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!

Chalet Shenanigans - Chapter 17

 You, Big Man, Front of boat, Prego

I don’t know if I can cover our second trip to Italy this summer in just one blog post.  It might take two;  it was that fun/funny/awesome.  Mr. Big and I were meeting friends (another group of friends, not the Florence/Tuscany friends) in Venice.  We set off in our car from Switzerland, intending to drive about 5 hours, (Mr. Big’s car trip limit), just spend the night wherever and continue on into Venice the next morning to meet their 9:40 a.m. plane at the Venice airport.

Since we didn’t leave from Switzerland until late afternoon, we only got to Brescia before Mr. Big was ready to call it a night.  We did as we always do, (and as you should do, too, if you plan to travel like we do, i.e., by the seat of your pants), and followed the signs to the “Centro”.  Please note that this is the point where you should follow the actual, real directional signs and abandon your GPS.  Our GPS, Margaret, is good but she is not that good.  Margaret never knows about the myriad one-way streets and she is especially confused by Pedestrian Only Zones.  Margaret is always trying to get us to take a right when we KNOW that taking a right will only result in mayhem.



Turning off Obnoxious Margaret for the moment, we made our way to the Centro and we were met with a giant dilemma.  All of the street signs would seem to indicate that we had arrived in a Pedestrian Only Zone, yet we were still following a long line of cars who all seemed to know where they were going.  Blissfully and obliviously following the line of cars because they were heading EXACTLY IN THE DIRECTION WE WANTED TO GO, we found ourselves in the center of town.  Not only were we in the center of town, we were in the main piazza.  And, we were being herded by many, many Italian traffic cops around many, many bollards and guard rails TO PARK DIRECTLY IN THE CENTER OF THE PIAZZA  BECAUSE WE WERE IN A LINE OF CARS FOR A CAR SHOW.  Yes, Mr. Big’s Audi was now lined up in the middle of a town square for some car show.  Everyone else that we had been following was getting out, opening up their trunk lids and hoods and getting ready to show off their cars which I then noticed all had WRITING AND ADVERTISING all over them.

Yeah.  Us, not so much.  I turned my head to my beloved and said, “Dude.  Our car is not Car Show Ready.  A) It is filthy and B) I believe there is unrecycled trash in our trunk.”



Peeling backwards out of that primo-bitchin’ parking space, Mario Andretti weaves his way around a few confused cops, multiple pedestrians giving him the finger and some tricky cement bollards only to find ourselves on a nice, quiet side street where I spy a hotel sign.  STOP, MR. BIG!  PULL IN HERE!  ACT LIKE YOU KNOW!



And that is how we found the Hotel Vittoria in Brescia, Italy. 



Our room was lovely, the breakfast was lovely, the town center was lovely.   More importantly, they gave us a handy little sticker to put on our car so that we could park on the street and no Politzei could have us towed.  The best part was later in the evening when we walked the block back up to the main piazza because Mr. Big actually wanted to go the stupid Car Show.  He was like, pffft, I so coulda been in this show.  My Audi is hot.



Whatever.  Anyway, onto Venice the next morning.  Okay.  Who knew?  I mean, I knew it was cute and picturesque and historic, but I was not prepared for just how fabulous it was.  I knew there were canals and gondoliers, but it is waaaaaaay more intense than you are picturing.  There is actually, like, no land.  It is all water and bridges.  How do the houses stay afloat?  I still don’t get it and I was there for four days and, let me tell you, I was studying the phenomenon.

There are no cars allowed in Venice, so everybody parks in the multi-story car parks located just outside the city.  Hint:  Park on the top floor and snap some awesome photos.  The car parks are totally the tallest structures around.  Go directly from the car park to the ticket booth to buy your vaporetti tickets.  The vaporetti are boats that are the equivalent of the Metro in other cities with regular stops along the canals, just like a bus, except it’s a boat, get it?  Just figure out how many days you are going to be there and buy a ticket that covers that many days.  It’s way easier than buying a ticket every time you get on and off the vaporetti and much less expensive.  A 3-day ticket was 45 euros.  Cheap.

Another Hint:  The boat stops, (okay, read that again--boat stop, like bus stop, see?) themselves, kind of look like floating barges.  The first time I walked out onto one, I thought it WAS the boat.  I kept expecting it to move.  But then the real boat showed up and pulled up along side and I realized that I was just an idiot.

As soon as you get out into the canal, you are going to realize that you are in a magical place.  I was fascinated by the gothic-ish, Moroccan-ish style of the homes and the way the front doors lead right out onto the water.  You can flag down a taxi, which will be a boat.  You can hire a gondola, which is kind of cheesy, but just one of those things you need to do in Venice.  Just for future reference, a gondola ride is 100 euros for 30 minutes.  We made our gondolier find us a restaurant.  We were like, dude, we’ve got you for 30 minutes, so we want to see some really cool stuff and, at the end of 30 minutes, we want you to wind up at a restaurant where you would take your own mother.  He did and it was great.

Our gondolier was a font of information.  Mind you, this was already our third evening in Venice so we had seen most of the “touristy” things and we wanted, at this point, some inside scoop and to see things that normal tourists don’t see.  Well, his inside scoop was that he wanted to brag on himself a little.  Apparently, back in the day, (the day being the 13th century), there were 10,000 gondoliers.  All of the quaint and charming little bridges that now cross the canals did not exist.  Everybody who was anybody had their own fleet of gondoliers and the peons had to rent gondoliers just to get from point A to point B.

A few dozen nasty wars and marauding occupiers later, (and with the building of multiple bridges), the gondoliers slowly dwindled down to their current number—425.  Today, in modern Venice, these 425 guys, (no women), all descend from a few “authorized” gondolier families.  It’s not just an occupation that you can acquire.  There will not be a new Discovery Channel show called “Venetian Gondolier Wars” or whatever.   No.  One is either born with gondolier sperm or one is not.

Now, we were drinking wine in the gondola, so, unfortunately, I cannot remember the actual name of our guy.  Let’s call him Giuseppe.  Gondoliers propel the boat through the canal from the back of the boat.  If there are only two people in the boat, the two guests sit on a little couch, facing forward.  When the gondolier comes to an extremely low bridge, he hops along to the front of the boat and his weight makes the front of the boat dip down low enough to go under the bridge.  I know this because I watched a gondolier do this on our second day there because I was trying to figure out how they kept from hitting the bridge abutments.



Anyway, Giuseppe was up on the back of our boat, our friends were on the “couch”, I was perched on a little stool on the right hand side of the boat and Mr. Big was a few feet beyond me on a stool on the left hand side.  (I’m sure there are proper terms for right and left on a boat, like “lee” and “port” and whatnot, but I don’t know them.  Let’s just go with left, right, front and back, shall we?)



Anyway, a really low bridge approacheth.  Suddenly, Giuseppe stops his diatribe about gondolier lineage and yells, “Excusi, big man, front of boat, prego!”  Now, the only other guy in the boat besides Mr. Big was our friend, who is the size of a jockey.  So, Mr. Big looks at Giuseppe with inquiring eyes and points to his own chest, as in “who, me?”  Giuseppe nods and gestures that he should move his large, American-sized body up to the front of the boat.  It took me a minute, but I quickly deduced that Giuseppe was using my husband as, you guessed it, ballast.

“Dude, you are ballast!”, I yelled.  And then, when poor Mr. Big still had a perplexed look on his face, I pointed to the rapidly approaching bridge abutment and clarified, “Your ass is being used to weigh down the front of the boat!”  I was laughing so hard, I thought I was going to rock myself off the side and into the water.  It wouldn’t have been so funny except that Giuseppe was right:  every time Mr. Big stood up or just shifted his weight from side to side the whole boat bobbed up and down and left to right like a  toy in bathwater.

Giuseppe’s English was rudimentary at best and he did not understand that he had just insulted my husband, nor did he understand why the other three people in the boat were peeing themselves with laughter.  He just continued to do it for the rest of the ride!  Well, why the hell not?  It was working a treat, right?  He just kept saying, “Big man, that way” or “Big man, back up”.  OMG, I’ll never forget it.



So, this summer we ended up spending about two weeks in Italy, baking in the sun, buying some nice leather goodies, some silk ties, a fabulous Carnivale mask to hang on the wall in the bathroom in the chalet and eating a lot of pasta.  I will have to tell you in the next blog post about the lovely couple that we met—she is from Charlotte, North Carolina and he is a Venetian local—and the delicious, typical Venetian meal that they introduced us to.  Heaven!

Chalet Shenanigans - Chapter 16

 Tuscany, Part Deux

We went for the second time to Tuscany last weekend, and, I must say, my opinion has not changed, (see blog post from last year).  But, since my opinion has absolutely no sway with the billion Americans who have their hearts set on Tuscany, let me just try to steer you in the right direction.

First, and I cannot stress this enough, if you are picturing fields of sunflowers and lilac, YOU ARE THINKING OF PROVENCE.  Provence in is France.  Tuscany is fields of grape vines and olive trees.  Yes, there are a few sunflowers, but they are growing wild along side the autoroute.  They have sprouted from seeds that have BLOWN ACROSS THE BORDER.



Second, and this I also cannot stress enough, if you are coming to Tuscany in the summer, MAKE SURE THAT YOUR HOTEL HAS AIR CONDITIONING.  This is non-negotiable.  It is HOT in Tuscany in the summer.  However, there is one easy way around this.  Don’t go in the summer.

Tuscany is so crowded in the summer that it will give you anxiety attacks.  It is not relaxing.  It is stressful.   But, if that is the only time you can go, stay out in the countryside in a hotel with a pool and you will be fine.  Only venture into Florence or Lucca or Pisa (biggish cities) before noontime and then get the hell out of there.

Here are some really cute villages out in the countryside:  Raddi in Chianti, Volterra (which is known for mining alabaster, so if you are into alabaster, this is your village), Castellina in Chianti, Colle di Val d’Elsa, San Gimignano, Greve in Chianti and there are probably 20 or so others that are just perfect.  By this I mean, they sit up on top of a hillside with a medieval wall all around and they are just begging you to take their picture.

Here are the villages that are just regular, functioning, work-a-day places where actual people live and are not full of tourists:  (mind you, some people want to go to these villages just for that specific reason), :  Poggibonsi, Castelfiorentino, Tavarnelle Val di Pesa, and, really, anything along the coast of the Ligurian Sea in Tuscany.



OK, that is all the practical advice for this blog post.  Now, onto the funny stuff.  We stayed in a very nice hotel in the work-a-day village of Tavarnelle.  I actually liked the village because it was quite authentic and not full of tourists.  I mean, I went walking one morning and down in the village at the “private club” on the main street there were already 4 or 5 guys sitting at the outdoor tables drinking beer at 8:30 in the morning.  The stores and bakeries hadn’t even opened yet, but the Tavarnelle Social Club was in full swing.  My kind of place.

Sunday morning I made Mr. Big get up at the crack of dawn to drive to Lucca because they were having an outdoor antique fair.  It was advertised on the internet as a grand 3-day affair with hundreds of vendors.  It was advertised as starting at 9 a.m on Sunday, the last day of the 3-day event.  So, we were up with the farmers at 7 a.m. and out the door for a 1.5 hour drive to Lucca to find, I was sure, many, many treasures.



Yeah.  No.  We arrived in downtown Lucca at 10 minutes until 9.  I started getting worried when we were able to find a parking space which was quite close to the “pedestrian only” downtown area and were, really, only minutes away from this giant event.  Where were the hordes of people and why were we able to find rockstar parking?

In Italian time, 9 a.m. apparently means 10 a.m. or even, lunchtime.   At 9 a.m., approximately 3 out of the 200 participants had set up shop.  We walked around and around and around and around the downtown area, doing the same circuit over and over and over again, each time catching one or two more vendors who had taken the tarps off of their stuff and were ready for customers.  I thought Mr. Big was going to blow a gasket.

Now, if this were France or Switzerland, we could have ordered some café au laits and croissants and sat outside for an hour until everybody got their act together.  But, this was Italy.  In Italy, you eat your breakfast inside the bakery hovering over the counter.  You are expected to down your espresso in one gulp and eat your croissant while rubbing elbows with all of the other patrons and your ass is expected to be out of that bakery/café within 5 minutes.  So, we did that and then we were out on the sidewalk 5 minutes later wondering why we had bothered because STILL none of these Italians had their booths opened up.  It was frustrating, I tell you.





Mr. Big’s favorite item of the morning was a ginormous ship’s head of a naked, buxom lass.  She was about 5 feet tall and each bosom was the size of a toddler.  Don’t ask me what kind of décor she would have fit into, possibly a man cave.  The cool thing about her was that one of her boobs slid open and pirates could hide their booty inside her boob.  We did not buy her, much to Mr. Big’s chagrin, but if I had had a shop in NYC I probably could have sold her for 10 grand.



We did buy four more copper pots which Europeans use for cooking but I use for planters.  After purchasing copper pot #4, I was like, OK, dearest, enough with these copper pots.  I am over them.  Also, we now have to carry them to the car.  Enough.  Y’all, if we didn’t look like two bozos carrying these giant copper pots to our vehicle, then I just don’t know what.  We really need another hobby.  Like golf or something.



Alright, the last and final story involves a bad word, so, if you are a minor or a Mormon, you should just sign off right now.  Fair warning.



After spending a hot, hot day baking on the cobblestones of downtown Florence doing the whole tourist, sightseeing thing and practicing our “gratzee meelee” and “booona serra” and “arrivaderchis”, the four of us were ready for a relaxing stint by the pool at our hotel.  This relaxing stint included, we envisioned, some wine and cheese and sausage which we had picked up while were out and about shopping in Florence.

Approximately 8 minutes after we had happily ensconced ourselves poolside with our delicious picnic, the maître d’hotel, dressed in a three piece suit, comes scurrying up to our lounge chairs.



Mr. Hotel Policeman:  (In quasi-English),  ‘Scusi me, signores  y signoras,  but this is not allowed.



Us:  What?  What’s not allowed?  (At this point, I thought he was referring to my ultra-white Swiss skin in amongst these tanned Italian bodies.)



Mr. HP:   Youah are being very rudah.



Us:  Rude?!  We thought we were being very quiet!



Mr. HP:  No, youah misunderstand.  It is rude to eat and drink things that you have not bought from our bar or restaurant.  You must order only from us your drinks and food.



Us:  (Out loud), Really?  Oh, okay, sorry.  (To ourselves, under our breath), Really, dude?  Where’s the sign?  We don’t see any sign that says “no food or drink”.



So, one of our party, who shall remain nameless but forever dear in my heart, mutters, under his breath, “Fucka Youah”.  Well, I guess you had to be there, but, after an exhausting, hot, sweaty day trying to read and speak Italian, when we were finally, FINALLY, chillin’ and relaxin’ only to be told to put away our wine and sausages, we had had enough.  Fucka Youah, indeed.



This, of course, became our mantra for the next three days and we all went home having increased our Italian vocabulary by 33%.  Next weekend, we are meeting another set of American friends in Venice, (what is it with you Americans and your love affair with Italy?  There are other countries in Europe, you know!), and I am excited to see what other local swear words we can make up.  I’m thinking Asti Spumanti, if said with the right flair, has potential.