Tina Time

3/21/06

So, Italy, so glad you asked! My husband Keith and I celebrated our 25th anniversary with a fabulous trip to Venice, Florence and Rome last October. In spite of the fact that I have told the stories over and over, retelling simply takes me back and leaves me with the pure joy the trip was and through memories still is. First of all, how can you expect to have anything but a great time when the only thing on your agenda each day is what beautiful or interesting thing you will do that day. There are no phone calls, you are not expected to be anyplace at any specific time, except perhaps to catch a tour, on your way to learn more about one of those beautiful, interesting things. Vacation in general is a pretty great thing, but this one was right in so many ways.

Before we had decided on exactly where we were going to go for our anniversary, I mentioned to Keith that while I didn't want to spend our whole trip in St. Louis, I would not mind stopping there on our way to wherever we might go to see one of the last games played in Busch Stadium. It turned out, he had already bought the tickets to the last two games of the season and was going to surprise me. The first night of our trip, at Busch stadium, my favorite Cardinal player, Albert Puhols, hit a grand slam and led the Cardinals to their 98th victory of the season. I knew right then and there it was going to be a great trip!

We left for Italy on Sunday morning, a long flight in coach, but we were so excited on setting out on our 2 week trip that it seemed to pass quickly. We changed planes in London and enjoyed just listening to the lovely accents all around us. It was amazing to see the differences, even in England. We flew on a small plane to Venice and landed in pouring down rain. We were both dressed in summer clothes, having left from Dallas and 90 degree weather, and it was cold and wet. We followed the crowd from our plane to the baggage carousel, cold and wet, watching the other multi national passengers as we all waited for our luggage. There were Middle Eastern men, African men, European women dressed like they had stepped off the front page of vogue. And the shoes!

Anyway, we waited as one by one the crowd left with their luggage until it became apparent that ours was not on the belt. It seems that it was delayed in London and the lady at the customer service counter gave us a print out with a claim number and said the luggage would arrive on the next flight and would be at our hotel that evening. We found our shuttle driver and watched the rain continue to pour, much to our dismay, as he sped through traffic with no concern for the large buses, other cars and large puddles of standing water, the whole time he was turned around talking to us in his beautifully accented English. He was funny and we watched out the windows, eager to soak in every detail of this all new world. I couldn't wait to get a glimpse of my first canal.

Our hotel was small, 37 rooms, and decorated in European Victorian with hand painted furniture, large sculptured ceilings, blue and gold striped floor to ceiling drapes. It was all charm, complete with haughty concierge and mud brown coffee. We got to our room, but of course had no bags to unpack, so after we oohed and ahhed, we decided to take a nap and wait for our luggage. the room was on the second floor and the windows looked out over a small canal. We found that the windows had large wooden shutters that when closed, made the room as dark as night.

We woke up around 8pm (we had been up since early the morning before) to find no luggage had arrived and calls to the phone number on the claim check yielded a voice message in Italian. Though our quaint little hotel had a small bar and served breakfast, it did not have a restaurant inside, so we asked the desk clerk about where we could eat. She told us there were no good restaurants close by, but as we were still wearing our shorts and Hawaiian shirts, we opted to stay close to the hotel. Ins spite of the warning from the hotel clerk, we found a cute little restaurant down the street and ordered our first Italian mean, including wine to help us warm up. The waiter was charming though he spoke little English, but by pointing to the menu, we were able to order and enjoy a delicious meal. Once again we enjoyed the accents of a German family next to us and several Italian couples having dinner. We took our time, laughed about the luggage and finally finished and headed back to the hotel. (Stay tuned for more later!) Our day in Venice, Florence, Rome and Naples.