The Really Good Restaurant Adventure

For the next few days, Jack Sh*t is chronicling his adventures on his recent trip to Italy as well as including tips to help you plan your own international travel. It is his special way of saying "Nanna nanna boo boo, I went to Italy!" to all his loyal readers.

 Mostly our eating plan while on our Italian vacation has been (a) to stop someplace that looks pretty good when we’re hungry and/or (b) stop someplace that looks really good whether we’re hungry or not.

However, I had some across a tremendously well-reviewed restaurant that my wife Anita and I were dying to try.

I wasn’t sure either of us was going to have much of an appetite after visiting the Rialto Street Market, a huge collection of vendors peddling fresh fruits, vegetables and seafood. The appetite-killer was the little butcher shop that appeared to specialize in horse-meat. Giddy-up!

After a morning wandering through the market and an afternoon of more ancient church visiting (and stair-climbing), we decide to make our way to the restaurant for an early dinner.


All the guidebooks tell you one of the things to do in Venice is to “get lost”. Seeing as how the “streets” appear to be designed by a committee of lunatics, we have no trouble at all following this advice. As a matter of fact, we appear to spend most of our time fully dazed and disoriented.

I finally bite the bullet and turn on the data roaming on my iPhone, with the full understanding that it’s probably going to cost my daughter Pisa her college education. Thankfully, the phone’s GPS figures out where we are and leads us to our destination straightaway.

Unfortunately, it’s 5:30 and the restaurant doesn’t open until 7 p.m. Hungry and dejected, we wander over to a neighborhood park and hang out for a bit, watching some local kids race scooters around and older folks let their dogs visit the one phone-booth-sized square of grass in the area.

We get back to the restaurant right as it opens and, of course we hear the inevitable “Do you have a reservation?”

Whoops.

Apparently other people read reviews, too, and the place is booked for both tonight and tomorrow night, our last night in Venice. Anita has the good sense to check on lunch the next day (they do).

The next day, we give ourselves plenty of time to find the spot again. However, we spent so much time around the restaurant yesterday that we know it like the back of our hand. We walk straight to the place, and wind up getting there over an hour early. Are you kidding me?

We head back to our park to kill another 75 minutes, and I start getting worried that the expectations for this meal can’t possibly live up to all the time we’ve invested in it. This is setting up to be a disaster.

 

  

An hour or so later, we’re at our table and purring over a cheese plate and tapping our sparking prosecco glasses together. We’ve declared this our honorary 25th wedding anniversary meal.

No, it’s not a late-night candle-lit dinner, but like our marriage it may be unconventional at times, it may be something that we’ve had to work at sometimes and… it’s everything we hoped it would be.

Cheers!

More Italian Food Porn

Postcards from Venice

Nearly Sunk in Venice

For the next couple of weeks, Jack Sh*t is chronicling his adventures on his recent trip to Italy as well as including tips to help you plan your own international travel. It is his special way of saying "Nanna nanna boo boo, I went to Italy!" to all his loyal readers.

 The moment I stepped outside the train station and viewed the Grand Canal in Venice, one thought ran through my mind: “Why the hell did I lug these heavy golf clubs over here?”

Seriously, Venice is a one-of-a-kind spot. I was going to waste a bunch of time describing it, but instead I think I’ll just include a link to this trippin’ virtual tour.

As we were riding on the water bus to our stop, we realized that our directions to the hotel were… ummm… a little less than specific. As a matter of fact, there was nothing after, “Get off the water bus at such-and-such stop.”

We got off the boat and saw the most impressive churchal structure I think I’ve ever seen. We slipped inside and I fired up my iPad, thinking we could use its GPSishness to locate our destination. Only the battery was on about 1% because I had been watching an entire season of Storage Wars on the train ride over.

So we start wandering the “streets” of Venice, lugging heavy bags down creepy alleyways that I’d never even consider walking down if I were in any other city on earth. After about forty minutes of wandering, Anita ducks into another hotel and asks for help.

Five minutes later, we’re at our hotel without being mugged, spending 500 euros or dropping a suitcase into the water.

This vacation’s looking up!

The Pickpocket Incident

For the next few weeks, Jack Sh*t is chronicling his adventures on his recent trip to Italy as well as including tips to help you plan your own international travel. It is his special way of saying "Nanna nanna boo boo, I went to Italy!" to all his loyal readers. 

 They warn you about pickpockets on the subway in Milan, but how can you know they mean you?

We’re bumping about, standing room only, in the subway on the way to the train station and a young pregnant girl is parked behind my wife Anita.

We’re still in a travelers daze, trying to figure out which stop will land us at the train station. Next thing I know, Anita is stooping to pick up her wallet, which the girl has dropped trying to ease it out of her backpack. She slinks back, away from us, and takes a seat on the subway. If she feels any remorse or shame, it doesn't show in her eyes. It’s just another day at the office for her, I suppose.

Anita buries her wallet and phone deeper in the pack and starts wearing it front-ways. I move my own wallet to my front pocket after briefly considering shoving it down in my underwear.

We’re both a little shaken by the near-disaster, and I continuously feel a little panicked when I can't immediately put my hands on my wallet. As if traveling in a foreign country isn't stressful enough...

At the train station, we purchase tickets to Venice at a self-service kiosk, but the machine won’t take my credit card or chip-and-pin card for some reason, so I wind up having to feed it most of my remaining euros. A day and a half in and we're already more over budget than a Lord of the Rings movie.

The kiosk allowed us to pick the seats we wanted, but somehow we’ve managed to put
ourselves a dozen rows apart for the 3-hour train trip. I settle in and hold my wallet with
both hands.

Next stop: Venice.

What I Learned From Staring at The Last Supper

For the next few weeks, Jack Sh*t is chronicling his adventures on his recent trip to Italy as well as including tips to help you plan your own international travel. It is his special way of saying "Nanna nanna boo boo, I went to Italy!" to all his loyal readers.

 WWJE? (What Would Jesus Eat?)
There’s a professor at Cornell who has done some interesting research about the link between food and religion.  One of his discoveries was that the portion size of the food--as well as the size of the plates--has increased over the years in depictions of the Last Supper. It’s true; the plate size over the years (from 1000 to 2000) has increased by 66% and serving sizes have increased accordingly.

No I’m Not Going Around!
I also learned that convenience trumps artistic integrity. A portion of the lower part of the work (including Jesus’ legs) were cut away to make room for a doorway. I thought it was just because Leonardo couldn’t paint feet…

Oh Snap!
I also learned that the more important the art, the less likely that they’re going to let you take a picture of it.

Okay, So What About The Next-To-The-Last Supper?
I also learned that if you want to see The Last Supper, you better get your tickets months in advance like my wife Anita did.

You Are Here?

For the next few weeks, Jack Sh*t is chronicling his adventures on his recent trip to Italy as well as including tips to help you plan your own international travel. It is his special way of saying "Nanna nanna boo boo, I went to Italy!" to all his loyal readers.

 Chalk it up to travel-madness.

My wife Anita and I get the really helpful dude at our hotel front desk to draw us a map to direct us on the 5-minute walk to where we're supposed to meet our tour that includes viewing “The Last Supper.”

After wandering around for 20 minutes or so, we make our way back to our hotel and get the really helpful dude to explain it one more time, while shaking his head and rolling his eyes. I wish his English was terrible so I can blame our terrible ability to follow simple directions on him, but he speaks my native tongue better than I do.

We wander around again for another 25 minutes, and now we’re in serious jeopardy of missing our tour bus. We’ve been walking up and down the same block over and over, and the addresses seem to make no sense at all. Plus, there’s not a street sign to be seen anywhere.

We finally flag down another tour operator, who directs us around the corner to a place WITH A GIANT FREAKIN’ SIGN that we walked past SIX OR SEVEN TIMES.

With only moments to spare before we get left behind, we hop on the tour bus and breathe a sigh of relief.

“Phew,” I say. “Otherwise, we’d have had to go see “The Next-to-Last Supper.”

Postcards from Milan

For the next few weeks, Jack Sh*t is chronicling his adventures on his recent trip to Italy as well as including tips to help you plan your own international travel. It is his special way of saying "Nanna nanna boo boo, I went to Italy!" to all his loyal readers.

 

Know Your Euro

For the next few weeks, Jack Sh*t is chronicling his adventures on his recent trip to Italy as well as including tips to help you plan your own international travel. It is his special way of saying "Nanna nanna boo boo, I went to Italy!" to all his loyal readers.

 Meet the Euro, the Dollar’s suave, more-attractive international cousin. Yes, it looks like something you ran off on your home printer, and no, it’s not as much fun as the Peso. When you’re down in Mexico, you can exchange $100US for roughly three million pesos. That’s what I’m talking about! Purchasing power, baby!

No, the Euro is double dastardly because prices look reasonable but after you get back to your room and double-check your math, you discover that you may have… just possibly… overpaid for that combination “Last Supper/Dogs Playing Poker” piece of artwork.

If you’re planning a trip overseas anytime soon, please feel free to use this handy reference guide so that you won’t get monetarily mixed-up.

First things first: when you initially get your hands on some euros, don’t do what I did, which was yell at the bank dude, “Hey, I’m here on vacation; I don’t have time to play a game of Monopoly with you!”

However, it turns out that the euro is fairly simple to get accustomed to, but you do need to have triple-reinforced pockets due to the fact that it’s a very coin-heavy currency.

ONE CENT EURO COIN
Always keep at least one of these in your pocket in case you lose a filling from one of your teeth; you can just melt this little guy down and make very nice temporary replacement.

TEN CENT EURO COIN
Immediately throw this in the trash. It’s simply not worth carrying around.

TWENTY CENT EURO COIN
See “TEN CENT EURO COIN”

FIFTY CENT EURO COIN
Okay, we’re sniffing around at the edge of real money now, so pay attention. This is worth keeping around due to the fact that most public toilets cost anywhere from one euro to one euro fifty cents.

ONE EURO COIN
I got confused between the 1 cent/1 euro, so I probably threw away $50 dollars worth of coins. Yes, I know it makes more financial sense for governments to use $1 coins, but… like the bidet… I’m an American and you can’t tell me to carry around a $1 coin! I won’t do it!

TWO EURO COIN
Oh Hell no! So now I’ve got a coin that represents real money, only it’s in my pocket where I constantly forget about it. My wife Anita went to a public toilet that didn’t make change and dropped two 2-euro coins in a machine that didn’t make change. She sat in there for a half hour trying to get her money’s worth.

FIVE EURO BILL
This is the your go-to money in the Euro family. I don’t feel like rooting around through a pocketful of coins, so just about everything I purchase is paid for with this bill. It’s also my tipping bill; I realize it’s too much when a bellboy at the hotel hugs me and calls me “Papa”.

TEN EURO BILL 
I don’t think I ever saw a $10 euro bill. Maybe they’re just a mirage.

TWENTY EURO BILL  
Whatever you pay for with this bill… stick of gum, Coke Light (Coke Light? Coke Light?), Last Supper mouse pad… you’ll get nothing but coins back as change. At some point, your pocket or purse might start dragging against the ground from the weight.

FIFTY EURO BILL
A fifty euro bill basically represents one meal for two at most restaurants, including the service charge for sitting at the table, the fee for water and the tip that the wait staff seem always surprised to see.

BIGGER BILLS
I suppose there are larger euro denominations than these, but you can’t afford them.






Last note: When you return home, expect to find enough leftover euros rattling around in your luggage to get a good start on your next European vacation.