I can be an extremely demanding travel partner, so I'm grateful to have such a great guy to carry my stuff and nod agreeably at my demands for wine, chocolate, cheese, or the beheading of a rude tour guide/shop proprietor/bystander/train conductor/barrista. We spent two weeks touring Italy and Croatia, ate our weight in prosciutto and gelato (though not at the same time) learned to speak Italian phrases that were so mangled waitresses thought I wanted a steak when I ordered Prosecco, and understood that most Europeans dress much better than us at all times, always. I took many photo-ops standing in front of landmarks trying to pose like Benito Mussolini and yelling "PREGO!" which everyone said to us all the time, no matter what we were doing.
After a stressful trip from New Haven to Rome, involving a blizzard, the forcible removal of passengers from a plane, a broken aircraft and the smelly feet of someone who travels with no shoes on for 9 hours, we boarded a train to Florence as our first stop. What a phenomenal city! The first piazza we entered was the site of a temporary chocolate expo. I bought a caldo cicciolato from some dude in a tent, a styrofoam cup full of hot dark melted chocolate with crushed hazelnuts on top. I realized immediately that I loved Italy. It scorched my throat, but I wandered in front of moving cars, bicycles and trams, guzzling the entire bit. Except for the Vatican, which I'll get to later, some of the best art I've seen is housed somewhere in Florence. We visited the obligatory Uffizi - a Renaissance haven, and mashed elbows with annoying gawping Asian tourists talking on cell phones and cutting in front of everyone while not acknowledging that there was a dignified line formed. We went to the Accademia and saw the David - a world treasure. We ate at a restaurant where I learned my favorite Italian word: Gobbi, which means hunchback. Every time I saw it as a name or title, which was often, I was delighted and squealed HUNCHBACK! It's the little things. My husband ate tripe. That's significant. Next up was Venice: home of Prosecco, apperitivo and chichetti, which all equal an awesome happy hour. I used to think that Istanbul was the most photogenic city ever, but Venice takes the lead. It's a bit tough to navigate on foot, because the walkways are like restaurant placemat mazes - you have to find streets containing bridges that lead to the right plots of land, or go back and walk past the same postcard shop fifteen times while bickering to your travel companion that they're blind and you're going to shove their carcass into a stinking canal. One thing we did in Venice that I regret was visit the old synagogues. Buildings date to the 1300s, when Jews were forced to live in a certain neighborhood, take only one canal from which they'd be harassed and have garbage thrown at them, etc., and were abused until about 1943 or so and good luck finding a conclave now. Anti-Semitism is exhausting.
We reluctantly left Venice to spend a day in Trieste, the northern spot that pre-WWI was home to James Joyce. Trieste was purported to be the site of his writing THE DUBLINERS and PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN. After the war, he found the city changed and boring. We couldn't help but agree. Snooze. We were there to catch a bus to Pula, on the tip of the Istrian Peninsula in Croatia. In Pula, there is a Budget and Avis rental car office. We got a nice little VW Golf two-door manual transmission, meaning I had to do all of the driving because I drive stick like a mofug, but the dude I married does not. Like most folks, he effing hates my driving. Then, we had our first near-death experience. Part II to follow. . .
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