Peter’s random ravings

We are having problems with composing our post for Venice. Venice is like that old Clint Eastwood movie “The good, the bad and the Ugly””. So as a filler here are some of Pete’s random ravings that I’ve been accumulating. Well, maybe not raves but whinges.

All over Europe Claire has been struggling for a good cup of tea. Her success rate has been under forty percent. In so many situations she gets that look on her face in anticipation and then gets thwarted by a hitch. Some reasons, no jug,  no tea, no black tea, tepid water, no milk. It just keeps happening. We caught the cable car to the top of the mountain in Innsbruck today and played in the snow for a while. We were cold and wanted something to warm us up. Before we went into the restaurant at the top, Claire said those magic words “cup of tea”. In the restaurant she had already put the water in her cup and then looked at the selections of tea, her face dropped, of the five teas available not one black tea.

Ice Coffee? I know it sounds like a dumb introduction but try getting an iced coffee that in any way resembles the ones we get back home. In one of the galleries in Florence I ordered and Iced coffee and got a small strong black cup of coffee with ice cubes in it. The next try was in Venice and its was ice cream and very strong coffee, no milk at all.

For us silly English speaking types we seem to struggle with something as simple as tea and coffee.

In Firenze on the second day while Uffizzi Gallery I came down with a sudden attack of Galleriaphobia. I suspect that the cause is attributed constant exposure to paints from the 14,15,16 and 17th centuries. The dust from marbel sculptures also seems to be having and impact as well.  The worst cases of the attacks seem to occur in rooms depicting religious scenes. The paints used in these paintings seem to be particularly toxic.

I’m also displaying symptoms of Polkishowertennitis. Whenever I have a wet head I develop and overpowering urge to touch my feet but its impossible to do so. This effect is happening all over Europe. Hope it clears up when I get home.

Everywhere we travel there seems for be a preponderance of statues of men on horses. There everywhere. Never see statues of men leading goats or cows. There was one statute I saw in Assisi of a man on a sad looking donkey. Because of this variation in statue design they made the man a saint. I think his name was Francis.

Italian postal logic. All over Europe we have been accumulating things (some idiot brought a Russian cossack hat in St Petersburg). So we wanted to send a parcel home to ease our luggage problems. Some of the post offices in Italy don’t offer a parcel service as they are too small. So when we found a huge post office in Florence we thought you beauty. This post office have more than 10  counters but was full. You needed to take a ticket and wait for your number to come up. After a 15 minute wait we got to the counter and we were informed that we couldn’t send a parcel by sea from this post office as they didn’t have any forms. He then showed us on the map a small post office 20 minutes walk away where we could send the parcel. This was a 3 counter post office but it was closer to the sea. It figures.

Despite all of the above we are still having a great time.