. Just watching him was scary. Steve hadn't even opened the bag of seeds and the pigeons already knew that he had something. The pigeons were drawn to him. Some of them flying ontop of his shoulders or head just waiting.

I could hear the hesitation in Steve's voice as we told me to get ready. He quickly opened the bag and poured some out onto his left hand . At the instant, the pigeons went nuts. They all flew on top of him and perched all over his arm. The wings flapped in his face and the birds landed and stood on his head. It was a funny and scary sight. He poured out a bit more onto his hand a went on a little longer. This time, moving his arms around and spreading them out. I took a bunch of pictures and videos.

When Steve finished, he through the remainig seeds in his hand into the air and walked over to me. The bag was still half full. He suggested that I tried. I shook my head again and saying never. But beign the good friend Steve is, he convinced me to go. I was so scared. Never had I had so many bird fly at me. Sure it is fun to see it on other people and filiming, it was totally different if you were the victim. The only situation that prepared me for this was when our family was taking care of 3 chickens at home. They liked to peck food off of our hands.

I concealed the bag of seeds in my arms and walked towards the crowd of pigeons. With my legs still shaking and my heart rate increasing, I quickly revealed the bag without opening it. 2-3 birds flew on top of me. Steve screamed "Pour it in your hand fast". I did as he did, and at that moment, my fear of the birds left. The excitement of them just flying on my was overwhelming. All I could do was scream and laugh at the same time. I could feel the birds landing on my arms and adding more and more weight on them. At one time, I probably had around 5-7 birds on each arm. Their feet scratched my arm so much. All this time, Steve was filming me and it was awesome. By the end, I my hands were empty, my arm was slightly red from the scratches and I had stepped on the wing of a pigeon. I gotta say that this was one of the funnest things we did.

Even after me, there were still seeds in the bag. Steve went a second time so that I could take some more pictures. During this 10-15 minutes, we probably took soo many pictures and videos. It will be fun to look over the videos again one day. We had a lot of fun, but the seeds ran out before we could get the most out of the situation. But no matter what, it was always fun to see the birds attacking an unexpecting tourist.

We were about to step into the bascillica until we were stopped by the greeters at the front entrance. I thought they wanted us to remove all weapons (AKA our swiss knives), but I was wrong. We weren't allowed to have our bags or wastebags inside. The greeter pointed us to a small busy alley telling us that we had to drop off our stuff there before we could come back. It seemed weird and I was very suspicious at first. I really didn't want anything to get stolen. After 10 minutes or so, we finally stepped into the St. Mark's Basilica. It was very nice and also very high. Instead of being able to walk freely around the church, there was a designated path outlined by posts and ropes. You are not permitted to walk outside of the boundaries. It felt weird to be so restricted and not being able to stand still to take good and steady pictures.

Turns out that you could access other special places in the church, but for a fee of course. Did Steve and I go? No, not this time. There didn't seem to be much interesting that was worth our time and money. The style of art were mainly mosaics. The front of the altar was really nice though. Aside from the nice altar, there were many statues of saints close by being held up by several thin pillars. Steve instantly pointed out St Paul and St Peter. How did he know? From Steve's words "oh, St Peter is the one that is bald and St. Paul is the one with the sword." Though it makes sense in many cases, I challenged him on this topic for the next 5 minutes before we reached the chapel.

There were about 8 pews setup for people to sit or kneel at. At the front was a statue of Jesus and two tables of candles. I bought a candle as they were only 3 euros, something I could definitely afford. Steve was really nice to stay with me while I prayed for around 10 minutes. We left in silence. But knowing the both of us, silence would have broken the instant we stepped back outside.

Prior to entering the church, the St Mark's Tower had a huge line up in front of it. By the time we came out, the line had shrunk by a lot. Did I really have a choice to climb the tower? of course I did, but I wouldn't have given up the opportunity. But turns out, there was no climbing involved because an elevator was used. Steve and I managed to line up behind a family or small class of Jewish people. Weird I would say to see a Jewish person in a Catholic area, not that I have anything against them. These were the type of Jewish people that had long side burns. If their side burns got too long, they curled them and rapped them around their ear. On top of that, they usually wore a full hat or the kippah.

As we reached the entrance of the tower, an employee at the tower requested that we check-in our backpacks and jackets. We got our number tags and then proceeded to the ticket purchase counter. Yup, great being a student. Even a 2 euro discount is very much appreciated. We didn't wait long until we got into the elevator and in less than 1 minute we were at the top. That's right, it wasn't that tall, but it was the tallest point in Venice. To be perfectly honest, Venice overall wouldn't be interesting without the river, churches and boats. When viewed from the tower, Venice looks like a large orange yellow carpet. Most of the houses (almost always an orange yellow colour) were built very very close to each other and they all looked very similar to each other. Despite the initial disappointment, with every minute I stared, the more I enjoyed the scenery.

After we descended back to the ground level and grabbed our bags, we went into an exploring mode again. What this actually means is that we don't have anything in particular we want to see, but just enjoy the scenary, the people and the air. But before we had really started looking around, Steve started up a very long conversation about confession, Stealing and P2P and downloading music. The whole debate/conversation/argument started when Steve wanted to learn more about confession asking what I had previously confessed. It was so interesting and fun to discuss this topic that we talked about it for probably 1 hour while walking around St. Marks Square and looking into the different shops. It was essentially a debate between Steve telling me that I should go to confession because I was stealing music. Sure I was downloading music and software in general, but for some reason, I didn't want to give into saying that i was stealing everything. I guess in a way it is stealing. You would be amazed at this converstation, it was like a married couple arguing while walking down the street. Steve would do his "oh you don't listen to me. You are going to hell for stealing. How come you don't confess it? Why do you think it isn't a sin? " and the list goes on. But was really an awesome conversation because I learned more about Steve, which was the most important part for me.

While arguing and debating, we passed by a lot of souvenir shops that we didn't even go in. I guess we were so focused on the conversation at the time that we kind of lost track of what we were looking at. But as the topic of sin and stealing faded away, we continued our way in the innder streets passing buy some fresh produce vendors, restaurants and churches. Yup, I went to many many churches already but I can never get tired of them. I even recall someone setting up a table in front of a church asking us to sign up for something that I don't remember. They spoke very good English, but still, there was no reason for me to sign anything. Hmmm actually, i think I did write some fake information down :). Probably wrote Steve's name but not his personal information.

While passing one fresh produce vendor, I noticed a weird fruit that looked like a canteloupe. Steve also stopped to take a look at some of the grapes or something. I have never seen this fruit before. The skin had the colour of a canteloup, but it had lines from the top to bottom like a basketball. The size was a little smaller than a north american canteloupe. My curiousity of this fruit made me pick it up to try to squeeze it. After 3 seconds or so in my hand, someone behind the shelves walked up and said something while pointing at my and gesturing me to put the fruit down. Obviously I didn't understand him, but Steve walked by to tell me after that I wasn't supposed to touch the food. Wow, I had not known this at all. In Canada, you could pick up the food if you want to see how it is. Here in Italy, the vendors are the only ones allowed to touch and also put in the bags. You only touch it after you have paid for it. Weird.

Our stomachs were starting to get empty by this time. We definitely needed food soon. Steve suggested that we start walking around looking for something to eat. But, we were so unsuccessful in finding anything. We passed by a lot of expensive restaurants and gelato shops. That didn't really help though. We did however pass by a sandwich shop, but for the money and value, it didn't seem like it was worth it. Steve was almost ready to buy one too. I hope Steve wasn't angry at me for not eating there. We continued to walk aimlessly in whatever direction the roads led us. Up and down stairs and across bridges we went until we ended up in a very Empty street that had 1 pizza restaurant. knowing us, we just default to pizza. We sat down and ordered. I can't remember what I orderd this time, but it was good and dthat was all that mattered to me.

We were eating out tin the open on a very sunny day. The parasoule was good enough to cover both of us so we wouldn't get sunburn. We tried to eat quickly so we wouldn't waste too much time. But there was something coming up that would eventually waste a lot of time. When we asked for the bill, I put in my share of the total but Steve didn't have enough cash on him. I didn't have any more cash on me as well so Steve was a little screwed. Steve asked if he could use his credit card to pay, but be wasn't allowed because his meal didn't wasn't about 12 euros. So what did Steve have to do? He had to leave me as hostage at the restaurant and look for some money. It was quite embarrasing :) I sat there at our table with the Rick Steve's book out reading the articles of Venice.

I waited for about 30 minutes before Steve came back. I felt really bad for Steve because he couldn't find an ATM that was close by. He went all around the area looking for it, and I still don't remember his story of going around St Marks Square again. I wasn't angry at Steve, it was just another funny thing to remember. No hard feelings and we even laughed about it.

From here on, we walked back to St. Mark's Square to take the boat aimlessly again, getting off where we wanted to. We would get off if we saw something intersting namely churches or a famous landmark. There was one particular church that we wanted to go to but had no idea how to get across the river. There weren't any boat stations near by for us to get off. Steve did however eventually find out that we had to take a cheap gondola ride to get across. It was 2 euros a person or something like that. We walked to the little docks waiting for someone to tell us to get onto the gondola. Just before we stepped in, we put our money into one of the gondola operator's hand. The gondola was stripped of all its nice decorations and was left with a bare boat internal but with a gondola shell.

The ride was weird at first and kind of scary. The gondola was quite shaky and moved up and down a lot because of the motor boats passing by. We took the opportunity to take some shots again of course while we were moving about on th water. Not 5 minutes had passed and we had already arrived at the other side of the river and exited the boat.

Steve and I walked quickly towards the church and up the stairs to get in. It wasn't particularily big and the center was a restricted area. We could, however, walk around the outer circle of the church and look at each of the small chapels. At the back of the church was a nice chapel that had 2 pews set up on two sides (a total of 4 pews). Told Steve that I would take some more time to pray so that he woudln't have to wait for me before leaving the church. It was nice and calm in there. The altar was very well decorated and the sun on the altar placed a divine atmosphere.

The sky was still very bright when I left. Well it should be, it was still very early in the afternoon. We didn't want to waste our time so we rushed back to the gondolas and crossed the river again so we could head towards the public boat transit. Our next destination? no where in particular. We got off several times to explore the old alley ways. As this was our final day in Italy, we didn't want to break the tradition of 1 Gelato per day. Though they Gelato wasn't as good as it was in Rome, we were very satisfied.

Our journey continued on the boats. This time, we sat on the boat watching the buildings and people pass by. Stupid us, after some time, we discovered that we had gone too far and were kind of lost. We got off the boat and tried to find the correct boat to take us back. We waited aroudn 10 minutes before anothe boat came by. Instead of trying to get lost again, we decided that we should get off the boat at the station taht was close to our hostel. This way, we could explore our area and see the seafood market again.

By mid to late afternoon, we didn't look at the Rick Steve's travel guide book anymore. We walked from street to street, from lots of people to almost no people. Eventually, it was only the two of us on an empty street beside the water. We walked and we talked and absorbed the nice weather. We eventually reached a huge open water area that had a really nice view of the sun in the background. I got a picture of Steve and I sitting together with our legs hanging over the ledge, looking out into the water.

Another 15 minutes past until we got got up and headed towards the main streets. We walked slowly, talking about Roger and how he would have like it here. Its weird, being with Roger for 2.5 weeks seemed like a very long time and it was different without him around. Then again, we did get to do some more funny shots of us being stupid.

it was still pretty early in the evening when we got back, so we took another boat to head east towards the mainland (only 10 minutes away on boat). The mainland was really different from venice. For the first time, I saw cars and trucks as well as a regular grocery store. We walked through the store looking for some food that we might have been interested in eating or maybe even some drinks for the long ride tonight. It was a waste of time as the only thing interesting was a whole chicken, and with fond memories of savagely eating a whole chicken not too long ago, this was definitely not my top choice. But no problem, I don't think Steve wanted to eat grocery food anyway.

With nothing left to see on the mainland, we decided to head back to the hostel and just look for soem food around there. Steve suggested that we try their local seafood, which was expensive but well worth the money. The fish served at the restaurants are bought fresh daily from the market. Of course this isn't as fresh as in Chinese/Cantonese cuisine where they kill the live fish on the spot, it was still something rare to see in Europe.

Competition is fierce here in Venice. Many restaurants served very similar foods all around the same price. Some of course were fancier with a nicer indoor atmosphere, but we weren't really willing to pay for that. Anyway, we could get nice and fancy restaurants here in Canada. The waiters at the restaurants would try to lure you into their restaurant. Well not lure, but stand at the entrance and tell you how good their food is and and immediately ask you how many people to seat. We would just ignore them until we made our decision. We walked around the busy district again looking for a relatively cheap restaurant that seemed to have a good reputation. Reputation at this point was based on the amount of customers currently sitting down eating. Cheap was anything under 15 euros for me, and Steve didn't really care.

We eventually sat down at a restaurant that was 2 minutes walk from our hostel. I ordered the monk fish while Steve ordered the seafood platter (which also had some monkfish). Why the monkfish? I saw someone else eating it beside us and it looked really juicy and good. there wasn't a lot of food onthe plate mind you, but it was really good. The fish is served without the skin and some small sides. The meat of the fish was parted to make it easy to cut off with a knife. Because the portion wasn't huge, I took my time to finish it. Steve was worried at the end of the meal that I didn't have enough food and offeref me some of his. He was right but i still refused.

After dinner, we grabbed our backpacks from teh hostel and took the boat back to the train station. There we waited for the train to arrive while finding out what to do in Munich when we arrived in the morning.

Last time when Roger was with us, we booked a 3 person bedroom on the train. This time, we booked a 6 person couchette because we were trying to save on some money. The beds are much closer together and weren't as comfortable. But turns out, after the train started, the only people in the room was Steve and me. We had the larger troom all to ourselves, bu I guess the conductor and ticket checker didn't like that. He came by to see the other 4 beds retracted and yelled at us for taking up more room than hat we paid for. Hey, if no one else is coming, don't waste the space !! We got to bed and slept not long after.

Labels: eurotrip

posted by lazypig @ 12:06 PM