Venice, day 1

Kyle has discovered my hidden talent. It is 'train squiggling', as in, "Ann, squiggle your way in there and save us a seat."
  The train into Venice was actually quite nice, as we somehow ended up in a weird in-between car that was technically 1st class. We had an enthusiastic dread-locked conductor, and decided to eat in the dining car. I got the tabbouleh, which came out in a drinking glass.
   When we step off the train in Venice Mestre (the city outside of Venice where we are staying), it becomes very apparent that we're in someplace completely different. Firstly, we've left the relative coolness of the mountains and are smacked in the face with sticky heat (and it's supposed to be in the 90s the entire rest of the trip). In a way, Italy fulfills some of the stereotypes, with a little of the popped collar slickness mixed in with some street-level grunginess.
   We check into the Hotel Centrale, whose interior reminds me a lot of a 2010s version of 'Lucy Ricardo goes to Italy' (but with a working elevator, thank God). The staff is busy and brusque, but the rooms are air conditioned, which is a shocker, and we get our own bathroom. In the bathroom is an odd mini-sink, which we think can't possibly be a bidet because there are no jets, just a regular faucet, and a mystery cord in the shower, which I pull on, but nothing happens. More about these things in Rome.
   Having to buy the tickets from a tobacconist (which keeps very odd 'I open when I feel like it' hours), we take the bus into Venice itself, crossing the water. In a way, exploring the city in the late afternoon/evening like this was a good way to first experience the city, as a great portion of the tourists had cleared out by then. Venice is beautiful in a way completely different from any other place we visited, in a unique, almost ethereal way. It seems like it came out of a fairy tale, or was designed as a set for a movie called "Old World Charm". With winding tiny side streets (we're talking so small that I could put my palms flat on the walls on either side) and large and small waterways, Venice is an incredibly difficult city  in which to navigate, but it is a good city to get a little lost in, as it's not so much a city filled with landmarks; the city itself is the big attraction. And we did not find any of the "Venice smells and has giant water rats" rumors to be true. It is true, however, that Venice is touristy to the extreme. We hadn't heard so much English since London, and certain areas are packed during the day. One amusing incident happened as we were passing over a bridge our second day. An American girl stopped me to ask if I would take her group's picture. "Pho-to?" she enunciated slowly. "We speak English," said Neil, wearing a 4th of July T-shirt. "Oh! They speak English," she tells the group. Still, one of the guys said, "Grazi," in a painful American pronunciation when I was done. "They speak English!"
   We wander through the city a bit, seeing what we think might  be the Ca Rizzonico (but isn't), and finding the Galerie Academia and discovering that it closes early on Mondays. We walk along the Grand Canal and in the surrounding area, seeing a few churches, including S. Maria del Carmelo, S. Maria della Salute, which is a beautiful domed church, and San Travaso and its square. Reaching the tip of the island, we find Punta Della Dogana, a museum with a statue of a naked boy holding a frog in front.
   We get gelato (Neil and I get mango), and explore a bit more before having dinner at Pizza Zola. We are served by a tattooed woman with short hair whom we can't understand well, as she speaks in a rapidfire staccato and seems to take 4 people's orders at once. I get eggplant pizza, and Kyle gets hot dog and french fry pizza. Mine's okay, but not great. Kyle says he wouldn't eat his again.
   We return to the hotel around 8:00, and soon the lights go out, as the power has popped off in our room. Neil goes to tell the front desk, who gets it working again with the directive to not use the plug for the T.V. (which is way up by the ceiling, so why would we?) and to only use the plug in the bathroom. We decide to ignore this ( Neil: "I'm not using my computer in the bathroom"), as we didn't think we had caused it anyway since we had only one light on and one tablet charging. It might have been the girls down the hall, as we heard a hair dryer and giggling right before the power blew.