Our Venetian trip was planned as a trip of finales: our time in Venice ended the day after Mardi Gras, so we were looking forward to fireworks in St. Mark's Square (which turned out not to be happening, at least not this year), and on our way back through Milan we had planned to visit da Vinci's Last Supper. As the trip progressed we added new final milestones: 

On Mardis Gras we completely threw good sense to the wind and ate like there was no tomorrow; stopping for pizza not once but twice; enjoying a gelato (at the best place we'd found yet) AND a frittole (a donut-like pastry with raisins that Venetians have mainly at Carnevale) AND a yummy dessert at dinner. The kids probably thought their health-conscious parents had taken leave of their senses, but we didn't hear any complaints. We stopped for lunch at a tourist trap restaurant right by Rialto Bridge (which really wasn’t bad, or all that expensive). We had a big surprise when Grace took a bite into her fried calamari and out popped one of her baby teeth! That’s the second tooth in a row she’s lost on a day when she already had a late night planned (the other was New Year’s Eve). She’s giving the Tooth Fairy some overtime. Dinner that night was a highlight of the trip: a restaurant named Zucca that featured lots of vegetarian dishes prepared with fresh ingredients with methods from around the country—I may make a trip back to Venice just for the mushroom lasagna.

The Venetians mark the end of Carnevale by igniting a giant wooden bull in the middle of the lagoon to mark the transition from Fat Tuesday to Ash Wednesday—we decided we would stay up for that. Our dinner at Zucca kept us out till nearly 9, and then we meandered back to the Accademia Bridge, conveniently close to our apartment, crossing the Grand Canal where the lit gondolas pass by in the "Silent Parade," and with a view of the mouth of the Canal where we expected to see the Bull set ablaze. We found a great spot with a view of the Customs House, where the doomed bull sat in dock throughout Carnevale. But when I set the girls' expectations by pointing out a boat in the canal where the bull would be, Grace protested vociferously—there was no point in standing around for the next hour-and-a-half to see some speck of a bonfire out in the middle of the lagoon, she said. We HAD to find a better spot. We knew where we could try for a better view, we told her, down my St. Mark's, which was an absolute zoo all week long, so we weren't super hopeful of getting a spot. It didn't matter, she said, we needed to try or there was no point. I warned her again that we might miss out on seeing it altogether, but then reflected that usually in life I regret the chances I don't take, not the ones I go for, so we set out.

What can I say? Sometimes you should listen to your kids. We walked right up to the docks, and not only were we able to sit directly in front of the view (which had been moved to the middle of the lagoon, where we may not have seen it at all from the bridge), but there was even a bunch of chairs from a local hotel that people had comandeered for seating, so we got to sit down until the great conflagration began. Well, nearly. Amelia faded fast, and by 11:45 was insisting she was too tired to go on and wanted to go back. I convinced her to stay, barely. Then at 11:50 came the dreaded news: she needed to go potty. Bad. There was no way she was going to make it to midnight, when we presumed the bull would be lit. Victoria took her through the crowd behind us, which had grown quite large at this point, and went off to find a bathroom or head back to the apartment. At midnight Grace and I stood up for ignition, terribly sad that Amelia's toughness was undone by her bladder.

Only it wasn't! Victoria had resourcefully found, shall we say, alternative arrangements to the pay toilets far from our seats, and Amelia was back, livlier than ever. We had another 30 minute wait, until at 12:30 finally a bunch of fireworks went up inside the bull and up it went in a blaze of glory—spewing embers high above the lagoon and barreling off into a cloud that rolled over the gondolas that were filling the lagoon from the canal. In seven minutes the whole bull would be nothing but a pile of smoldering ash. Except that the Venetian fire department, which stands faithful vigil over a stone town completely surrounded by and immersed in water 364 days, 23 hours and 55 minutes per year, took its chance for action and unloaded on the fire with the water cannons of two fireboats just in time to save the rickety 2x4's holding the faintest shape of a seated bull, which will doubtless be far more dangerous to the poor soul that has to disassemble it than would have been the pile of cinders that would have been there if they'd waited another 30 seconds.

The next morning we surprisingly woke up by 8:30 with relatively good energy, so we had time to pack and make our way to the Peggy Guggenheim Museum. It made another nice way to wrap up our trip. For her retirement, she restored a palazzo on the Grand Canal and played host to numerous modern artists, whose art she bought and hung around her house or added to her sculpture garden, which is mostly still where it was when she was alive. After a week of seeing stunningly beautiful Renaissaince paintings and sculptures that we'd seen in art textbooks our whole lives, it was unreal to walk through one decent-sized house and see one painting after another that came from the "modern art" section of those same books—all hung by the same woman who'd known many of the artists. The museum still kind of went the same way as other modern art museums we've visited—the kids were fascinated for about two rooms, and then we all kind of started zooming through one painting after another where—I apologize for the heresy—but it looks like the artist's true genius was figuring out how to sell one of Amelia's doodles as a great statement on the condition of art.

On Monday, the day we'd tentatively planned to do our gondola tour, the weather was foul, so Victoria struck upon the idea of taking a gondola to the train station on our way out to leave town like the celebrities we like to think we are. Peggy Guggenheim got around Venice in her own personal gondola; why shouldn't we? We struck up a good conversation with an English-speaking, personable guy who looked like the sort of gondolier Meryl Streep would score in a movie about Venice, but then—wouldn’t you know it—it turned out to be his lunch hour, so he passed us off to a taciturn, nearly incomprehensible guy who, let's just say, looked like one of the gondoliers offscreen. The novelty of the ride wore off on the girls in about 5 minutes, but they say they enjoyed it, and it certainly felt far more luxurious than schlepping our carry-ons over half of Venice's 400 bridges if we'd walked.

Considering we had very little prep time for this trip due to a very busy pre-vacation schedule, Victoria did a terrific job of landing us two coveted tickets: one for the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua on our second day, and one for Santa Maria delle Grazie where you find Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper fresco. You have to get reservations for these because their climate has to be tightly controlled to protect what's left of them. We kind of killed time Thursday morning around Milan, then stopped for lunch at a sunny little café (where the sun moved off so that it wound up being shady by the time we sat down), and so wouldn't you know it that we were running late. Literally, running late by the time we found the church, then found out there was actually a completely different da Vinci exhibit around the corner. We were so disheartened to run into what appeared to be the right location, but to not see any open doors. At first we thought we'd been too late and been locked out (you're supposed to be there at least 15 minutes before your reservation; we were only 10 minutes early). Then we found a letter taped to the door explaining—as well as we could decipher with our week's worth of Italian—that the exhibit had been closed by order of someone or another for 3 1/2 hours.

It turned out to be a holiday in Russia this weekend (Men's Day), so there were lots of Russian tourists standing around, and Victoria was able to find out from them that we'd understood the letter correctly, and they said an announcement had been made before we arrived that it would open up again at 3:15. So we headed down the street to San Maurizio, which turned out to be a beautiful little cathedral all covered in frescoes of Bible stories and stories of the saints. The girls thoroughly enjoyed trying to guess what the stories were, and then hearing the stories they weren't familiar with (some of which are thouroughly in PG-13 territory, but what can you do?). Victoria and I were thrilled that this whole trip they almost never lost interest in all the art work that we saw, and they thanked us repeatedly and talked about how they wished the trip would just go on forever. It was so rewarding!

When we returned to Santa Maria delle Grazie there was a small mob already gathered around the doors that had opened a few minutes earlier. We had to press our way to the front, but two bilingual employees of the museum kept things in order so that people entered in the order in which they'd bought their tickets, and we got our full 15 minutes (maybe longer) with the artwork, in a very uncrowded chapel. Exiting the place we certainly enjoyed a feeling of accomplishment and peace after the panic of thinking we might not get in; we spent a little while longer exploring the city before heading to dinner at a delicious Roman restaurant just down the street from our apartment.

So there were lots of finales to our trip, but mine came at bedtime that night. Our Milan apartment was very well located, but tiny—you had to move the kitchen table in front of the apartment door to have enough room to pull out the girls' sleeper bed. But there was just enough room on their hideabed for us to pile in for prayers and lullabyes. On our first night in Italy the girls asked if we knew any Italian lullabyes, and Victoria thought of "Que Sera, Sera." I cobbled together a version as well as I could from my memory of watching the Doris Day Show reruns during one childhood summer vacation, and we sang it every night. The girls joined in after a couple of nights, so it became a quartet. Hearing Grace and Amelia's voices, cuddled up with them on the little bed in our warm little apartment was my finale.

Until the next trip.

You saw last week how Victoria enjoys her trips to LA.  This weekend, though, I got the opportunity to tag along and make her follow a different routine.  The kids stayed with Victoria's parents, and I joined her on the flight.  Thankfully the flights were not too full so I was able to get seats there and back with minimal drama.  I didn't get seated in first class, but Victoria and her friends saw to it that I was a little pampered, anyway!

On Saturday evening we went to Manhattan Beach and enjoyed a yummy Italian meal at Pomodoro—a great bargain where we shared one large pasta with grilled vegetables and the waitress just kept bringing us delicious, pillowy, rosemary bread.  On Sunday morning we got up fairly early (though not very early on Eastern time) and went for a long run—we actually pulled off a half marathon!  The run took us along Manhattan, Hermosa and up to Redondo Beach.  It was overcast and chilly, but there were plenty of surfers to watch on one side, and gorgeous multimillion dollar homes on the other, so we had a great time.

Our run ended practically in front of Trader Joe's so we ducked in to buy some dinner for the flight home and Victoria replaced a glass at Pier One next door, which had been broken in transit on her last flight home.  (She pointed out that they hadn't wrapped it correctly and they replaced without so much as a receipt!)

After quick showers we got a cab back to Manhattan Beach for brunch at the beautiful new The Strand House, where we'd made reservations the night before.  The food was excellent, but the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the ocean may have been even better.  We got to enjoy watching some more quality surfing—the waves were really starting to pound with a big rainstorm blowing toward shore (though it didn't arrive until after we'd taken off).  We also had a nice conversation with our waitress.  It won't surprise you to find out she's an aspiring actress, but in this case she's actually landed a recurring role on Body of Proof, including this week's episode, so we're looking forward to catching that On Demand!

On the way back to our hotel we stopped for a bargain on some olive oil at World Market (75% off!) and I thought I'd pop into that west-coast mecca for IT guys, Fry's, but time was getting tight so we went to the next-door Best Buy instead, since I did need some earphones.  This left us with a two-mile walk and about 45 minutes till we needed to be downstairs for our shuttle.  You might think that would be a real problem after running a half marathon, but in fact the only problem wound up being that we were wearing our "nice clothes," and my dress shoes and Victoria's tights were absolutely not suitable for fast-walking.  We made it back and got everything tossed in our suitcases in time to make it back to the airport easily, and the flight crew was nice enough to give me a seat.

One last oddity:  LAX has Best Buy machines in the airport and we were curious as to whether their prices are competitive with the stores.  Turns out that the exact same earphones I bought in the store for $20 are only $10 in the machine!  So I bought a pair and I'll be taking the others back to the store.

Whatever else happens this Christmas season, our Christmas spirit was fulfilled last night.  The girls have been begging to decorate the ginger bread house I purchased in Ikea a few weeks ago.  But I did not have the powdered sugar for the royal icing and no candy for decoration.  So Ken and I hurried and got the needed extras to make the decorating a success.  From what Ken reported there was excitement and dancing, and expressions of awe and wonderment at the sight of all the candy I brought from LA.  Not that I couldn’t buy the same candy here, but that’s when I had the time to go shopping.  So yesterday after school the three girls began decorating.  It was so fulfilling and joyful to watch the happiness on the little faces.  And what is Christmas if not for joy?

I’ve been working Los Angeles route so long now it almost feels like second home.  I have my routine established now although it’s shifting with the seasons.  Basically the strategy has been to maximize my time at the beach.  We would get to the hotel hopefully right before 5 pm when the next-to-last shuttle leaves for Manhattan Beach.  The first couple of times I changed into my work out clothes and went for about a 3 mile run on the beach but I soon learned that left me wiped out for the next day’s long run of 6 – 12 miles.  So at night I would go to watch the sunset and surfers, stroll, maybe get coffee or dinner.  The last shuttle would come at 7:15 and I would get to bed soon after getting to my hotel room.  Now that it’s winter, the sun sets soon after our arrival, so instead of the beach I go shopping.  There is great shopping in the area and I always was a little sad that we don’t have more time here because by the time I am all beached out there is no time to shop.  When I say there is great shopping here I mean there is an abundance of stores to be visited without two children in tow.  I rarely shop at home.  My children tend to run wildly while in the store, pick up everything they see, beg to buy everything they see, and if there is bulk candy to be dispensed from large containers with the simple pull of a lever it’s all over.  I live 5 minutes away from a shopping mall but go maybe three or four times a year.  Here in LA though I can indulge without fear of being kicked out.  My favorite clothing store, Anthropology, is nearby but yesterday I had to do some Christmas shopping.  So I went to Target and picked up some gift cards for the teachers along with a few stocking suffers and loads of candy for our gingerbread house decorating on Thursday.  From Target I went to Trader Joes and got five things: salad, salsa, bread, soap, and a toothbrush – I left mine at home.  That way when I get home Thursday morning I won’t have to go grocery shopping.  Next door to Trader Joe’s is Pier 1.  I don’t usually shop there but I popped in, and wouldn’t you know it they had handmade glasses Kenneth and I looked at a few months back but deemed too expensive on clearance.  I had the store manager check the Maryland store inventory which was insufficient so now I am lugging back to Maryland ten new glasses.  Then I stopped by REI for another gift card.  At that point it was nearly 11 pm eastern time – I always stay on my body clock when on short trips, and I headed back to the hotel.  Right across the street from the hotel is Staples where I badly need to get some office supplies, but it may have to be another trip – no room in my luggage.  Today there is a food market in one of the shopping centers that I always wanted to go to but was never here on a Wednesday afternoon before.  I will have to stop by there.  So the second day of my layover I usually go for a long run on the beach.  The ocean makes me happy.  Really, is there anyone who doesn’t love the sight, sound, and smell of the ocean?  When I get over the last hill and see the immense blue stretched out in from of me my eyes well up with tears—every time without fail.  The long run along the ocean is not arduous – I get to be where I love, and it’s flat.  It’s three miles to the beach from our hotel where I run along a major street and then a pretty wood chip trail through residential area.  I typically then would run more on the Strip, and for the last two or three miles I would run barefoot on the sand letting the waves catch my feet.  Perfection.  I would hang out on the beach and wait for the hotel shuttle to take me back to the hotel where I would get ready for my flight home.  The best layovers are the ones on weekends when Kenneth can join me.  It is so much fun to have his company, especially on the long run.  It’s a perfect date – running side by side talking, taking in the ocean.  I cannot wait for this weekend because Kenneth is coming with me!  Now the sun is up, and I am ready for my run on the beach!