Life without Car

April 30
Leaving for Florence and Pisa
Early morning trains to Florence and Pisa – walk to train station preparing for travel
When walk on Strada Nova main street in this area of my apartment mostly residents and always very busy – Italians relate to each other – mother and child, adult and older parent, father and child, friends – relationships matter. Friends of all ages relate and talk and share. People are at ease with each other. Often I see couples kiss some are very young.. What I see is they enjoy each other.
At night people walk on Strada Nova always together. People sit out at osteria at restaurants with dinner, with drink, with coffee always together. Early eve children are out playing with parents nearby – on skates, on two wheel scooter very popular with children, no skateboards, only children on bicycles, no motor vehicles (except boats) , some games with ball – what I see is their enjoyment and they are children playing. Lots of laughter and crying lots of emotion. What they eat mostly is pizza and gelato. Unfortunately lots of men smoke and some women. I don’t think there is any age requirement for drinking cause very young buy wine at grocery store. People mostly women buy lot of bread pane – the bars sell panini sandwich mostly meat and tettramini half sandwich without crust and all thin white bread. Espresso is mostly at the bar standing maybe with pastry pasticcia and if you sit at table if the place has such you pay double and they bring it to you. Sometimes it is overflowing with tourists and streets are narrow and you can barely walk. One place today everything was stopped due to the traffic and I went to another place. Lots of tourists take gondola ride from 2 to 6 or 7. I think its about hour for over one hundred and more at night. Most of the food we know you can get in supermarket – cant get ginger, scallions, bean sprouts, bok choy, matzo meal, oats and most other grains, deli meats, dim sum, papaya, horseradish, kasha varniska, knish, sauerkraut, pumpernickel, black bread, rye bread, lavender, pickle, ketchup (?), - I saw two MacDonald and one Burger king and no Peets or Starbuck. Supermarket has clever system to weigh produce – scale has picture of everything and you place item on it and press the picture and number and then comes receipt on sticky paper. No muffins, no buffet..
That leads me to morning – I wanted to go to The hotel here Gritti Palace and front door or really side door on grand canal opens to water taxi and gondola so that’s how most people arrive and they are very wealthy and probably famous. I walked in and it was a museum to me – just magnificent with incredible paintings including painting of Doge Gritti – it was a Palace. Then I saw restaurant outside overlooking grand canal and decided to go. My bill probably broke all records and they had buffet – I got espresso of course, yoghurt and banana and sat for hour not really thinking just watching the view of grand canal and some of the people. I took photo of English couple near me and he took my photo. The bill was 12 euro = $13+ tip.
Later in day went to Teatro Fenice that burned completely in 95 and saw the new Teatro – very fake beautiful.
Got room for first night in Florence using book in store and phone card. So I leave tomorrow for one day in Pisa and 3 in Florence.
Had some very disturbing news about reality – a tanker crashed and burned on road to Bay Bridge – road I use to go to work – it’s a miracle nobody injured except driver who did something wrong. It’s a disaster affecting thousands of commuters – I sat there reading and worrying and then I just decided not to worry about it now. Meanwhile at the internet store two women making phone calls cause had no cash and credit cards would not work at ATM just like me last week. I gave her some euros and she didn’t want to take it and I insisted. I told them about my situation and what I learned.
For anyone traveling here – I just realized should have told her to go to Amex that I discovered today! – it is not smart to rely on the credit cards or the ATM cards for cash – you need Plan B.
I had a lot of dreams last night – one that I lost my car – took it to work and when I left I couldn’t remember where and I forgot to write down where so I tried to get someone to help me and everyone was too busy. Then I began to remember just general area – and to get there had to cross water and there was lot of water pools. Saw a woman w baby carriage crossing water and I did and I was okay. Still I wanted to find my car
Then had dream about lots of people doing special walk and they were all using these two walking sticks – this was to acknowledge them and unite them as special people. I saw this and realized that’s why there were so many people here with these walking sticks in Venice.