Fun on the Menu / Signs of the Apocalypse

Thursday, December 22, 2005

Fun on the Menu / Signs of the Apocalypse

Rejoyce, I have yet again returned to the land of the living, bearing stories and pictures from foreign restaurant menus...

I took off for a couple days and the Traveling Companion and I hit the streets of Venice to have a little look around.

First impression: Hey- they have to do something about handling the storm runoff- the streets were full of water!
We were able to deal with it, but Hertz is gonna be pissed because parking the rental car on the curb at the hotel was a bit of a problem...

Let's step back a bit and talk about some goofy stuff.

Traveling Companion and Yours Truly went up to the Lake Como region (to Como and Torno) and nosed about on Saturday... Very nice place- a tad windy while we were wandering the streets, but overall very cool little towns. I'll bet summertime there is wonderful.

Como, facing back on the road from Torno.

As we wandered the streets TC & YT found a little street market where the TC picked up a hat, which would prove necessary for survival later in the week...
There was the requisite shopping for, and the eventual bargaing for said hat... a story in itself. Interesting in comparison to Shanghai...Nobody pawing at you every ten seconds trying to sell you DVDs and Rolexes...
As that purchase progressed, I was drawn to a capsule station in the market...
You are familiar with the gumball vending machine, but in Europe and Asia, you would be amazed at the stuff you find in these things.

This thing was amazing for two reasons...
First, it was selling thong panties for 2 Euros a pop, second, the actual name on the machine (Big Balls) was, well, overdescriptive for the machine, but perhaps more indicative of the user...

Oh well... Onward.

TC and YT were off after a short jaunt around the lake- we headed toward Verona...

I like traveling in Italy on the Autostrada...
I'm doing 160kph and people are still passing me like I'm not pedaling fast enough.

Some distance (I'm not exactly sure- I don't have a real grasp using Kilometers for distance... We were either 90 miles or 90 feet away) from Verona we ran into a smog bank. We were in a farming area and the smell was horrible- Since "smog" is by definition a mixture of smoke and fog, I was tempted to refer to this colloidal suspension as "smit", due to the mix of smoke and airborne animal feces...
We decided to continue until we were able to breathe outside air without the aid of self-contained breathing apparatus.
We eventually arrived in Vicenza- a cool little town an hour or so from Venice.
After wandering around the town for an hour or so we had a nice dinner and found a hotel... We made plans to visit some of the tourist attractions then next day and hit the sack.

We visited the Olympic Theater the next day- a place designed by Andrea Palladio- pretty much everything in Vicenza was designed and built by Palladio- from all the buildings and street layouts to the recipes for cappucino and tiramisu, if you want to believe the locals.
Read a little about the Teatro Olimpico here...

We finally departed Vicenza- a bit reluctantly, but we wanted to get to Venice before high tide... and in short order we were stashing the car at Tronchetto and hopped a water taxi to St Marks Square.
Our hotel was about a block west from San Marco- the perfect distance and direction from San Marco- Quiet and out of the way, but still close enough to be able to get around quickly.
Quickly was important because it was cold! I mean, make-sure-you-bring-the-Brass-Monkey-in-from-the-back-porch cold...
TC was fortunate in acquiring the hat in Como...Frostbite on the top of your head is nothing to sneer at.
(YT's cranium is protected by a veneer of thin blonde hair and sunglasses, both worn 24/7...)

While YT was in Turin and while in Venice, I had the occasion to see new and interesting items for the Fun on the Menu series...

Here are some of them: