aMAZEing venice

So I have a really bad sense of direction. It’s so bad that I often get lost in the Northern Virginia area; an area I have lived for over 20 years. I also used to get lost in Sapporo and would have to rely on those who didn’t live in Sapporo to help me find my way. It’s pathetic, I know.

When faced with a choice to either go right or left, one would think one has a 50/50 chance of being incorrect. Well if one is me that chance is actually 95%. For some reason any time I randomly choose a direction I am almost always wrong. I don’t know why or how it happens, it jus tdoes.

I know what you’re thinking. If you’re always wrong, why don’t you pick a direction but then trick your bad direction sense and actually take the other direction? Yeah, I tried that. I still end up wrong. I don’t know how my sense of direction knows whether or not I will try to trick it AFTER it has already made its decision, it just does. It’s amazing really.

Anywho my point is Venice was built on top of 117 small islands and consists of 150 odd canals, 400 bridges, small, narrow streets and alleyways. In other words Venice is a giant maze.

Every guidebook says the same thing. “Everyone gets lost in Venice, but don’t worry, it’s a large island so you can’t leave it!” (the exclamation mark being some kind of reassurance or something). Right, but you can still get lost for like, ever.

Which is of course what happened to me the next day when I want exploring Venice solo (Dan went back to Bologna for school and Nancy had work). Getting to St. Mark’s square wasn’t a problem as there were signs to it everywhere in the city.

There weren’t, however, any signs pointing to other points of interest to me like say, Nancy’s house so I wandered. Of course I ended up wandering in the opposite direction of where I wanted to be (Nancy checking up on me on the phone: “What are you doing all the way over there?”). In looking for the Frari church I ended up in the opposite direction to another church which housed a bunch of stray cats.

After much searching for Frari square I got tired and finally decided to just go back to Nancy’s for the day. It was then that I accidently found my way to the Frari church.

Although it was late I figured finding the Frari church was a gift from fate so I paid the 2.50 euro admission fee and went inside.

No regrets. The church houses some of the most magnificent paintings I’ve seen yet in Europe (unforch no pictures allowed) making the church an excellent place for me to rest my tired feet.
Afterwards I went back to Nancy’s (that was also a struggle I assure you) and we went out for a dinner of pizza where I ordered shredded horse meat lemon pizza (after I got Nancy to clarify with the waiter that it was just lemon juice and I wasn’t getting a pizza with slices of lemon on it – because, you know, that would be gross). Delish.

After dinner I deferred going back to Bologna for a day because I was wiped out from a day of continuously lost walking. I ended the day by curling up with her cat (she’s a snuggler) and catching up on the latest trivial gossip.