I kept a travel journal while I was in Italy. Most of it was sloppily written at times of near exhaustion, but if I can ever find a few minutes I'd like to type it up and post it. I never really wrote about the trip on the blog because I thought I was going to get to the travel journal thing sooner. But since I've floundered, here goes:

In sum, it was great. Everything about it surpassed my expectations tenfold. Marissa's planning was flawless and we got to nearly every single destination that we wanted to see: The Sistine Chapel, Roman Forum, Colosseum, Uffizi, Accademia among dozens of others. The weather was perfect, about 86 - 88 and sunny ever day. The food was ridiculous. I will never, ever be able to think about Italian food the same way again.. I don't know if it's an attention to detail that we don't have here in America... or if it's something as simple as the soil the food comes from... but it was hands down the best food I've ever eaten. Our air and train travel went flawlessly and our ability to navigate through cities / communicate with locals was way easier than I thought it would be.

The only hiccup came on our second to last night. We arrived at our hotel in Venice at about 9:55pm to find the front door locked. Eeventually we found a sign on the door that essentially read (in both Italian and English): We have waited until the previously discussed check-in time. Our lobby is closed for the night. See you tomorrow!

The only problem was that there was no previously discussed check-in time. We talked to an employee at the restaurant adjacent to the hotel but he didn't speak much english and didn't indicate that he knew how to get in touch with the owners. We brought two police men over to the sign.. but their English was even worse. Their most understandable response was an excited "you can come back..... tomorrow!". Yeah, great, thanks. But what about fucking tonight!? Of course, the little bit of italian that I knew failed me and I couldn't remember how to ask about "esta notte?". We were initially worried because Venice is quite small and it was a very, very crowded week at all of the cities we had visited. Luckily, Marissa had spotted this beautiful joint on our walk from the waterbus. The gentleman at the desk spoke great english, sympathized with our plight, and gave us a discount on one of the two rooms he had left when he had every chance in the world to gouge us for far more than he did. It was expensive, but we'd been very good about our spending money while there and not having to sleep on the watery Venetian streets made it worth every penny. We actually have a good shot at getting our money back from the travel agency for their miscommunication about the "previously discussed check-in time", too.. which would ensure that there was not a single bad thing about our entire trip.

I've been half-heartidly saying that I wanted to visit Europe for a very long time. I'm very glad that I was finally in the right position to do it and that I went with the right person. Now that I have I know that's it's not only very do-able, but worth every penny and minute of effort and I definitely plan on returning. ***

Posted some pictures up from the Dear Electric recording session at my house this past weekend here.