Venetian Quirks: prego, hot chocolate and pigeons

We’ve seen a few things about Venice in the 48 odd hours that we’ve been in this beautiful city of glass, gondolas and tour groups. As we travel through Europe, we try to pick up bits and pieces of the language of the country in which we’re touring, a little “obrigado” in Portugal, perhaps a “Gracias” in Spain, and in Iceland… ok we didn’t even try, but who knows Icelandic anyway? So anyway, we’ve had a two week crash course in Italian and have picked up a little more than just ‘thank you’ translated. The mysterious phrase is that of “prego.” No, its not the pasta sauce, people. Instead it is a useful, multi-meaning phrase which one can use at pretty much any given awkward silence. We walk in a store, look at something and the owner comes over: ‘prego,’ she says. We ask for the bill and it comes with a ‘prego.’ We thank them for their meal and service and they respond ‘prego.’ So we’ve taken to using it as well. People say hi, we say ‘prego.’ Someone bumps into us, we say ‘prego.’ We read a menu completely in Italian and point to a few things, liberally speaking ‘prego’ as we gesture down the list. We think it means ‘here,’ ‘you’re welcome,’ ‘go ahead,’ and just about any other filler phrase you can think of. What a great word, we should come up with one too. I think I might just start repeating some nonsense word as a consistent response to everything and anything when I get back to the states…we’ll see.

The next quirk. Some of you may be familiar with San Marco square in Venice. Its big, has a large church and about a thousand nasty pigeons mooching off every tourist in sight. It is also, obvious though it may seem, the greatest place in the city for a good bit of people watching. As we said, in Rome we sat by Trevi Fountain for over two hours and enjoyed one of our favorite past times and we were hoping to repeat it here in St. Mark’s. So, we found just the spot and decided to grab a cappuccino and a seat lining the square. There was a plethora of chairs surrounding white linen clad tables in the center of the square so we thought we might just do that. Seeing as we were between meals and wanted just a drink, we thought we would check the menu to see if their offerings would suffice. As we scanned through the list of beverages and light lunch items, we were appalled. Our drink of choice, and the freedom that purchase gave us to a frontrow seat on St. Mark’s, would cost us nine Euro eighty cents. For one. And the plan wasn’t to split a cappuccino. Ok, we thought, that is ridiculous, but there are tables a little over here and they don’t seem to have nearly the views. We cautiously bellied up to the bar and asked the price for two cappuccinos. That would be 2.50 each, we were told. There we go, we thought, much more reasonable. Just to confirm that the good news was exactly what we were looking for, I gestured to the table with our name on it. “That one, right?” I asked confidently. “Oh no,” I was quickly corrected, “if you would like that seat the drink will be 9.80.” Honestly? I was asking for the same cup of coffee just a different spot. I could see it from here. I could spit on the table from where I was. And those 10 steps were going to cost me seven Euro?? (Ok, like I’ve stopped doing the calculation or something…ten dollars and fifty cents?!!) So we strolled across the square, got two cups to go for five Euro and sat on the free benches lining the square. That’s right, we stuck to The Man.

So right here should be the third quirk and it would have been, however last night we had an event that more poignantly describes this specific quirk. Whitney will fill you in soon, be prepared for a good one...stay tuned.