A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Florence, then Venice...

We all agreed that what should heretofore be referred to as "the (passport) incident" was best left out of the blog and all social media posts until it had been happily resolved.  I made this decision mostly in order to save my mother the anxiety I knew she would experience (and my father the misfortune of being the person with whom she would most share that anxiety), but also because we wanted to focus on exploring Florence and not on "the incident."

As I sit on the comfy couch in our Venice apartment, having returned from a full day of travel back and forth to Florence to retrieve the passports that had been shipped there from Rome, after we left them in the safe there due to a rushed exit out of Rome (you might remember tales of taxi drivers waiting, while we rushed from the Basilica to the train station) by a lovely but inefficient concierge who didn't pay the extra money necessary to insure they would arrive in Florence in 24 hours (BEFORE we were due to leave the city), I can now get back to the business of the blog.  :)

One of the things I love most about my family is our resilience and ability to focus on the positive in any given situation.   Even during our last day in Florence, while we were anxiously awaiting the shipment that never arrived, we managed to enjoy the city, spending most of our time at the unexpectedly wonderful Santa Maria Novella, where we marvelled at the cloisters, the century old frescos, the astounding history of it all (the famed wooden crucifix was created in the 1200's!).  Apparently the square housing the Basilica had become rundown in recent decades, but a restoration of the surrounding area is well underway.  Now it is filled with flowers, music, and people - which is only proper for such a spectacular place.  As we wandered around the many rooms and the small attached museum, where the process of restoring the frescos is explained in detail, we all marvelled to imagine how these structures were built in a time without cranes or calculators.  The fact that these architectural masterpieces were designed and created hundreds and hundreds of years ago is beyond inspirational.

Portions of the cloisters had been destroyed to make room for the train station, of all things; other parts (including the frescos) had been badly damaged during the 1966 flood of the Arno.

 We were particularly inspired by the tales of those who devote their careers, but, even more so, themselves, so completely to, as Maddie eloquently put it, "preserving another's legacy."  The fact that we would never have access to these amazing works of art if so much time, love, care and devotion wasn't put into the salvaging and restoration of them is a truly humbling thing to think about.  In essence, those who devote their lives to preserving another's legacy are creating a legacy of their own, nameless though they will remain as we revisit these significantly historical sites.

After our morning at Santa Maria, we found a charming cafe for lunch, and then Dana and Daniel went back to the hotel to check out how "the incident" was progressing, while Maddie and I waited in the much shorter line to enter the Florence Cathedral (while the intrepid souls who were intent on walking to the top of the Duomo waited hours in the hot sun for that privilege).  It is another beautiful, astounding and historically significant site, to be sure, but then it feels as if any given church you enter in these Italian cities is equally worthy, so it's sometimes difficult to understand why one or another gets all the attention!

When our passports hadn't arrived before it was time for us to head to the train station and Venice, we made a decision... we would all go to Venice together, check in to the hotel, have a beautiful dinner on the water, and then one of us (I insisted it would be me, as I had visited Venice many years ago and had a good book to read on the train) would return to Florence today to retrieve our package in time for our cruise tomorrow (yup, "the incident" once again had an ultimate cruise complication ;)

While Dana, Maddie and Daniel got intentionally lost in the alleys of Venice, I made the trek to Florence and back.

Here, Daniel and Maddie channel Before Sunrise.  Unfortunately, yes, that is Daniel's best Ethan Hawke impersonation ;) (they are practicing in one V city for their ultimate strolls around Vienna)

When the Mom's away, the "kids" will play :) - dancing around Piazza Rialto

Maddie researched the best gelato spot in Venice, which Daniel declared his fave of the trip! Suso

so, of course, they had to bring me back tonight to try it.  Yum!

United by 6:40 (I wound up on the same train back today that we all took yesterday!), we took to Rialto Piazza for a glorious and unique dinner (I had cuttlefish :( - not sure I'll do that again ;), while Dana had steak tartar - definitely not another night of pizza/pasta), a wonderful walk around another Venice neighborhood, and then, finally, a glorious, peaceful and informative gondola ride.  I was initially dismissive of the gondola experience, imagining we would be riding alongside a bunch of other gondolas, with tourists grinning and waving at each other.  Instead, our gondolier took us into canals so dark and silent that the experience verged on being spirtitual.  To see this side of Venice was an extraordinary surprise, as was the historical tour we hadn't expected.  We got to see the home where Marco Polo was born, the one where Casanova lived, as well as to learn about everything from Venice's early history to how the restaurant owners buy and ship their food.  I couldn't have picked a better way to end our second day in Venice.

So dark, so quiet, almost surreal

Now, passports safely tucked away in my suitcase (safes be damned, from this point forward! ;), we are about to call it a night (perhaps I should say early morning...)   Tomorrow we will have a few final hours in Venice before we head to the port and board our ship.  I'm not sure what Internet access will be like over this next week, but I'm sure I'll find time to post from time to time.  Sunday is a day at sea, so I likely won't post until Monday night, after we've returned from Corfu.

Our gondolier told us that tourism has been down since its high a few years ago, when 26 million people visited during one year; the streets were so full, he said, that people could barely walk.  I am quite content that today, as I took the Vaporetto back and forth to the train station, I had a perfect perch to watch the chefs loading their wares for the day, the emergency boat speeding away to offer assistance, and the various tourists and residents taking to the water for whatever leisure or business had brought them here.  While Venice is undoubtedly a tourist's haven (much like Mackinac Island is in the US), I have a better sense during this visit how it is also a home for the 60,000 people who live in its historic center.

And, more than anything, I am grateful to be able to share all of these experiences with my funny, supportive, enthusiastic and appreciative family.