The German Island of Rügen and the Trail of Tears: aka, Kelly Relearns to Bike

After the weekend in Berlin, we split off from our friends to go up to the island of Rügen in northern Germany. Still wondering where it is? Maybe this will help: 

Rugen is pretty dang close to Copenhagen and southern Sweden, which means that most tourists in Rügen are either German, Danish or Swedish. Given that most of the towns on Rügen are devoted to tourism as a major source of income, that's a lot of Scandinavians! Swedish, Danish, and German are all related Germanic languages, and in their written forms there are a lot of similar words, but we thought it was interesting that if Scandinavians and Germans talk to each other, they use English whenever possible instead of one of their own languages. We didn't see anyone while we were there who was obviously American, though maybe we did and just assumed that they were Swedish since they were speaking English! The Swedish accent in English is so adorable and if they're really good, they just sound like Minnesotans to me. 

Will had been to Rügen a few other times over the past seven years, and it was awesome to get to explore the things I've heard so much about. On our first evening we took a stroll around this pretty lake that is very close to the center of the town of Binz, where we were staying. 

This sign was posted on the edge of the lake, and WP tells me it translates roughly to "Searching for food is our job, we don't need your help. Thank you." An adorable little note from the ducks and swans of the lake!

Apparently this lake is also a popular spot to film music videos. While we were there this crew was working on a music video, with the singer mostly lip-syncing: 

The main drag in Binz has a lot of shops and restaurants, and this hilariously named "Spa Pharmacy", which is funny if you're into English/German puns (has this Apotheke been very naughty?): 

We walked through town to the beach to get our first look at the Baltic Sea. Right along the boardwalk, there was this amazingly intricate sand castle, which was actually a teaser for a sand castle exhibition at a local museum. Why you would have an indoor sand castle exhibition, I have no idea, but this one was pretty cool: 

I also got a kick out of these little beach benches. You can rent these wicker chairs during the day to sit on the beach and have some shade. In Italy they had big umbrellas that you could sit under in groups and are patrolled by people to take your money, here they have small individual chairs that are locked until you pay for them. Sometimes it's small things like this where you see a lot of cultural variation. 

After enjoying a nice dinner along the seaside, we started our walk back to our bed and breakfast. On the way we ran into the most out-of-control family fun concert. We were drawn by the sounds of German-accented singers doing a cover of the Pitbull song "Give Me Everything":  

There was a huge crowd of people watching and dancing, I guess this was just a free concert put on by the town for tourists. After a few American songs they moved on to some German classics that the 50+ age range seemed to get really into. Here they are doing "Good Feeling": 

After a little dancing with the Swedes and Germans, we headed home to get some sleep for our big day of BIKING. That's right! The next morning we rented a couple of bikes, and my first stressful biking moment took place. I had to test ride the bike for the rental guys to make sure I had the seat at the right height. This probably sounds easy to most of you, but you probably bike more often than... once every 15 years or so.  I didn't fall off the bike, but I was pretty shaky getting started and made them lower my seat even after the worker tried to convince me to keep it up high by saying "you're riding the bike, not walking with it between your legs."

So after getting our helmets strapped on, we walked our bikes over to the bikes-only trail (of which Rügen has a pretty extensive network), and we started making our way toward Prora Beach, about a 4.5km ride from Binz. I actually did pretty good getting to the beach, and even got more comfortable turning and stopping (somewhat) gracefully. The trails to the beach were all pretty flat, and actually went right up to the sand. See, photographic proof that I was on a bike: 

When we got to the beach it was nice to take a little break on the sand with an Apfelschorle (awesome German beverage, a mix of apple juice and sparkling water). We dipped our feet in but didn't go swimming because, as you might guess, that Baltic Sea water is cold! For only being a few kilometers outside Binz, this beach was pretty deserted, possibly because of the weird history behind it. There is a huge building right on the beach that was built by the Nazi government between 1936-1939 to house 20,000 German workers at a time. Hitler also wanted it to be easily convertible into a military hospital in case of war. The original idea was to cycle all the workers through this one beach resort for their annual vacations. The building is pretty imposing and now stands mostly abandoned. Because really, who wants to build a resort out of Hitler's former beach hang out? They can't tear it down either, because then they'd likely be accused of trying to revise or forget the historical significance. Right now the only things there taking up a tiny portion of the building are a museum about the structure, a youth hostel (which definitely does not hold 20,000 people), and a few stores and cafes. 

Here's a photo of the Nazi building that I took from Wikipedia. This is the land side of the hotel, the beach is on the other side: 

And here's my photo of the beach: 

After Prora we got back on our bikes and headed for town. By this time, I had some muscles wondering why they hadn't been used in years, and I was feeling a bit sore. But it was all good, because we were heading for town which meant we were heading for lunch! 

After lunch (at a Chinese/Thai restaurant that was pretty tasty by European standards) the plan was to go up to visit the Granitz Hunting Lodge, a castle nearby mostly used in the 19th century for hunting by the local nobility. There is a cute little tourist train that goes from Binz up to the castle, which is located on top of a hill. Originally, we were planning to take that cute little train, but after a morning of successful biking, we got cocky. We thought, hey, it's only another 10 kilometers roundtrip, we can do it. 

The beginning of the trail was pretty easy, and went past lots of scenic pastures of horses and goats. 

Once we started ascending, the forest got a little thicker, and it was easy to see why you'd put a hunting lodge in the area.  

Getting up to the top of the hill was hard. I have a lot of respect for the cyclists of SF, who all us non-bikers have all seen struggling up a hill and thought "it doesn't look that bad." It IS that bad. I went to a lower gear and was going so slowly that I could have walked faster and eventually had to walk my bike up to the top. Ugh!

The hunting lodge was pretty cool though, and I'm glad we made it up there. Here's what it looks like from the outside; it has a circular tower on each corner and a really tall one in the middle:

Here's the entryway, filled with many years' worth of antlers: 

On the second floor there are more antlers all around and this really cool small spiral staircase connecting a couple of rooms: 

To get to the top of the middle, highest tower, we had to go up these steps that hug that outside of the tower. If you have any fear of heights, these steps would be pretty bad for you. Not only are they super narrow with a low handrail (all original pieces from the 1840s), but if you look down you can see through them because of the intricate pattern: 

They had security guards located at the top and bottom of this staircase, and only allowed one group of people to ascend or descend at a time, because with too many people it could get dangerous. From the top of the tower, the view was amazing. We could see down to Binz and all the surrounding towns and fields: 

This little pink building is part of the visitors center. I like how you can see the how thick the forest is that surrounds the hunting lodge:

We thought it was fun that out on the viewing deck they had these markers indicating how far away various cities are located. Straight ahead in the this photo, Oslo, Norway is located 643 kilometers away:

Apparently if it starts to rain they don't let people up on top of the tower, partly due to lightning and partly due to slippery iron steps on the way back down. We made it up to the top just in time. After we climbed back down the steps and got outside, a light rain started (a "summer rain" which means that it was still warm outside, so still biking weather.) You can see it out in the distance in this photo: 

After our tour of the lodge we had to get our bikes back to the rental agency before 6pm. When we left the lodge it was about 5:20pm, and we had a little over 5km to go. Instead of taking the bike route that we took on the way up the mountain, we decided to try a different, more direct route, in hopes of making it back to town a little faster. So in the rain we started on the new path, which we quickly found out was actually not meant for bikes, but cars, specifically ones with four-wheel drive. First came the cobblestone steep downhill section which turned our arms to jelly as the bike bounces along, then the sticky mud and big puddle section that brought our bikes to a slow crawl, followed by my personal fave, the tiny country one-lane-in-each-direction highway. Luckily we didn't end up having to bike on the highway for more than a couple kilometers, but it was still scary! There was no bike lane, so we tried to stay as far right as we could, though cars sometimes had to drive slowly right behind us waiting for traffic coming the other direction to pass. Thank God that German drivers are used to having cyclists on the road. 

After we made it back safely to a bike trail, I started crying. What a baby! At this point we had about 15 minutes to get the bikes back to the rental place, and crying definitely doesn't make you bike faster. After drinking some water and making proclamations that "I'd never bike again/this is horrible/why didn't we take the cute little train" (all of which I've since revoked), we got back on the bikes and named our adventure the Biking Trail of Tears (no disrespect meant to the original Trail of Tears of relocated Native Americans in the 1830s).

We got the bikes back on time and were pretty happy to get rid of them. I am proud of myself for trying to bike again, and proud that I successfully biked about 20km in a day! I think next time we're in a place where there are lots of bike trails and I won't be forced to go on a highway, I'll do it again. It's nice to know that I can, and that I probably won't fall off. Will was happy as a clam to be back on a bike (and to finally see me on one), and I think even more excited to get back to his road bike in California. From Rügen we made the four-and-a-half hour train ride back to Berlin and had an afternoon to sight-see there before heading back to the States. 

To avoid confusion: we're back home in the US already, but since getting home I've been a little delayed posting about the end of our big trip. One more post and then we'll be all caught up!

Berlin, Round 1

After leaving Italy, we made our way to Berlin for a few days. We met our friends Paoli, Danny, Sarah,  and Samuel, who were coming from London, New York, and Paris, all to hang out in Berlin together. Originally some of us had planned to go see Radiohead and Caribou in concert in Berlin, but the show got canceled because at an earlier concert in Toronto their light display fell and killed one of their crew. They rescheduled the show for September, but we won't be flying back to Berlin in a couple months just for one concert! At least we got our money refunded though, and still had an awesome time in Berlin. 

Since there were six of us, we decided to do an apartment rental through Airbnb. We stayed in this beautiful apartment in the Prenzlauer Berg neighborhood, which ended up being extremely inexpensive split between us all. The four-person family who normally lives in this apartment have a huge record collection and a nice stereo set-up that was fun to use. Here's the living room: 

One day we went to the farmers market and picked up some produce for dinner. This kitchen is perfect for a big group dinner! 

There were three bedrooms in the apartment, all with very cute (half Ikea/half antique) decor. Here's the master bedroom: 

On our first day exploring, we ate lunch at this restaurant called Dolores, that serves "California gourmet burritos." We've figured out that it is generally a bad idea to eat any type of Mexican food in Europe (with a few notable exceptions in Barcelona and Madrid), but we had to try this place since it is modeled after the taquerias of the Mission District in San Francisco, where we lived before moving to Spain.



Inside the restaurant the walls are decorated with a public transit map of San Francisco, even showing Dolores Park, our old neighborhood hangout!

The food wasn't life-changing (it basically tasted like Chipotle, with a few more interesting sauces and serving Anchor Steam beer), but we were happy to have some recognizable form of American/Mexican food. Now that we're back home in the States, we're waiting till we get back to California before trying again. We need some Gilroy tacos! Here's me and Danny waiting in line; so excited to eat some burritos!

From most parts of central Berlin (which was part of East Berlin during the Communist rule in East Germany) you can see this gigantic TV tower, which was constructed in the 1960s and is the tallest building in Germany. Here's Sarah and Danny in front of the tower: 

Berlin is a pretty cool-looking city. In the part of town where we spent most our time, there are a lot of relatively new apartment buildings mixed with more historic ones (ours dated to the 1890s) and every once in a while churches, some of which are blackened from WWII bombings. Most of the boulevards are lined with big trees, and there are a lot of parks. This is a fairly typical street in Berlin; I snapped this photo on our way out to dinner one night when it was starting to storm: 

After dinner we went out to a few bars, the first of which is called White Trash Fast Food (gotta love those Europeans and their lack of political correctness). We went there to see a show featuring a surf-rock band from California that Paoli knew about. The band was good, and the inside of the venue was pretty silly. They have it decorated like a hipster T.G.I. Fridays - complete with red and white checkered table clothes, Chinese lanterns, fake pagoda facades, serving burgers and fries alongside fondue, and blended cocktails. What a mess!

After White Trash, we went to a club called Tresor where we met up with a friend of our French friend Sam.  She works at Tresor, so got us in for free, which was pretty nice. The "club" is basically just a giant warehouse with several floors of extremely loud techno music, fog machines, and lights. It was not my favorite scene, but when in Berlin, you kind of have to go to a massive techno club at least once.  On one of the higher up floors there was a balcony looking out into all the unused space of the building. It is crazy that a major European city has this much extra space to spare:

We didn't stay long at Tresor, followed it up by a party in what felt like a German Elks Lodge with DJs spinning old disco and new wave tunes, and eventually made our way home at about 4:30am, pretty tame for Berlin. The next morning we got up and went to the farmers market and tried Currywurst, which is a fried bratwurst sausage cut up on top of french fries with ketchup and curry powder. Invented in Berlin, Currywurst is a popular and delicious snack in Germany, and it's pretty cheap (about $3-4 for a fairly filling portion):

Later that afternoon, we walked around some more of Berlin. We went along the river and eventually end up near the remnants of the Berlin Wall. During summer it is usually really nice weather (while we were there it was sunny and thunderstorming on and off), and a lot of restaurants and bars along the river have cool outdoor seating, sometimes on the river, like this place called Watergate, which Will used to visit back when he lived here for a couple of summers:

It was pretty cool to see the Berlin Wall, which is now covered in murals and graffiti art. I didn't actually know that there were several layers of walls dividing East and West Berlin, but in some spots you can actually see two sets of walls with the "no man's land" buffer zone in between. 

Berlin was about what I expected it to be, especially after having heard some much about it from WP. The Germans we talked to in Berlin were all pretty nice, and for the most part spoke almost perfect English, which works out well for people like me who automatically respond in Spanish when asked a question in any foreign language. It's "ja" not "si," d'oh! 

From Berlin, we headed up to northern Germany to the island of Rügen, where people are a lot less cosmopolitan (less English spoken) and the scenery is gorgeous. After our trip up to Rügen we spent one day back in Berlin, and that's when we went to see the more iconic tourist attractions. More on that part of the trip in a couple posts!  

A Night in Milan

On the 4th of July, we were in Milan. WP and I had one night there and my family had two nights. Since we didn't have too much time, we just took a subway ride down to the center of the city and took a look around. Here's the main cathedral, a pretty impressively huge building: 

The inside of the cathedral was awesome, here's a view from the back of the church looking toward the altar: 

This statue was particularly interesting, with all his muscles and some bones showing:

There are a lot of funny signs in Europe, but this one might take the cake. "Jesus on the Web": 

Since it was the 4th of July, we decided to celebrate by going to McDonalds for some french fries. Plus, it is fun to go to see what menu items they have that we don't at home, like the Parmesan Snack! On the 1 euro menu you can get a snack size portion of Parmesan cheese that is about as big as Will's thumb:

Later that evening we went to dinner at a place that had some Abruzzese specialties (the region where we spent time in Penne), and some Milanese specialties. The risotto Milanese is prepared with saffron and Parmesan, and was so delicious! 

During dinner a thunder storm rolled in, so our walk back to the hotel was a little bit wet. It was still pretty warm outside, so the storm didn't stop us from getting gelato! We found another location of Grom (which we went to in Florence and Venice), and had some amazing gelato on our last night in Italy. 

On the walk home we took cover in this beautiful arcade that houses fancy shops like Prada and Louis Vuitton. 

In the center of the arcade, there was a wedding dress photo shoot taking place. Not sure about the photographer's decision to use McDonalds as the background...

From Milan, Will and I flew to Berlin to meet some friends and my family went back home via London. We were sad to leave Italy (and Italian food), but excited to go to Germany! Next post will be about our time in Berlin, followed by our trip to the island of Rügen in the Baltic Sea.  

Venice: Just Like the Movies, But Hotter

When we walked out of the train station in Venice, the first thing we saw was this green domed building perched on the edge of the Grand Canal. Amazing!   

The architecture in Venice is beautiful, and also unlike a lot of what we saw in other parts of Italy. There is a distinctly Turkish or Byzantine look to a lot of the buildings (for centuries Venice controlled the trade with the Middle East and China in Europe); many of which include colorful domes, wood carvings, and arch-shaped windows. All of this would make for a picturesque and unique city, but when you add the canals and boating culture, it just takes it to the next level. Venice is enchanting, and it is so easy to see why millions of people visit each year. 

After leaving the train station we hopped on a vaporetto, the large passenger tug-boats that operate like city buses or a subway system. Getting on and off the boats is usually pretty easy, but I don't recommend doing it with too much luggage! Here's my mom on the vaporetto, taking in the scenery during the 15-minute ride to our stop: 

The vaporetto took us to one of the San Marco Square stops, and then we had a short walk to our hotel. The hotel was beautiful inside, and had a bar and restaurant on the canal with a view of one of the most prominent churches in the area, Santa Maria della Salute. Here we are on our first evening in town, checking out the view before heading out to sight-see: 

Our first stop that evening was to the Piazza San Marco (St. Mark's Square), where we got to see the famous basilica and bell tower. Mike and I had to take a UC Berkeley grads photo in front of the campanile, which was the architectural inspiration for the one on the Cal campus. Go Bears! 

Here's the one at Berkeley, Sather Tower. Just like in Venice, you can see the tower from all over campus and many parts of the East Bay.  

Here's a closer photo of St. Mark's Basilica, which has such a beautiful exotic exterior:  

From San Marco Square, we headed down a street with lots of little shops selling Murano glass figurines, masks, and little things to snack on like pizza and gelato. Our whole time in Venice it was extremely hot and humid, so we found ourselves stopping to take breaks more often than usual. I think on this first evening it was about 95 degrees and extremely humid!  After only a couple weeks in Europe, my 17-year old sister Alyssa "went native" and started ordering drinks (OK, only one at a time, and just with the family). She took a leap of faith by trying the Aperol and soda spritz, which is a very popular drink in Italy, but not so popular among our American crowd. The Aperol liqueur just tastes so bitter and syrupy, like cough medicine, even though Italians call Campari the bitter one and say Aperol is sweet. It's an acquired taste, I suppose: 

After our break we continued walking through the city and made our way to the Rialto Bridge, which is sort of like the Ponte Vecchio in Florence in that it is a tourist hotspot and there are lots of jewelry and knick-knack sellers on and near it. The bridge is quite beautiful though, and from the top there is a great view of the Grand Canal (the biggest canal through the middle of Venice). 

That first night in Venice was the final Eurocup football (aka "soccer") match. Will and I have been sort of keeping up on football (pretty easy to do in Spain, where it's around you all the time), and this final game of the cup was super exciting, mostly because it was between two major football-loving countries, Spain and Italy. For whatever reason, there weren't many bars or restaurants in our tourist neighborhood showing the game, and our hotel bar's tables were all reserved, so we ended up in one of our hotel rooms. It actually turned out to be really fun; WP and I picked up some pizzas and beer to bring back, and we had a great time watching Spain win 4-0 with some spectacular goals! Good thing we were alone in our room cheering for Spain, not sure the Italians would have loved us doing that in public. Although there aren't all that many Italians in Venice; about 60,000 in the islands making up the historic center, compared to a daily average of 50,000 tourists (2007 estimate according to Wikipedia).

The next morning we went back to Saint Mark's Square to visit the Doge's Palace, which is right next to the basilica. While waiting in line we saw a lot of Spanish tourists, and one even had the Spanish flag fastened to his shirt like a cape, presumably in celebration on their recent victory. Gotta love that Spanish patriotism, at least for their football team. 

The inside of the Doge's Palace was pretty amazing (though mostly not air-conditioned; note to self: come back during fall or winter), and we got to visit a lot of rooms that were formally the apartments of the Duke. The courtyard of the palace was nice, and runs right into the basilica, which you can see partly covered in scaffolding in the background of this photo:

There was also a pretty cool armory and prison which we got to check out, including the Ponte dei Sospiri (or "Bridge of Sighs"), where they used to walk the prisoners on their way to the dungeons. We did the walk ourselves, and it was pretty dismal, though cooler than upstairs in the palace, so maybe the prisoners at least had that going for them? Here's the bridge from the outside, leading over a canal from one part of the palace to the prison cells: 

Another favorite part of the palace, especially for WP, was the map room (big surprise, I know). There were some enormous maps on the walls showing all parts of the known world, and these giant globes, some showing the world and some showing maps of stellar constellations: 

After a quick stop at the Venetian history and archaeology museum (Museo Correr) in Saint Mark's Square, we headed over to another island that is part of Venice, the Lido. The Lido is a long skinny island that acts as a natural breakwater for the Adriatic Sea and helps ensure the calmer waters that you find within the rest of Venice. The beach on Lido is also pretty famous (Thomas Mann's novella "Death In Venice" is mostly set here, and the Venice Film Festival takes place here every year), so we had to go check it out. In a normal city this is when we would hop on the metro or take a bus, or maybe even walk, but in Venice, everything happens on boats. We got on a vaporetto and had a nice boat ride out to the Lido. Once again, boat culture is awesome. On the way there we saw this boat carrying some small trucks out towards the Lido (one of the few islands in the Venetian archipelago that allows motorized vehicles): 

Once we made it to the beach in the Lido, we tested the water, even though we were woefully unprepared for the beach and had to roll up our shorts and skirts: 

The Adriatic Sea is really warm in summer, and on this hot day most people were either in the water or under umbrellas. After walking around a little more, we'd seen most of the points of interest on the Lido, we headed back toward Venice. On the way we stopped on a few other islands to see some interesting churches. One in particular, San Giorgio Maggiore, was awesome because it is located on an island facing the main parts of Venice, and we were able to go up to the top of the bell tower to see the view. Here's a picture we took of it later on, during sunset:

The church was designed by the 16th-century Venetian architect Palladio, who used influences from Roman buildings to create an extremely influential style (Jefferson's home at Monticello, the U.S. Capitol Building, and the White House are a few examples of American buildings that were inspired by his work). Here's San Marco Square seen from the top: 

And another view of Venice, with lots of church domes visible in the distance: 

We happened to be up in the bell tower at 5pm, and we realized that the bells might ring. After a few minutes of waiting and hearing other church bells in the distance, nothing happened. All of a sudden the bells started ringing a little after 5 (a little bit late, Italian-style) and startled us all! Somehow WP managed to capture this awesome moment of Alyssa cracking up because of the bells. Adorable! 

That afternoon we visited a couple more churches, and a couple of very well-placed drinking fountains. One of the great things about Italy is that they have these public fountains with potable water all over the place. Thanks Italy! 

To get back to our hotel, we took another vaporetto boat and got to see a tugboat bringing in a cruise ship. In Venice the contrast between the size of the buildings in the harbor and the cruise ship was crazy. This thing was huge! 

After a much-needed hotel (and air-conditioning) break, we ventured back out for an evening ride on a gondola! Our gondolier's name was Roberto, a third-generation gondolier with lots of fun information about the city. As we got started, Roberto popped a bottle of prosecco for us: 

It was fun being down at water-level, and Roberto took us down lots of tiny canals, some of which are reserved for gondolas only. Here's the "street" sign that means no motorized boats are allowed in: 

We happened to choose our time to ride during very high tide, so as we went under the little bridges that span canals, Roberto often asked my brother Nick (who was sitting in the front) to lean one way or the other to make sure the front point of the boat didn't scrape the bridge. In this photo you can see how close we came with some of the little bridges:  

Our ride also took us onto the Grand Canal, which is the main passage where the vaporettos  and personal speed boats pass by, causing some little waves. Here we are in front of the Rialto Bridge: 

The gondola ride was really fun, and it was cool to see the base of buildings in Venice. A lot of apartment buildings, restaurants, and hotels have little docks for boats, and we even saw one building with a boat garage (a metal grate acted as the door; apparently this was used for filming the movie "The Italian Job"). It amazes me that the city can function as well as it does with the threat of floods, erosion, and other water-related problems always present. From our gondola we saw that the tide as so high, the water from the Grand Canal was starting to spill over onto the sidewalk at the base of the Rialto Bridge: 

After dinner we made out way back to San Marco Square, which we had heard was partly flooded due to the high tide. In front of the basilica and the campanile, there was a huge puddle of water. Little kids were playing in it and adults were dancing around to the nearby accordion and violin music, it was quite the Venetian scene. 

On our last day in Venice, before heading out to the island of Murano, we saw this produce boat where people go to get their fruit and veggies. I guess it makes sense that if they have to bring everything in on boats, why unload it before people buy it? This boat was just docked on the side of a canal, close enough to the sidewalk where people could see the produce. 

The boat ride to the island of Murano was pretty long, and we got to go past some parts of Venice we had not yet visited. When we were almost to Murano, we passed the Isola di San Michele. In 1807 this island was turned into a cemetery because it was deemed that burying the dead on the mainland where everyone lived was unsanitary, especially when people died in epidemics. The bodies were loaded on to special burial gondolas and sent over to this island. 

We didn't stop to visit, but you can see that the name of the vaporetto stop is "Cimitero": 

The island of Murano is known for the special Murano glass produced here. They sell the glass all over Venice (and beyond), but it was fun to visit the source and get to see all the shops that specialize in different types of products. The chandelier shops were particularly impressive, and we also liked this sculpture outside: 

That evening before dinner back in Venice, Alyssa stopped to buy a Venetian mask. After trying on several, she chose this gold and black number with the feather on the side: 

We ate dinner that evening at a really great restaurant called A Beccafico located on the Campo San Stefano. The owners are Sicilian, and it was great to get to try some Sicilian specialties even though we didn't make it all the way down south to the island itself. Will was really excited about his main course: spaghetti-like noodles with anchovies, pine nuts, parsley, raisins, and bread crumbs. Such a crazy combo, but apparently one that worked well. Here are the twins toasting to Venice: 

The next morning we took the train up to Milan for our last night in Italy with the family. I'll leave you for now with one last photo of the Grand Canal, taken during our gondola ride!