I think Padova, was the place we got lost the most. We were supposed to download directions from the Internet but we couldn’t find an Internet café, and all the Internet hotspots we stopped at refused to work on our computer. So apart from our big Europe map, which would get us to the city of Padova, we were driving blind. I rang the woman who’s place we were going to stay at several times and tried desperately to scrawl down the names of Italian towns and roads that she was saying and match them up with something on the map, but it was hopeless. A lot of the time I couldn’t even figure out what letter the town or the road she was saying started with.

It was dark when we drove into Padova about seven thirty at night, right in the middle of Italy peak hour. It felt like we were back in Rome, cars banked up in every direction, the sound of sirens and cars horns again.

‘Look for signs to the train station,’ Pete said, ‘we’ll stop and call her from there. At least then she’ll know exactly where we are. The directions might be easier.’

‘Or she might be able to come and meet us,’ I said hopefully, staring out the window trying to find a sign.

We spiralled in closer and closer to what looked like the city centre, still no signs and no station. We were sitting at a red traffic light about three cars back when Pete wound down his window. There was a guy standing on the footpath selling newspapers. Pete called out to him.

‘Excusez. Douve la stazione?’

The guy said something back to Pete in Italian pointing right at the traffic lights we were waiting at.

‘Grazie,’ Pete said, winding up his window as the light turned green.

‘How about that?’ Pete said turning to me with a big grin on his face.

‘About what?’

‘My Italian.’

‘How did you know what to say?’

‘I didn’t, I threw in a few words that we’ve been learning on the French tapes and I had the word for station in Italian from all the bloody times we’ve looked for it. Pretty good hey.’

‘Yeah, yeah, very clever,’ I said, my eyes still peering out the window looking for something that might resemble a train station.

Pete had understood the directions the guy had given him and drove us into a seething mess of cars that were nudging there way closer and closer to the pick up point at the train station.

‘Look for a parking spot,’ Pete said, breaking just before he nudged the car in front.

We found a bank driveway with four signs saying no parking and swung our long van in and turned off the engine. I immediately looked around to see if anyone was going to care where we parked, but it seemed no one did, everyone was too interested in getting home for dinner.

I picked up the phone and pressed the redial button.

‘Pronto,’ from the other end of the line.

‘Angela, it’s Sarah. We’re at Padova train station.’

‘Ah, si, five minutes. I come, five minutes. I meet you under the big red flashing clock, si?’

‘Where?’

‘The clock, big red numbers. The clock, you see clock.’

I craned my neck back behind us looking for the clock. All I could see were people streaming out of the station.

‘I’ll find it,’ I said. ‘How will I know you?’

‘I wear black coat.’ Ok, great, so does every other person in Europe. ‘And have red hair.’

‘Red?’ I said thinking she must have got her English mixed up, Italians don’t have red hair do they?

‘Si, red.’

‘OK, see you soon,’ I said and hung up, thinking I was going to find her whether her hair was red or purple. It was getting late and there was no way I was sleeping in the van with four kids and temperatures that were getting close to zero.

I’d spotted the clock with the red numbers. While I was standing near it looking for a woman with red hair, Pete moved the van closer to the station, squeezing into a spot in the pick up area. Before he’d even turned the engine off an old guy was tapping on his window. I watched as Pete wound down his window with that look of, ‘So?’ on his face. The old guy proceeded to tell him with his hands that the car was too far away from the gutter, that he needed to move it closer. From what I could tell he wasn’t a parking official or security guard. I watched, laughing as Pete tried to inch our huge box on wheels closer to the gutter between two tiny cars.

Then the phone rang and it was Angela with the red hair.

‘You here?’

‘Yes I’m here, under the clock with the big red numbers.’

I looked around, there were lots of black coats, but no red hair and then I saw her, a petite woman with a phone to her ear and yes, red hair falling in waves down past her shoulders. I waved madly like I’d spotted a friend I hadn’t seen for years in the crowd, and started calling down the phone, ‘I can see you! I can see you! I’m walking towards you right now.’ She spotted me and smiled, waving too.

I wanted to hug the woman when I walked up to her. I was so relieved that we weren’t lost, we’d found someone who was going to give us a warm bed to sleep in and a hot shower. She put her hand out to shake mine though before the hug thought had a chance to go any further.

Angela said it was the worst possible time to arrive in Padova and that she would have to take us along the back streets to get to the house where we’d be staying for three nights.

Pete squeezed the van out of its parking spot and we followed Angela and her husband in their car, twisting and turning down dark back streets.

When we got there the house was warm and Angela assured us there was an easier way back into town when it wasn’t peak hour. She stayed for a while chatting and showing us pamphlets about Padova and explaining with the help of a mudmap on the back of a pamphlet, how to get to Venice. ‘Easy,’ she kept saying, ‘Easy to get to Venice.’ While her husband, who’d seen the relief on my face at Padova train station when I’d found them, kept telling us we would probably be better off catching the train.

After Angela had finished pointing out the way to Venice she went on to tell us how hard it is to find your way around Italy. She said the signs for street names were terrible. They either weren’t there at all or if they were they were hidden behind a vine that had grown over the wall which they were chiselled into. And that was even before you tried to use a map, many of which didn’t have the finer details like back streets marked on them. She said her and her husband were on a committee for their local area to try and improve road signs and maps. She told us that even Italians found it hard to find their way around.

After they left I grabbed Pete by the arm and said, ‘See?’

‘See what?’

‘It’s not us at all, everybody finds it impossible to find their way around this place.’

The next day was a rest day, we spent it reading, playing cards, and exploring the dirt roads around the property on the two mountain bikes Angela had left for us. The day after was Venice.

We decided against Angela’s husband’s advice, and drove to Venice. Pete said we’d be fine, I had my doubts but seeing he was the one driving I was happy to go along. Surprisingly this time we were, except for one traffic accident just off the autostrada, which caused a bank up of cars, there were no other problems. We actually found our way without taking one wrong turn, a record for our road trip so far.

We knew we were going the right way when we found ourselves driving across a long bridge that looked like a piece of elastic that had been stretched from the main land to a hazy island in the distance. We followed the signs to a concrete car park, level after level of car spaces stacked up on top of each other in the middle of a barren construction zone. There was a cold breeze blowing through the empty car park, giving the place an almost eerie feeling. But I could imagine it in peak season, packed, horns tooting, empty chip packets blowing in the wind.

We found our way down to where they sold tickets for the boat ride into Venice. It was a similar set up to a small corner shop, with an unenthusiastic guy serving behind the counter. I’m sure if I’d been able to understand Italian I would have heard him say, ‘Yeah, whadya want.’ I felt like we were entering a second rate them park in off season that was trying to keep its head above water, (excuse the pun), except for the couple of hundred of Euro we had to hand over to get in. And that was just for the first ride.

The kids hadn’t stopped smiling since we got in the car that morning. They knew Venice was a city built on water and that the roads weren’t made of tar. They knew that you needed boats to get around instead of cars and they couldn’t wait. Pete and I had decided that Venice would be about the kids, no churches or art galleries, it would be completely up to the kids as to what we did.

They loved the boat ride in. They sat up the front watching the bow cut through the still water, the little waves it made as it went. Watching the people get on and off along the way, the people who used boats instead of cars. Then they watched as the city appeared as if by magic out of the haze. When we first saw the Basilica di San Marco, its spires glinting in the sun, I knew the kids were going to have to put up with one more church. The building looked like something made for a fairytale kingdom from another world. Definitely theme park stuff.

We got off the boat with the rest of the people who had joined us along the way and drifted for a little while in the pull of the crowd, the kids giggling as we went up and over bridges, watching the occasional gondola pass by underneath. We stopped when we reached the Piazza San Marco, drawn in by the glittering façade of the Basilica, a tower which the kids said we had to climb, and flocks and flocks of pigeons.

Kai was the first one to realise that you could feed the pigeons. There were several women selling bags of food for the birds, one euro a bag.

‘Can we? Can we?’ Kai said jumping up and down holding onto my arm. Besides counting all the dogs that he had seen so far in Italy and falling in love with a rat at the Pantheon, Kai had decided that his one aim before we left Italy was to touch a bird. ‘Pleaseeeee,’ he said, with his best big teeth grin.

‘Yeah, OK.’ I said, thinking, one euro, this is the cheapest fun we’ve had since we landed.

Kai came over with me to the buy the bags of food and squealed when I bought two. I gave him one bag and kept the other for when that one was finished.

‘Go on then, feed the birds.’

Kai grinned and lifted the packet to tip it into his hand. Before the bird food had even tipped into Kai’s hand grey pigeons swept up from the cobble stone ground of the piazza, like a carpet about to be shaken, and landed on Kai, covering him. Kai looked like a mass of feathers and flapping wings. At one stage there were so many birds I thought they were going to be too heavy for him, that his knees would start to give way and he’d have to sit down. But he didn’t, he just kept grinning and saying, ‘Mum look! Look at this one,’ and ‘Did you see that one!’ and ‘Oh mum, did you see the one without a foot?’

Jack, Noah and Poppy put their hands out to Kai for feed. As Kai poured it for them my kids disappeared and metamorphosed into giant birds. They looked like four giant homing pigeons. Pete and I were laughing so hard that a lot of the shots we took got blurred. Pete got in there in the end, letting the birds flap all over him. I was happy to stand back and take the film, flapping wings, bird lice, not to mention bird poo, is not really my thing. By the time we’d run out feed we’d become a tourist attraction ourselves with people all around us snapping photos of the kids and the birds.

Kai kept his arms out long after all the feed had gone, russelling the paper bag occasionally to try and maintain the bird’s interest. Two birds hung on for a long time but finally, realising it was just an empty paper bag after all, they let go and flew off.

‘Oh,’ Kai said, his head hanging. ‘I was hoping one of them might crawl into my pocket and come to our new house in Switzerland with me.’

To recover from the birds and keep Kai’s mind off his special friend that we’d just lost we headed straight for the tower. The kids were disappointed to find a modern lift operated by security guards instead of a narrow twisting stone stairwell. Room at the top was cramped. This time we were sharing it with lots of people instead of the few that had climbed the bell tower with us in Sienna. The view though was worth the squeeze.

The haze by this time had lifted. Walking slowly around the top of the tower we could see out over all the islands that were connected by bridges to make up Venice. We could see the main canal and all the little canals that broke off from it and headed into what looked like a thick forest of buildings, the fronts of the buildings plunging down into the water. The kids pointed out gondolas punting their way along some of the canals and wanted to know if they could go on one.

‘We’ll see,’ I said, not telling them that we would only go on a gondola if we could find the one that Angela had told us about. The one the locals used. Apparently you could ride it a short way for one euro each instead of having to pay the exorbitant fee they charged for the tourist gondolas.

The kids didn’t last long at the top of the tower, they were keen to get down in amongst it all. To wander the footpaths that ran along the canals, cross the bridges and do what all the tour books recommended, get lost in Venice.

Everyone moaned and groaned when I said we were going to have a quick look in the San Marco basilica, but they were quiet enough when we went inside, fascinated by all the gold and the mosaic floors that dipped and rose. Noah wanted to know why the floor wasn’t flat; the only explanation I could give him was that of a church perhaps sinking.

After that we had a quick lunch first at, (much to my deprived children’s excitement), Maccas. It was easily the cheapest food in Venice and I didn’t have to wonder if everyone would like it or not. While they ate I went out and browsed the shops in the alleyway.

I’d seen bits and pieces of Venetian glass as we’d travelled through Italy. The closer we got to Venice the more of it there seemed to be. But on the island itself it seemed like every second or third shop was full of it. The glass in Venice was different to what I’d seen before, smoother, deeper, more intricate patterns. The colours - blues, greens, reds - filled the glass. Other pieces had the colours stretched through, weaving lines that left you mesmerised. I could of spent hours staring and browsing, thinking I’d like to buy this one and I’d like that one too.

It was the perfect place to look for a fortieth birthday present that I needed for my girlfriend back home. I found a bangle with two glass beads. There was silver twisted through the beads. There were paperweights and animals, pendants and mobiles, and the most divine Christmas glass baubles hanging in the window. I could imagine the glass baubles hanging in our window at home in Australia but couldn’t stretch my imagination far enough to work out how to get the baubles home without ending up with a paper bag full of tiny pieces of glass in stead of baubles.

In the end I just bought the bangle and then went got the kids. After I’d made them promise not to touch anything and told them the shop was too small for them to move too fast, I took them in too look at the glass.

They loved the animals and the patterns that twisted through the paper weights, but when I pointed out the Christmas baubles hanging in the window all I got was a, ‘Yeah cool mum,’ as they glanced at them and then skipped on outside, relieved to not have to think about how far they were allowed to swing their arms.

The next shop we went into was a paper shop. It was similar to many that we’d seen along the way except this one had hand blown glass pens that you could dip into ink and write with.

The guy that ran the shop saw me pointing the pens out to Pete and came over.

‘You try?’

‘Ah, no, it’s OK, I’m just looking.’

‘No, you try, don’t have to buy.’

‘Just to try?’ I asked, wanting to be sure I was understanding.

‘Yes, just to try. What colour you want?’

OK, so maybe I wasn’t understanding. ‘I don’t want to buy, just looking.’

‘Yes, I know. You try. What colour?’

I looked at Pete.

‘I think he’s happy for you just to try it, he just wants you to pick a colour out that’s all.’

I picked out this delicious red pen that had swirls of green through the glass and a dark green ink to go with it. The guy opened up the package and the inkbottle then dipped the glass nib of the pen into the ink. The nib of the pen seemed to suck the ink onto itself. Then the guy drew some squiggles on the piece of paper.

‘You,’ he said passing the pen to me.

I took the pen and swirled my name across the page. I’d expected it to drag on the paper or at least be scratchy, but it was smoother than the best ballpoint I’d written with. I kept writing and swirling, not able to hide the smile on my face. There’s something about a good pen and writing with real ink, the smell of the ink, the way the pen glides across the page.

‘Where are you from?’ The guy behind the counter asked, apparently happy to let me keep writing as long as I wanted, he didn’t have any idea how long that could be.

‘Australia,’ I said, looking up from the paper.

‘Ah Australia.’ He reached under the counter he was sitting behind pulled a book out.

I thought he was going to ask me how to write something in English, like the guy in the art gallery in Sienna had. He’d wanted us to give him the best English wording for a sale sign he was writing. Or I thought maybe this guy was going to ask me to explain a particular English word, like the guy we’d bought an expensive bottle of wine off in San Gimignano. That guy when he’d realised we spoke English had pulled book out from under his desk and said, ‘I learn English from a book, what does “sure” mean?’ It had taken us about ten minutes to explain.

The guy in the paper shop put on his glasses squinted at the book he’d pulled out and then said, ‘G’day mate, thanks love, no worries.’

I laughed. ‘What are you reading?’

‘How to talk Australian.’

He showed me the book. ‘It tells you all about Australia. Lot for me to learn.’

‘Why are you learning about Australia? You coming over?’

‘No, no, just need to know. And you, what do you do here, long way from home. Holiday in Italy?’

‘For a little while, then we go to Switzerland to live for six months, we’re putting the kids in French speaking school.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah really.’

‘Yeah,’ he said repeating my lazy yes, ‘yeah Australian too.’

I laughed.

‘Very cold in Switzerland.’

‘Gets cold in Australia too.’

‘Not too cold.’

‘Yeah, pretty cold.’

‘But no snow.’

‘We get snow.’

He laughed. ‘You have joke with me.’

‘No we do really.’ I looked at Pete for back up.

‘Yeah, we do. Lots of snow enough to ski on.’ Pete said.

‘No. Where? The book didn’t tell me.’

‘In a place called Perisher,’ Pete said.

‘Perisher. Where?’

‘It’s down near Canberra. Snows near Melbourne too and in Tasmania.’

‘No. Really?’

‘Yeah really.’ We both laughed at his disbelief.

‘You show me?’ He asked spinning around in his chair to the computer that was behind him. ‘OK for you to show me?’

‘Sure.’

He tapped into google earth and then looked at Pete, ‘Peri what.’

‘Perisher,’ Pete said.

‘You come, you type it in.’

Pete went in behind the desk and typed in Perisher and watched as google earth zoomed in.

‘Right there,’ Pete said pointing.

‘I can’t see the snow.’

So then Pete did a search on Perisher and showed him the photos of the snow. The guy kept saying ‘amazing, amazing,’ over and over. He told us he would have to go home and tell his wife and kids, told us they wouldn’t believe him, that they’d think he was crazy.

In the end we bought the pen, it was the perfect addition to my friends present. We left the shop telling the guy he would have to come and visit Australia. He laughed and called out something to the kids in French. They smiled and waved.

After the paper shop we ambled down back street after back street. Walked along canals, crossed over bridges. We found the Accademia Bridge that crossed the main canal. It was lined with shops selling everything from soccer jerseys to Venetian glass. The kids sifted through the soccer jerseys finding their favourite teams while I compared glass with glass.

We caught the vaporetto number one, which we had an all day pass for because of the hundreds of euros we’d paid to catch the boat from the car park, along the main canal. We watched the façade of gothic, Moorish and renaissance buildings pass by, all adding to the effect that we were in a land somewhere else, a land far away, a land that Tolkein could have written about. We got off the vaporetto at the train station so we could walk back along the alleyways and over the bridges to where our boat would take us back to the car park.

It was on dusk and we’d wandered away from the crowd. There were no shops just doors that looked like they would open onto accommodation, maybe houses but more likely guest accommodation. The kids spied a tower in the distance and said it was the clock tower in San Marco Square, so we locked it onto our navigation radar and headed towards it.

It took us about half an hour to find the base of the tower, weaving through narrow pathways, crossing and sometimes recrossing bridges. But when we did find it, it wasn’t the bell tower in San Marco square at all; it was a tower back next to the railway station. We’d spent a good hour and a half doing a huge loop.

We decided it was better to get back on vaporetto number one and go back down the main canal. By this time it was dark and there lights reflecting in the water, dancing in the tiny waves as the vaporetto pushed through.

We got off at the fish market that was now closed and went looking for a small restaurant Angela had recommended in behind it. She’d said it was good food and would be a good price for such a big family. We found a restaurant but I don’t think it was the right one because the pizza we had was average, and the salad nothing better than lettuce and a Kraft dressing from the supermarket shelf.

After dinner we set out for San Marco square. The kids, who hadn’t complained all day, even though we’d walked miles, were still running, and jumping out at each other from behind corners, giggling, and of course asking for gelati. We got the standard gelati in a small corner shop just before we came back into the main shopping district. By this time most of the shops were closed or about to and all of the fairy lights that had been strung up for Christmas between the rooves were turned on. It was cold enough for me to have my bunny gloves on and be puffing a fine mist out of my mouth as I walked. For the first time in my life, the Christmas I’d seen in movies, and sent to people on the front of Christmas cards, had a hint of reality about it.

The kids weren’t that interested in the fairy lights or the glass baubles in the windows, Poppy and Kai did stop and look at some figurines, Santa, a reindeer, a few elves. But most of their excitement came from who could win the race to the end of St Marco square which was now empty of both tourists and pigeons.

At the end of the square was a Christmas tree made out of lit up plastic coloured tubes. I’d seen it in the morning on our way through, but in daylight it had been a boring mix match of colours. The lit up night time version though was different all together, the plastic tube tree, now with all its lights on, seemed like the centre of a magical elvan kingdom.

Jack was annoyed when we wanted to take the kids photo in front of the tree, he said it would be too hard to get a good shot. And the others were more interested in climbing on the sculptures of the lions that were next to the tree.

The photo we got though captured everything, the magic, the cold and the start of our first Christmas without swatting mossies and heading to the beach.

Everyone was quiet on the boat trip back to the car park, watching the lights of the island disappear, watching the people who used boats in stead of cars and buses go home to their houses All of the kids said they wanted to come again the next day. I wanted to as well. I thought maybe we could go out to Murano, the island that is famous for its Venetian glass, watch the glass blowers with their long glass straws. In the end though we decided not to, one taste of Venice would have to be enough for now, there were too many other places to see.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 31st, 2008 at 1:24 am and is filed under Switzerland Trip. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.