Chalet Shenanigans - Chapter 21

Buying a Completely Inappropriate Gift for the Grandkids


We did our whirlwind trip to Russia in only five days.  Hopefully, for those of you going there on vacation, you will have much longer to enjoy the sights, absorb the culture, eat the food, etc.  I took up the whole last blog post on just one Russian bar, so let me clue you in on the rest of the trip.  Now, this is going to go fast, so pay attention.

My number one priority was visiting Anastasia’s Summer Palace, Tsarskoe Selo, (OK, it really wasn’t HERS, you know that, right?  It was her dad’s and he was a Tsar, so she like, got to use it.  She was, as we say in America about all the Euro royals, a Member of the Lucky Sperm Club).  My husband, bless his heart, had no opinion on the itinerary for the day, (for once), so we trundled down to the concierge to find out the best way to go to the palace which lies about 15 miles outside of St. Petersburg.

The most efficient and popular way was to walk 6 blocks down Nevsky Prospect, look for a multitude of kiosks advertising their daily tours and ask around of the various people wearing sandwich boards about guided bus tours, in English, to Tsarskoe Selo.  Now, y’all know that Mr. Big is not a fan of public transport, but his is also not a fan of spending money.  He tentatively asked the concierge if it wouldn’t just be easier to take a taxi, but he quickly jumped on the bus bandwagon when she told him he would have to pay the driver to sit there all day and wait for us for the return trip.  Cost:  approximately 10,000 rubles.


Russian money is one of those currencies that make your head hurt to do the conversion rate.  So, even though 10,000 rubles might only equal 15 cents, it still sounds like a lot.  It was certainly enough to make the blood drain out of Mr. Big’s face, I can tell you that.  Off we tripped to check out the tour buses.  Turned out, there was only one tour bus per day to the Summer Palace that conducted the tour in English, so we had four hours on our hands to kill before the tour left.  Hello, shopping.


Funny story.  One time, about a hundred years ago, Charming Daughter and I were in an antique store in Asheville, North Carolina and stumbled upon a set of Russian nesting dolls with all of the Russian leaders on them.  I mean, the biggest one was Gorbachev, Breshnev was in there, and back through time through Stalin and, finally, the teeniest one was Lenin.  Well, to find this set in North Carolina was just, um, shocking, really.  Like, WHO IN GOD’S NAME, had this decorative item on their mantle?  Ever since then, she and I have had an inside joke about “voold you laak zum Vruusian nestink dolls?”  And then we crack up.  Every time.  I know, I know, inside jokes are so boring.

Anyway, while strolling the streets of St. Petersburg waiting for our bus, Mr. Big and I came upon kiosk after kiosk after kiosk with, you guessed it, Vruusian nestink dolls.  Of course, I must buy some for my daughter, but then, I got a load of the price tags.  Crazy expensive!  (The real ones.  The ones made in China are cheaper.)  They have nesting dolls that are girls, they have nesting dolls that are world leaders, and, my favorite, they have nesting dolls that are American college football teams.  What?  Yes, on a street corner in St. Petersburg, Russia, there was a set of University of South Carolina Gamecocks nesting dolls.  No Clemson ones, though, so we gave them a pass.

The next kiosk had something that we did buy, however.   MRS. DOMESTIC SON, if Grand One is reading this, please make her stop!  Grand One and Grand Two like to play chess.  They are actually quite good.  Right before my eyes was a wooden chess set wherein the chess pieces were Russia vs. America army people.  The queens were carrying tiny briefcases with the word “bomb” written in Russian on them.  (Why the American queen’s suitcase had Russian writing on it is anybody’s guess.  Probably because the person who painted it did not speak English).  OMG, I must own this so-not-politically-correct-memorabilia.  So I do.  Natch.

After negotiating with the vendor by using my FINGERS because she was pretending to speak zero English, I’m pretty sure I paid upwards of 6,000 US dollars for the chess set.  It was either six thousand or six hundred or six.  Pick one.  Anyway, Domestic Son will have to hide it if he ever has any Eastern European friends over for coffee.  It’s that bad.  I love it.

We had time to visit the blue-green-yellow cathedral in one of the main squares before we had to catch our bus.  I don’t even know the name of the cathedral, but you can’t miss it. It is in the middle of St. Petersburg and it is lime green, turquoise blue and sunshine yellow with a million people standing around it taking pictures.  Mr. Big is a sucker for a cathedral and he heard, while eavesdropping on one of the tour groups outside of the church, that the mosaics inside were fantastic.

DON’T DO IT, PEOPLE!  It’s a giant rip-off.  It’s not even a CHURCH.  It is one big tourist trap.  There are gift kiosks INSIDE the “church”.  Here’s a hint:  if there are people haggling over t-shirt prices in the nave, you are not in a house of God.  You are in a house of commerce.  Fair warning.

Our English-speaking tour guide on our bus was hysterical.  She so did not speak English.  She had completely and phonetically memorized her four hour tour.  Her accent, her syntax, her word choice; just mesmerizing.  She was like a computerized taped tour and by that I mean that, as we passed one landmark or another, she would launch into this canned spiel in whatever crazy language she was speaking and, when she was finished, she was finished.

 If anyone on the bus attempted to ask her a follow up question, she would just raise her eyebrows and smile.  SHE HAD NO IDEA WHAT ANY OF US WERE SAYING.  The drive out to the palace was 35 minutes of absolute hilarity.  I kept looking around the bus at the other five people, (yes, on that day in St. Petersburg, there were, apparently, only 6 English-speaking tourists in the whole city), to see if maybe I was just totally STUPID, but, no.  The other five, including my beloved, were as equally in the dark as I was.  The woman was incomprehensible.  But funny.  So, I just sat back and took notes for the blog and tried to make her say even funnier things.  Which was not difficult.

For example, upon arrival at our destination, I immediately noticed that some of the architectural details on the palace, like the window sills, had been gilded in gold, but the vast majority were only painted in this faux-gold-toned paint.  I asked about this and she explained, haltingly, that “zere iz no money”. 

Yes, unfortunately, that is one of those ugly downsides to killing off your aristocracy.  If you execute all of the dudes with the money, who is going to pay for the upkeep on the 218-room houses?  Who?  Farmer Ivan?  His wife?  I think not.  No, no.  It is now up to the Russian taxpayer to pay for the upkeep on Tsarskoe Selo.  Do they like paying for palace renovation with their tax dollars?

“It iz not a qvestion of laak or dizlaak.  It is a qvestion of duty.  As the money comes in, leetle by leetle, ve pay for the gilding.  Vindow by vindow.  Now, does anybody elz haf any qvestions bezides zis voman?”

To wrap this up, if you go, both the Summer and Winter Palaces in St. Petersburg are worth the tour.  That’s two days, right there. 

The Kremlin and Red Square in Moscow are worth one day, if you count walking through the highly-westernized two-story mall on Red Square.  (You cannot afford anything at this mall.  If you want to pay $400 for a pair of jeans,  just come visit me in Lausanne.)

The four-hour train ride between the two cities is educational because you get to see the countryside, which was quite enlightening.  Unlike my chess set, I’m going to try to be politically correct here.  The villages in the Russian countryside are not quaint.  The houses look to consist of tar paper and galvanized tin.  In four hours, covering about 500 miles, I saw MAYBE eight paved roads.  It looks to be a hardscrabble life out there in the country on dirt roads in depressing housing conditions.  Hopefully, those conditions are on the rise for the Russian people.  But only after they finish paying for the gilding on 782 more window frames at the Summer Palace.

Chalet Shenanigans - Chapter 20

 Where We Chill Out with Some New Russian Mobster Friends

My first recollection of anything Russian was in primary school in the 1960’s in California.  We had three kinds of “drills” at school:  fire drills, earthquake drills and Russian bomb drills.  Fire drills were not so bad because we got to go outside on the playground and leave the books and pencils behind.  Earthquake drills and Russian drills were miserable, however, because we all had to crouch down underneath our desks for what seemed like an eternity and when they finally let us crawl out, my outfit was always dusty and dirty, which made me mad.

So, for many years, I pictured Russians as these big, nasty guys who were going to come to my school, shake it like an earthquake and ruin my nice little sundress.  The bastards.  Then, when I was in my twenties, I read a Danielle Steele book called “Zoya” and I became extremely fascinated with the story of poor Princess Anastasia and how more of these nasty, Russian guys executed her entire family INCLUDING HER SICK LITTLE BROTHER.  Her body wasn’t found for decades and it was all a delicious and decadent mystery which my 26-year-old drama queen self just gobbled up.

I remember trying to picture myself with multiple palaces at my disposal like Anastasia.  She had a palace for every season but (according to Danielle Steel, that renowned historian) her favorite was the family’s Summer Palace, Tsarkoe Selo.  Now, I didn’t have a clue how to even say that but I just knew that I wanted to go there one day.  One day when I was no longer petrified of Russians.

Fast forward 24 years to a time when Americans trip in and out of Moscow like it was in Canada and Russians nosh on McDonald’s burgers and shop at the Levi’s store in the mall at the Kremlin. 

There’s even a Mexican restaurant on the street leading to Red Square called Borscht & Burritos.  (Kidding, I think it’s called Tequila something or other.  If it was MY restaurant it would definitely be called Borscht & Burritos.)

So, obviously, it’s time to go see my Summer Palace, right?  Before Russia starts getting too westernized and loses all its’ “russian-ness”.  Oh, ho, ho, there’s no chance of that happening any time soon!  First of all, Americans still have to get a visa to travel to Russia which is giant pain in the buttocks.  After you’ve taken care of that issue you are given another slip of paper on the airplane.  You have to write down exactly where you will be every day that you are in Mother Russia.  You will be expected to keep this with you on your person at all times and hand it over to anybody who asks.  (We were asked twice.  Once, I couldn’t find mine which caused quite a stir and pictures of gulags in Siberia began running through my head.)

Speaking of the plane, here is a rule of thumb:  if the passengers all clap when the plane lands, that is the signal that you are arriving in a not-quite-fully-developed nation.  They are clapping because they have arrived ALIVE and that can never be good.   If you go, don’t be discouraged by the drive from the St. Petersburg airport into the city center.  It’s kind of. . .grim.  It didn’t help that, in spite of the fact that it was the middle of summer, the people were wearing coats and boots because it was only 50 degrees F outside.

Once you get in the city center and start seeing all of the monuments and old buildings and the main shopping street, Nevsky Prospect, St. Petersburg scenery gets much better.  As a matter of fact, if one were going to try and characterize Russian “style”, one might call it “over the top”.  If one were being nice.  If one were being truthful, one might call it “Bordello Chic”.  The architecture, the décor and furniture in the hotels and shops, the palaces, in short, everything, is overdone, overdecorated, overgilded, oversized,etc.  I was just too, too much.

As you will see from the pictures, the Russians think there’s nothing that can’t be improved with a little gold leaf.  They also love marble, crystal and this funky shade of blue that was apparently Catherine the Great’s fave.  If a Russian can somehow combine all four of these elements AT ONE TIME, well, they are just over the moon in Decoration Nirvana.  More is more in Russia.

For example, the bar in our hotel was so scary and intimidating, we couldn’t even drink there.  There were six, SIX!, 12-foot tall statues of Zeus or somebody holding up the ceiling in a room about the size of a single-wide.  There was another little bar/restaurant about a half a block away that looked much cozier and laid back.  So, we went there twice.  Natch.

The first night we went, we noticed nothing amiss.  There were two tables of some really big, burly guys but we thought they were just there to drink massive amounts of vodka and watch the Olympics.  BTW, the Russian programming of the Olympics is A HOOT!  It is all weight-lifting, wrestling and gymnastics.  All the time.  Period.  Our dinner was delicious—borscht and pierogies.  Very traditional.

Late the next afternoon, we stopped back in for apertifs and that was when we noticed something very strange.  One of the big guys from the night before was back.  I just thought, OK, he’s a regular.  But this afternoon, he was with, well, there is no nice way to put it really, he was being entertained by two ladies of the evening.  (Technically, in this case, I guess I would have to call them ladies of the afternoon.)   And his bodyguard.  Oh, excuse me.  ONE of his bodyguards.  His OTHER bodyguard was still standing inside the front door of the restaurant where I had mistaken him for the maître d’hotel.  But that couldn’t be right, could it, since the REAL maître d’hotel was actually standing right there next to me showing me to my seat?

Slowly, it dawned on me that this “regular” might be a Mafia guy.  There was another customer to my right, all by himself, talking on his phone, but making eye contact with HIS bodyguard out in the vestibule.  Now, I am not the brightest bulb in the box, but I did own a little restaurant for 15 years and even I know that a little, neighborhood bar THAT ONLY HAS 6 PEOPLE in it, (two of whom were Mr. Big and I), did not need 3 bodyguards to maintain order.  Mercy.  That’s a 2:1 ratio.  That’s a recipe for gunplay, in my book.

As one of only two people in the restaurant who was not packing heat, I decided to put my theory to the test.  I wanted to see if those two dudes out in the foyer worked for the restaurant or if they worked for the clientele.  Putting on my snootiest Swiss expression and strut and my ultra-high Parisienne French accent, I sauntered out to ask them the location of the toilettes.  I got two blank stares.  I asked again in English.  More blank stares.  Since I had run through my entire repertoire of languages with no response, I turned and made my own way to the bathroom, of which I already knew the location since I had just been there the night before.

Upon returning to the table and summoning the waiter to bring me another glass of wine because there was no way in hell I was leaving this excitement, I whispered to Mr. Big without moving my lips, “Dude, we are in a Russian mob bar.”

Mr. Big:  No shit, Sherlock.  Did you think those two chicks were that guy’s daughters?

Me:  Well, actually, yes, initially.  But the two guys with guns in the vestibule who won’t stop staring at us are what really tipped me off.

Mr. Big:  This guy sitting next to me with the phone is quite scary.

Me:  I know.  Isn’t this fabulous?  Quick, order another drink.  And man up and order vodka this time, would you?  You can’t sit in a mob bar and drink pink wine.  Puh-leeze.

About this time, Mob Guy With Hookers lights up a cigarette INSIDE THE RESTAURANT like it was his living room.  After putting my eyes back in my skull, I summoned the real maître d’hotel  and asked for an ashtray because I have two smoking friends back in the US who will absolutely die of jealousy that I was smoking inside a restaurant.  (Hi, Chris!  Hi, Doug!)  Anyway, the waiter LOOKS OVER AT SMOKING MOB GUY with his eyebrows raised and he receives the go-ahead to go get me an ashtray.  This was when I realized that one is probably not allowed in regular, i.e. non-mob-affiliated, bars to smoke, but since I was now one of the gang, well. . .g’head, girl.  Rock on with your smoking self.

OK, nothing else happened.  No one died or was gunned down or anything.  I did wave good-bye and say au revoir to all my new friends.  None of them paid any attention to me, however.  In spite of the fact that we did not become Facebook friends, I am pretty sure that, should I ever need to have Mr. Big “taken care of” I know just where to turn.

Here is the link to the hotel where we stayed:  Taleon Imperial Hotel  The Mob bar is, of course, nowhere to be found on the internet.  Just go out of the hotel, turn right and go about three doors down.  If you have to go through two sets of bullet-proof glass doors, you are in the right place.  Tell them Trailing Spouse said “hey”.

Chalet Shenanigans - Chapter 19

Summertime in the Alps, aka Who Knew Burkas Had Found Us

We had to hurry home from our Venice trip because I was expecting around 25 people at the chalet for “La Fete du Quatorze Juillet”, also known as July 14th, the French day of independence where they celebrate cutting off Marie Antoinette’s and various other royals’ heads.  Unlike America’s  independence which was won via a legitimate war with uniforms and troops and everything, the French just got up one morning after a nice café au lait and croissant and said “today, we kill the king.  Oh, and his snooty-assed wife, too”.

Really, you can’t blame them.  I’ve been to Versailles.  I’ve seen Marie Antoinette’s bathroom.  If I was a French peasant, I would’ve revolted, as well.  I mean, she had people whose job it was to wash her pits and wipe her ass and change her in and out of her outfits 10 times a day.  I should admit, though, that, at one time, I had people who did this for me, too.  Their name was “Mom”.

So, my experience with Independence Day parties of any nature involves a lot of outdoor cooking, a lot of beer and fireworks.  As usual, there’s always a dilemma in Europe over bagged ice, i.e. it doesn’t exist.  (I need to insert here for the locals that the Coop in Ouchy has installed an ice chest with bagged ice.  Now, don’t all go at once!  Chill!  Ha!) I’ve discussed my normal plan of attack before in this blog where I start making ice in ice cube trays a week ahead of time and store it in zip-locs in the freezer.  Even using that method, however, one is severely limited because our freezers over here are so little, one can only store and make so much.

For this party, I had bought a really cool, old galvanized tin baby bathtub at a brocante fair that I was going to use as the beer cooler.  I began making ice two days ahead of time and then, in a HUGE stroke of serendipity, one of my Facebook friends posted a picture of a baby shower where the hostess had filled some pink and blue balloons with water, frozen them and used them to chill down her champagne.



Well, I copied that idea in about a New York minute.  Mind you, I couldn’t find just red, white and blue balloons, (conveniently, the colors of both the American and French flags), so I had to buy bags and bags of multi-colored balloons and sort out all the pinks, purples and yellows to fill my needs.  (P.S., if anybody in Lausanne needs some green, pink and purple balloons—call me.)

I filled them with water out of the tap and put them in the freezer and on party day, I surrounded my beers in my baby bathtub with my frozen red, white and blue balloons.  GENIUS!  I made about 100 cupcakes decorated with marzipan French flags and Eiffel Towers that came out looking like erect penises but what are you going to do?  Is it my fault that La Tour Eiffel looks like a phallic symbol?  I don’t think so.

We have an outdoor firepit on our deck which burns real wood which gave me an epiphany.  Bonfire = hot dogs and marshmallows cooked on sticks over an open flame, right?  So, I made a “kid’s table” with little Cokes in glass bottles, hot dogs, marshmallows and a new paddle ball set.  The paddle ball, itself, was lost somewhere on the mountain after about 3 minutes, but they (read all the kids, but mostly the little French kids) LOVED the hot dogs and marshmallows.  So much so that one of the 4-year-olds puked all over the deck around 9 p.m. but, you know, that just means the party is a success when the guests start projectile vomiting.

In preparation for the July 14th festivities, Mr. Big and I did manage to finish the powder room renovation at the chalet before they arrived. 

All except for the actual glass shower door, which had to be special ordered from the hardware store in Switzerland.  We are currently running a pool on when, exactly, this shower door will arrive. 

Someone took February, 2013, already, which was going to be my bet, so I am not participating in the pool.   Let me just say to those of you who are new to Europe, and to Switzerland, in particular, that if you need something “a mesure” or made to measure, in English, that you had better be the kind of person who plans ahead.  Years ahead.  Yeah.

Okay, fair warning, to Domestic Son and his wife.  DO NOT LET GRAND ONE AND GRAND TWO see the following pictures.  Seriously.  Our family is a “winter vacation” kind of family.  We are a SKIING family, i.e. we only ever used to go to the Alps when there was sufficient snow.  Now that Mr. Big and I have bought this chalet, we are here all the time.  Here’s news:  these mountains and these stars and this weather and this lighting and all of the outdoor activities are FREAKIN’ AWESOME in the summer.  It is MAGICAL, people, and you know I am not easily impressed.

Just outside our back door, the village of Chatel has just installed a mini-zipline, a mini-rock climbing wall and one of those bouncy/bungee/trampoline things.  8 feet from our house.  If one of you tells my grandson, I will never speak to you again.  BTW, Small Son, if the whole college thing doesn’t work out, this bungee guy’s job is awesome.  He doesn’t start work until 2 p.m.  Now, granted all he does for five hours is strap kids into a harness and re-start them if they just don’t get the whole process, but, hey, it’s a living and you don’t have to get out of bed until 1:48 p.m.

I went on a walk this morning at 1600 meters, yes, I am fifty, but Europe makes you into a crazy person wherein you find yourself doing silly things like walking up giant mountains, and, I tell you, it was AMAZING.  The view over my village, walking across ski slopes that I’ve skied down all winter, sharing my walking trail with daredevil mountain bikers covered in mud (that I felt superior over because they were going DOWN while I was walking UP),  and finally reaching the top where I enjoyed watching the people partaking of the Fantasticable.

What is the Fantasticable, you may ask?  Oh, my dear friends.  Let me tell you.  All during the winter, whilst riding the cablecar up the mountains to ski, one sees banners for the “Fantasticable”.  It runs only in the summer.  I assumed, (wrongly), that is was like some 50-meter long cheesy zip-line half-way up the mountain.  No, madame, you were so beyond wrong.  

The Fantasticable in Pre-le-Joux is not for the faint-hearted.  It is not for pregnant women or people under the age of 15.  It is not for people who smoke, faint at the sight of blood or those who want to live to see the next day.  It is SERIOUS flying, folks, like up where the airplanes go.  One takes 2 cable cars up to 1900 meters, lies flat on their belly hovering a few feet above a platform, and then some stoner (aka a mountain employee) UNCLIPS you from all that is holy and good OUT INTO SPACE BETWEEN TWO MOUNTAIN TOPS approximately 1.5 miles above the earth.   I actually have a really fancy camera, but even my awesome camera would not take a good picture of these brave souls because they were just too high.  It, (my camera), thought I was trying to take a picture of an airplane.  Truly.

Upon seeing the Fantasticable the first time, Mr. Big said, “No, ma’am.  My body will never be seen lying prone upon that apparatus.”  Fine.  Whatever.  I CANNOT wait until I can entice one of my three children here and then I will be posting the MOST AWESOME PICTURES EVER SEEN on Facebook of a 50 year old woman flying above the earth on the Fantasticable.  I’m just saying’.

Anyway, my 5 hour hike today above my village, dodging mountain-mud bikers all the while was the stuff of which dreams are made.  Oh, before I forget the best part, (which, probably, only my daughter will think is funny), apparently, the Arabs have discovered Chatel.   Yes, Charming Daughter, today I saw Burkas on the Bob-Luges.  I tried to take a picture for you but I was inside the bus at the time and the window made it all fuzzy.  Bummer.  You will have to come see for yourself.  (But don’t tell my grandkids because they have no idea how fun it is here in the summer!)

Chalet Shenanigans - Chapter 18

 My Stunning Venetian Toilet Brush

It’s 10:30 p.m. here at the chalet on a Sunday night and Mr. Big is totally engrossed in his Olympics, even though it is taped and he already knows the results of every event.  I thought I’d finish the last little bits about the Venice vacation and then we will move on to other things.

Y’all know the saying that “it’s a small world”, right?  Well, one of the gals in my bridge group back in the US has a dear, old college friend who currently lives in Venice.  I had promised my bridge group pal that, if I ever went to Venice, I would look up her friend and say “hey”.  Not only did I say “hey”, I ended up staying in this friend’s apartment, meeting her husband, going out to her house for cocktails and proceeding onto dinner in their little neighborhood resto.

This Venice connection friend, whom we shall call She With No Filter, was fabulous.  She originally hailed from Charlotte, North Carolina, but she has lived in Venice for 30 years.  She met a local yokel there 8 years ago and married him.  After she married Charming Italian Guy, she moved out of her apartment and into his because he had more square footage and a better view over the Grand Canal.



Keep in mind that she did not know either me or Mr. Big from Adam.  I just emailed her out of the blue and named-dropped my bridge gal’s moniker and told her we were coming to Venice and would like to meet for drinks.  Y’all.  It was ridiculous.  From the very first email, I could tell that we were going to be fast friends.  She was CRAAAAZY.  She With No Filter was firing email questions at me like it was her job.  When are you coming?  Where are you staying?  Where?  Oh, God, no, don’t stay there.  It’s full of tourists.  Park here.  Take a vaporetti there.  Eat here.  Drink there.



We ended up staying in her Bachelorette Apartment because she coerced me into cancelling our hotel reservation.  She scared me and y’all know I don’t scare easily.  If you could have heard that phone call to Mr. Big, y’all would have cracked up.

Me:  Hi, honey.  Whatcha doin’?



Him:  Um, working.  What are YOU doing?



Me:  I’m finalizing our plans for Venice.  By the way, you need to cancel the reservation at that hotel downtown.



Him:  Huh?  No way!  I was the last guy to book it on booking-dot-com!  It was recommended by 834 other people!  It was like neck and neck between me and some dude from Sweden just to get the last room!

Me:  Sorry, bub.  It’s gone.  Just let it go.  We are staying in a private apartment, nowhere near downtown, in a place with no air conditioning and we are going to love it.  I am being a good friend here and you just have to go with the flow.



Him:  WAAAAAH!  Why do you do these things to me?  Who are these friends of whom you speak and why do I always agree to this shit that I really don’t want to do?  Why, why, why, blah, blah, blah. . .



You get the picture.  Anyway, we show up in Venice at She Who Has No Filter’s apartment fully expecting to meet, greet, exchange keys and money and be on our merry way.  No.  We were there 8 seconds and our hostess had dropped the “F” bomb twice, invited us to dinner at her favorite local restaurant and charmed us thoroughly.  I am trying to find someone to compare her to.  Y’all remember the swimmer on the Poseidon Adventure, Shelley Winters?  Well, she was an Italian Shelley Winters.

We met at her and Charming Italian Guy’s  apartment for a drink (or three) and walked to their neighborhood restaurant.  Unbeknownst to us, she had arranged earlier in the day for a table directly across from the TV because Italy was playing in the World Cup (soccer tournament) and she knew her husband would not agree to go out of their apartment if he could not watch the game.  So, the boys sat on one side of the table and watched the game and the girls sat on the other and chatted.



There were no menus involved.  She Who Has No Filter told us what she was going to order for the table and we all agreed to try everything.  I ate a whole plate of sardines.  It was delicious.  In between courses and conveniently timed with the football/soccer time-outs, the restaurant owners came out onto the patio and played live music.  A magical, magical night.

Turns out, Charming Italian Guy is retired from. . .wait for it. . .one of the Murano glass factories.  Remember, I was an antique dealer for 20 years.  I was swooning, swooning, I tell you, when I found out this factoid.  But, here’s a clue to my level of ignorance.  I thought “Murano” glass was from ONE factory in Murano, Italy.  No.

You must, if you go to Venice, take the vaporetti out to the island of Murano, where you will find, about 12 “fornaci” or furnaces or, in layman’s terms, factories where they fire the glass.  We spent an entire day out there on the island.  It was not tacky, it was not cheesy, it was just cool.  Back on the mainland, every gift store sells “Murano” glass but it is not the real thing.  It is made in China.  BEWARE!  Go, instead, out to the island and buy the real thing.  It is pricey, but it is cool.

Us, we didn’t buy a durned thing.  Ha!.  No, really.  Over our living room coffee table in Lausanne, we have a Murano glass chandelier that we found at an antique market for 80 euros.   Mr. Big was like, um, no, Trailing Spouse, we will not be paying retail for our Murano glass.  We will continue to buy our odd bits and pieces as we stumble upon them at random, out there in the wild.  I wholeheartedly agreed, but that did not stop me from drooling over the things that OTHER people were buying.  Here’s the cool part.  If, you, you North American person you, buy something on the island of Murano, they are well-versed in how to get it to your house in Des Moines.  The UPS boat, yes, boat, pulls up in front of the showrooms every day and takes your well-wrapped vase to the Venice airport across the bay and deposits it on a plane.  I had never seen a UPS boat before and I was like, well, that’s friggin’ cool.

We did buy an awesome toilet brush.  We stumbled upon a tiny store, back in the main part of Venice, called MEE, (www.meevenizia.com).  As you know, we are redoing the powder room at the chalet.  Lo and behold, there before my eyes was the coolest toilet brush I had ever seen.  “Toilet brush” was actually on my list of things to buy, but never, in my wildest dreams, did I think I would find it in Venice!  I thought I would find it in Home Depot, ya know?

Also, in MEE, I found a ceramic cow riding an ice cream soda dairy cart.  Well, you know I bought that puppy, right?  Mr. Big was like, why do we need this cow?  And I was like, we need to buy this artsy cow to sit on the bar as an art statement BECAUSE WE LIVE IN THE ALPS WHERE THERE A LOT OF COWS.  Duh.

While we are in this shopping vein, let me caution you about the ubiquitous Venetian masks that you will see in every gift shop made of plaster of Paris.  DON’T BUY THEM!!! THEY ARE MADE IN CHINA!!!  Go a few blocks off the beaten path and find the studios of the actual theatrical maskmakers and buy your masks there.  Here’s the clue:  real masks are made of paper mache.  They are light and they don’t weigh a thing.  We bought a big one to hang on the wall in the bathroom.  It makes me happy every time I go in to pee.  Actually, She Who Has No Filter informed me that even my mask is a fake.  If you want the real, real thing, i.e. a mask that would actually be worn in a theater, it can only be black or white.  No paint.  No color.  No decoration.  I didn’t say anything to her (because I am still kind of scared of her), but that is just boring, right?  I wasn’t actually planning on performing on a Venetian stage; I just wanted something to hang in the bathroom.  No offense, SWHNF.

In a nutshell, go to Venice, but try not to go in summer.  Even though it is surrounded by water, it’s still hot.  Oh, and if you have a Venetian connection, run with it, because there is nothing like an authentic Venetian meal in a non-touristy area.  And, definitely, definitely, go out to Murano.

You remember that I started this epistle with a reference to “it’s a small world” because one of my bridge friends in Camden, South Carolina had an old college friend who lived in Venice now, right?  Yeah, well, I can beat that.  On the way home to Switzerland from Venice, we stayed the night on Lake Como, in Italy.  We took a ferry to the little village of Bellagio, which sits out in the middle of the lake.  Some of you may know the name because George Clooney used to own a house there and, also, I believe, there is a rather large casino in Las Vegas named after it.



Anyway, I was waiting at the pier in Bellagio to get my ferry back to the town where we over-nighting, and I hear, out of the blue, “Trailing Spouse!  Trailing Spouse!”  (You understand, this person was not actually yelling Trailing Spouse, right?  She was yelling my actual first and last name, get it?)

It was yet another person from Camden, South Carolina, population 7,500.  What are the odds?  Everybody has one of these stories, right, where you happen upon a person in some random place?  I swear, it makes your brain go crazy.  I was like, Random Friend from South Carolina, what THE HELL are you doing here on this dock in Bellagio?  Are you looking for George?  Or what?  Because he is long gone.



No.  Silly me.  She was shopping.  Of course.  It’s how we roll, we Americans.  Toilet brushes, leather shoes, Venetian masks, whatever.  Nothing, nothing, however, beats the purchase we just made in St. Petersburg two days ago for the grandkids.  But that is still two blog posts away, so you just have to wait!