October 22, 2016 – Untitled

October 22, 2016 – Untitled

This morning the complimentary breakfast buffet was once again picked over by the time I got there. There weren’t any forks so I went with. Croissant I could at with my hands and a bowl of cereal since I did find two lonely clean spoons. Unfortunately, after scooping some cereal into the last remaining bowl in the place, I realized there wasn’t any milk.

I flagged down a staff member who was tidying up and said, “bonjourno. ‘scuse–”

“Yes,” she said. Yes, not “si” so I thought I had a green light for English.

“Is there any milk?” I asked.

Her confused look confirmed how wrong I was about English. The resulting conversation was probably only two seconds but in my head it played out like a two hour horror movie.

“Milk?” she said, the syllables clearly making her uncomfortable as she had never uttered them before in her life.

“Milk,” I repeated, falling into classic Ugly American.

“Milk?” she said again, the word garnering no additional meaning by its repetition.

“Milk, um…” I fumbled and my brain shouted at me, “For god’s sake, stop saying, ‘milk.’ Try ‘leche’ or ‘latte’ or some other derivation!”

Yet all I could say was, “milk, uh, for the cereal?”

Had my brain had arms it would’ve tried to strangle me.

I don’t know if this next part is true or if it happened only in my head as my subconscious worked to embody the experience in a more graphic illustration, but I may have pantomimed the action of milking a cow.

I do know that the nice woman looked at the table and realized there wasn’t any “latte” and she excused herself to go get some.

My shoulders slumped as I fell into my chair, my brain muttering, “You are the worst, Kevin. As ambassadors go, you’re the worst.”

But at least I had milk for my cereal. I didn’t even bother asking for a knife or spoon. Who knows what I might have pantomimed?

***

I spent the day using the ACTV public transport ferry to get out to Murano, Venice’s renowned glass making island. Steaming through the canals to get to the sea highway, the realities of the sea workings of Venice were easy to see. From delivery boats to floating ambulances, everything happens on the water that I might be used to seeing on roadways.

As for Murano itself… it’s nice. A lot less folks than at San Marco, though I was there early on a Saturday.

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Two notes on this public art work:  1) I swear this is the Crystalline Entity that Lt. Data communicates with in Star Trek: The Next Generation.  and 2) I really, really wanted to ask people what they thought the brooms meant, even though I’m at least 76% sure they were part of the cleaning crew’s supplies and not actually part of the artwork.

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I wandered around abit and ultimately decided to go into the glass museum. It was 10 euros and I found it incredibly overpriced, especially as it had one of the worst floor plans I’ve ever seen. Though the rooms were numbered so you could follow chronologically, there actually was no way to access the rooms in sequence. You had to jump around in time or bypass rooms and then come back to them to make it work.

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No touchy!

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Hey look — a Blue Rhino!  And a Redish Hippo!

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These three cones by the way — actual art, not just for safety sake.  They had placards, unlike the Crystalline Entity’s brooms above.

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All was forgiven with the Daedalus-ian layout of the museum with the final placard. The prose is so… dense? Earnest? Pretentious? Impenetrable? I don’t know what it is, and I’m pretty sure I don’t understand it, but because of it, I’m happy to have given them a ten’er.

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Plus, outside they had a few larger exhibits, my favorite being this sea monster leviathian with creepy mood music that was a cross between a whale song and that single Rapture warning note from “Inception.”  I like to call this shot “Kevin’s Sea Monster Dragon.”

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Returning to San Marco, I grabbed a gelato and a slice of pizza (falsely advertised as “Crazy Pizza”), before walking along the waterfront.

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I came across the Venice Marathon finish line and snapped some shots to whet the Facebook crowd with promises of a 300th marathon finish.

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To be honest though I’m feeling a big dodgy. I’m still Neosporining my wounds from the SpaceRock Trail race last week. And I’m feeling tired, puffy, bloated and lethargic. I haven’t run properly in a few days, though I’ve been walking hither and yon (and yon and yon when lost in the alleys of Venice). I’m sure I’ll finish but I don’t know how I’ll feel. I’m worried and nervous but then I always seem to be that way. Two hundred and ninety nine starts before and I still get butterflies the night before and at the starting line.

The race starts somewhere around 9:40 am, because as you’ll recall it’s all contingent on the TV requirements. Hopefully by 1:40 pm tomorrow I’ll be basking in the triple Roman numeral Cs next to the seas of Venice.