Remember this post from May, in which I talked about the Pine Ridge Lakota Reservation and linked to the group trying to win a fruit orchard?

They won! That is so great.

This is appropriate, because I also just finally finished the final chapter of the freelance job that I took on specifically to pay for this trip. Jeez louise.

I will start with the trip home and move from there to Venice, because it’s better to end on a happy note.

While we were sitting in the airport waiting for our flight, I spent a happy few minutes buying Weird European Candy (I am very interested in Snack Foods of the World [particularly Prawn Cocktail Crisps]) and “Espresso to Go” for Mr. Dingo Jones, which turns out to be teeny-tiny square containers with straws attached to the bottom so little I would go past itty-bitty and call them idgy-bidgy.

Anyhow, in the container is a mixture of espresso and chocolate, and three sips made me run around my living room in circles for 30 minutes. (I am a delicate creature.) (ha)

After we sat down to wait, we eventually became aware of the conversation of the people around us. First it was a litany of all the things they had purchased. Then about how much money they had spent (let’s just say more than 10 grand). Then about how smelly and unhelpful “they” are. Then about how backward “they” are to not have air conditioning everywhere.

THEN HOW AWFUL THE ITALIAN FOOD IN ITALY IS.

We got up and moved to another part of the gate area.

Maw and Paw of this group were seated behind us, and Paw unfortunately was a Seat Yanker, so every time he got up to move around, I rode a small carnival ride. ALSO he did not like my putting my seat back ever, and the way I knew that was that every time I did so, he would ding the flight attendant and have HER tell me to put my seat up.

Then Maw and Paw discovered how much they had in common with the folks across the aisle and yelled back and forth to each other for quite a long time about “them” and “their terrible food.” An excerpt: “And they think they know better than you do. I mean, even when I asked for extra meat in my meat sauce, they didn’t give me hardly any, so it was practically all vegetables! Haven’t they heard of customer service?”

Oh, and we had a 2-hr delay on the runway at Greensboro, NOT our airport, because of storms. I have been to Europe twice now, and both times I have gotten off the plane at home in a mood ready for killin’. Just to warn you.

Still: at least we didn’t see any Stereotypical Ugly Amurkins until the tail end of our trip.

And now: Venice!

The ship docked, and unloading was an admirably organized process. We were among the last to leave, because we were staying nearby (out near the airport). The drive out to the hotel was interesting: farmland pushes right up against the edges of the city. I approve of this intelligent notion. We stored our luggage and took the train back down into Venice. Hooray for public transportation!

Holster bags, check! (That’s our hotel behind us.)

Venice was HOT. And crowded. At first we milled around aimlessly. We bought a map and a limonata. Finally Mama decided that she could get us where we wanted to go (basically, everywhere).

We got kind of lost. But the best kind of lost.

Here are the obligatory Grand Canal shots:

and

It’s very beautiful. We found our way to St. Mark’s eventually, but the line was very long, and it was so hot and crowded that we went back into the alleyways where we had wandered before.

Instead of grand canals, wee ones:

We wandered on shady streets

and even saw some laundry.

(I love that photo.)

THEN we decided that we had to eat or risk the grumpies and vowed to stop at the next likely place. The next likely place was Trattoria da Nino. Lucky us! It was filled with Venetians, including one lady I want to be when I grow up. She wore a linen fedora. She had a lorgnette. “I want to be her,” I said. “Of course you do, she’s totally weird,” my sister said.

Have you noted a certain consistency in my photo sets?

Not from a barrel, but very good. And we ate pizza.

Mine was the mushroom one in the back. All I could do was sit over it and shake my head. I hadn’t realized what pizza was supposed to be. I mean, I love a pizza. I have a whole song about pizza and wine that I like to sing. This was … amazing. I just don’t even.

We bought jewelry and handbags, and didn’t buy other handbags that we regretted not buying later. All the Venetians macked on my sister. It was dark and crowded and damp-smelling, except where it was bright, hot, even more crowded, and damp-smelling. We stuffed gelato in ourselves.

It was glorious. I loved it. I want to go back, and back again. One (long) afternoon in Venice is not anywhere NEAR like enough.

Back at the train station, we were early, and I bought Weird Italian Candy (see above). I was trying to get rid of my change. I just found the box of balsam pastilles that I bought the other night, haven’t even tried them yet (will report back). We collapsed in the hotel bar for a bit of wine, then ate in the hotel restaurant, where again I was made speechless by my bowl of pasta.

In the morning, I was made squeaky by the yogurt. What IS it about the dairy over there? I couldn’t get enough of it. I drank actual glasses of milk. I had a cup of coffee out of the goofy automatic coffee dispenser, and it was GOOD. Instead of bitter sludge, it tasted like coffee smells. I keep saying that next time around I want to come back, along with everyone I love, and live in Andorra so we can be close together. Also near the good coffee and the excellent dairy. So plan ahead for your next life. We’ll all have to learn how to ski.

And in the airport, I finally found a good souvenir for Dingo.

If you have met me for 5 minutes during an even-numbered year, you know that I am a honey-roasted nutbar about the Olympics.

Our dear boat tootled around to the Peloponnese, to the town of Katakolon, which is about as big as my foot but has a deeply dredged harbor because it’s only about a 40-minute bus ride to Olympia.

Our tour guide was Emilia: little, fast-moving, impossibly chic. Not the world’s biggest fan of repeated bathroom breaks. She was great.

Our bus driver seemed to feel that the line down the middle of the road was a running guide, not a lane demarcation, and that the speed limit was half the actual recommended speed. I kept seeing tiny houses by the side of the road, like spirit houses, with icons and candles in them. Emilia said they were to mark the location of wrecks.

There was a spirit house about every 20 feet.

We passed the town of Pyrgos and drove through a bunch of tomato farms and vineyards. We saw a shepherd with a crook guiding a bunch of sheep around. (Why yes, I did get slightly excited.) We saw Romany children begging at a stoplight. The bus driver stuck his head out the window and yelled at them.

We wore headsets during our tour of Olympia, and I know Emilia told us lots of interesting information, but most of what I heard was a loud major-key chord of angel choirs echoing in my head the whole time.

Would you like to see some piles of rocks? Yes you would.

How about a column?

That’s a reconstructed column from the temple of Zeus. It is ginormous.

Temple of Hera, anyone?

Many of the stones, being limestone from an ancient sea, are filled with shells.

At one point we were standing under a magnificent tree, drunk on the sweet scent of it, with tiny white flower falling into our hair and down the necks of our shirts. It was heavenly. I asked Emilia what kind of tree it was. “Well it’s an olive tree, of course!”

My sister even took a picture of me under that tree, looking as if  I need to stand up straight.

Then we left the nice shady bits (FILLED with tourists and Greek schoolchildren) and went to the stadium. If it hadn’t been so hot, I’d have run a little, but you’ll have to make do with this:

You kind of have to. I never ran track. Shocker, right?

Then we went to the museum, which was entirely brilliant, but I will just link to a couple of photos because there are better ones elsewhere on the internet.

A bit of foreshadowing: when we got to the museum, several members of our tour group broke out into loud complaints about the lack of air conditioning (“what kind of country IS this? how do they LIVE?”) and the crowds. I’m not entirely sure how a person goes to Olympia and expects to walk around in solitude. We were so annoyed. We were more annoyed later.

ANYway, the museum houses a lovely statue of Nike

And the very famous Hermes of Praxiteles. Emilia described baby Dionysus in this statue as “anxious,” and it’s one of my favorite sound bites in my head: AHNKH-shee-oos. She also strongly recommended that we check out The Holy Butt of Hermes.

Nice, right? (Note to self: start working out.)

At one point, I was standing to the side perusing crumbly old objects when I noticed a super tall, gorgeous-looking dude staring off with a “bow-chikka-bow-wow!” expression on his face.

“Niiiice,” says I.

Turns out he was staring at my sister.

Awesome.

Then we bought up gobs of souvenirs at the gift shop, including tzatziki mix, tremendous herbs, and tiny statues that now live on my dresser and my desk. We rode the Fear Bus back to Katakolon and found a table in the shade at a restaurant right on the edge of the water. Mom and I ordered a a liter of “wine from a barrel” (according to the menu). It was good. Really, really good.

We had feta (lower left corner), souvlaki, and fried eggplant chips that are the first eggplant I’ve had in years that I enjoyed. They were outrageous.

Then I had my ego smashed flat.

There was a cat,  you see. A pretty little cat.

She wanted FUDZ and I had one bite of souvlaki left. So I held it down, and she came over to eat it.

“Nice, jerk. Where’s more?” she said. I thought “errr,” then held down a bit of potato.

That cat sniffed the potato, looked at me, put out her claws, and smacked the potato straight out of my hand. My response was a frantic search for a suitable offering. I held down a bit of the very good bread.

She didn’t even bother to sniff it. She knocked the bread out of my hand and looked at me with scorn more withering than that of my first mother-in-law.

In so many ways, I am unworthy.

kittyyyyyyyyy!

Ahem.

Then we walked the streets of Katakolon and came back with approximately 19 bags apiece. We were so sure we had solved the Greek debt crisis all on our own.

That night, our next-to-last night on the ship, I threw myself dramatically onto the floor to protest the horror that was The Up Bed.

Guess what I found? A trundle under one of the other beds! It had been there the whole time. It was MUCH more comfortable than The Up Bed. Ay yi yi.

We spent the next day trundling around the ship and resting. I went to the casino with my mother and discovered that I apparently make all slot machines wish to crawl away weeping. She said she had never lost $20 so quickly – less than 5 minutes.

The next morning, we awoke in Venice.

(As usual, most pictures are my sister’s.)