Thurs May 15 - Goodbye Italy, Some Italian Phrases, Postscripts

Homeward bound

Goodbye Venezia!

Got up early as planned, left our apartment at 5:30am to catch the first Alilaguna vaporetto boat (Linea Arancio) at Ca'Rezzonica right near us.  

Took about an hour to get to the Marco Polo (Venice) airport.  Nice boat ride in the early morning when the city is relatively quiet. 

Had some breakfast at the airport.  Then a short flight Venice to Zurich.  Layover in Zurich - time for a snack.

Golden Gate Bridge

Flying over Switzerland

Then Zurich to San Francisco which was a grueling 14? hour trip.  Watched movies, read, tried to sleep, gazed enviously at the seats in business class. :)

Finally arrived in SF.  Marian, Harry and I took BART home (another hour plus), and Toby got a cab.




Good to be home AND a little sad the trip is over.  We are exhausted but it was worth it!   What a wonderful trip!  

 
Some Postscripts:

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A bit of Italian we found useful:

Parla inglese un poco?  Do you speak a little English?

Il conto per favore - The bill please.

Buon giorno - good morning

Buona sera - good evening

Ciao - hello or goodbye

Cingali - wild boar - Tuscan specialty

Gambrogini (?) - large shrimp in the shell

Baccala - white cod - very popular in Tuscany and delicious

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Exchange rate while we were there was 1 euro = 1.38 dollars.  So it was pretty easy to calculate.  If something was 20 euros, just add half and then it's a little less than that.

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I love this podast about pasta!  "spaghetti is like a living thing"  Pasta 101 (6 min)

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We were impressed with how seriously they take recycling.  Especially in Lucca.  In our apartment there were 4 bins:  compost, paper, glass/metal, and unrecyclable.  Everything had to go in one of those bins.  On designated days of the week, you put your bin out by your front door and it gets emptied.  Great system.


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Toilets in restaurants and other public places are almost always dual flush.  For those of you not familiar with this intelligent technology, you can flush regular or with just half the water - depending on your need at the time if you know what I mean.  Also, often the bathrooms were unisex presumably to save space.  And another thing I haven't seen that much:  sometimes you turn on the water at the sink via a pedal on the floor - the first couple of times I ran into this I stood there perplexed for several minutes!   I think this must be older bathrooms.

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Many buildings in Venice had 3 flags flying out front:  European Union (stars on blue), Italy (red white green) and Venice (lion, the symbol of the city). 

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And finally, it seems that there are no clothes dryers in Italy.  Everywhere you look you see laundry drying whether in the back of the house or the front.  I'm sure a lot of Americans would think it was "unsightly" but we kinda liked it.  It shows that people live there.  Here are a few examples.

In the alleyway next to our apartment in Florence:

 Seen walking around in Lucca:

 On the main street in Burano: