Somewhere over the rainbow

For those who haven’t been to Venice, it is a city surrounded by canals and water. We were told it was built on marsh land and is slowly sinking. It is a fascinating city with our senses working overtime!

The combination of rain, the full moon and a high tide brought an unexpected charm to the city. We marched through St Marks square sans shoes with water halfway up to our knees. Although we went for the shoeless option, many people were buying temporary Wellingtons (think big plastic socks. (soft if you ask me!). Functional but in no way fashionable.

So instead of seeing people waltz in the square to the classical music, it was more a case of wade through the square to sounds of splashing. It was quite funny watching water push itself upwards through the paving. Also I found fascinating that the church was at least 50 cm under water and they have on hand some temporary walkways so we don’t get any wetter walking around. Apparently St Marks floods regularly…

Of course we had our gondola ride but again the tide meant the internal canals were off limits as the gondola couldn’t fit under the many bridges. And what is a gondola ride without a song?

Punt, punt punt your gondola

Gently down the canal

Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily

Life is just so swell!

We shared a bottle of champagne on the gondola and afterwards, Dan recreated Madonna's Like A Virgin video and danced under the same bridge as she did!

That night we had a romantical dinner of mussels and a GREAT wine in one of the very nice restaurants overlooking the grand canal which was a very fitting end to a magic day in spite of the hideous weather.

Disney fans read this: we went to Neuchswanstein castle, the castle that Walt Disney used as inspiration for Sleeping Beauty’s castle. It was even grander than I had imagined. We took a tour of the inside and walked around the exterior. King Ludwig III who had it created had some serious fascination with swans – they are everywhere. In the carvings, statues, paintings and even massive porcelain swans that double as vases. It was excessive opulence. One room took 4 master wood carvers 14 months to complete. Again Dan couldn’t help but sing Disney songs, and for once I actually didn’t mind. I even requested a song, but he politely said, “that isn’t a Disney song.” Obviously I need to spend more time on my research. Beauty and the Beast or Phantom of the Opera – it’s all the same to me!

We arrived in Munich late in the evening and had dinner in the hotel which was surprisingly good. The food is an experience, with lots of new flavours and dishes to experience. We are keen to try our hand at some of the new dishes we have tasted once we get home. We had a lovely beer soup with pancake strips in it. (Who would have thought?) As we had been told, in Europe strange things sometimes happen without warning and we found this out ourselves. for us it was a public holiday - seemingly out of nowhere (Corpus Christi Day) and it shut down the city.

Not to worry though, we enjoyed a much-needed sleep in and took ourselves off to the Modern Art Gallery. The only thing was, we didn’t read the info we had on it so what we thought was the Modern Art Gallery was actually the one with Rennaissance and Impressionist paintings at it. Upside was that we got to see one of Monet’s ‘Waterlillies’, some of Manet and Picasso’s sculptures and even saw Van Gogh’s ‘ Sunflowers”.

We went to a Bavarian beer hall for dinner and drank steins! It was a great night with me (G) being pull up on stage to do the traditional slapping dance. (think National Lampoon’s European vacation).

We do have this captured on video… I must say I did better than the local German boy they also pulled out of the audience; at one stage (and we have it captured on camera) that I was in time and doing the same move as the real traditional dancer (His name was Leo and he was quite the hit with Dan and most of the girls in the tour group)! A bit of history of the building the beer hall was in. Hitler used to do many of his speeches in the hall and underneath in the public bar was one of his famous drinking spots. If you look closely at the ceiling of the public bar you can see the original SS signs underneath the painting where they have attempted to blend with the new painting.

Learnings:

• When attempting to dry clothes, it is never a good idea to have them touching the actual lamp. I did (without noticing) but luckily Dan was on hand to remove the new polo shirt from the lamp, put out the flames and fan the smoke detector to prevent the alarm being activated and the hotel evacuated.

Observations:

• There is a Disney song for almost every occasion

You need to adopt different and distinct pedestrian styles in each city to survive:

• Italy – make your intention known and don’t change pace. This means you can walk out on busiest road and people will stop and drive around you
• Germany and Budapest – wait for the green man even if there is no cars anywhere on the road. This is due to the culture of following rules (I reckon communism or oppressive regimes had something to do with this)
• France – good luck – crazy drivers, no line markings and seeminly no road rules. God help us when we drive through France in a couple of weeks