Halloween Spectacular

Tomorrow officially starts the "BEDIN" quest, but I thought I'd start a day early to deliver a little Halloween Spectacular.

I left Turin this morning at 6am and have arrived five hours later on the opposite side of The Boot. Italians don't generally celebrate Halloween, but why let something like popular opinion effect how I partake in foreign festivities? I have therefore treated myself to a long weekend in Venice.

This place cost an arm and a leg in taxes alone, so I find myself pinching pennies by the sea side. Regardless, the canals are fantastic and the buildings divine. My favorite part is the Gondola Men, always leaning cooly against wooden bridges with their slender boats tucked safely underneath, lapping with the tides. I can't help but to feel that they exude a kind of sexuality that I have never before seen in those working in the public transportation profession. I imagine my bus drivers wearing those body-hugging nautical V-necks and the result is just not the same. Train conductors in ribbon-lined straw hats? Definitely no the same appeal. Gondola men: the only reason why anyone would pay 60 Euro to float through canals.

The city is as confounding as you would expect a city built on water to be. To get from here to there requires maze-like intellect as dead-ends are bountiful and streets signs perpetually useless.

Still, beauty is omnipresent and I'm happy to be here. A domani tutti, and Happy Halloween.