"In Venice, we thought we'd seen everything...
Dips in the Grand Canal... sunny-side-up eggs cooked with a camp stove in Saint Mark's Square, [parents who make their] little kids pee [and worse] in the passageways*... bicycles barrelling down the waterfront, couples making out on the pavement, others who steal the very pavement stones [from the alleys] for their collections. Nothing to sneeze at!
...And instead we were wrong...
It was a very real Suzuki 200R the other night that woke up half the sestiere of Santa Croce, who--even though they hadn't eaten mushrooms--first thought that they were hallucinating. But it was a real motocycle, burning rubber and spewing exhaust... with two foolish French twenty-four year-olds, thoroughly trashed, unable to even pronounce their own names, much less to understand the obvious and ancient urban fabric of Venice."
[They had had to scramble over the Tolentini footbridge from the Piazzale Roma carpark in
order to end up in the narrow, winding, inaccessible alleys of the city. No small feat, considering that the many bridges in Venice aren't ramps, but are covered with stairs, as you can see from this photo from Rick Steve's page on Venice.]"Stopped by the police, who also had thought they'd seen everything, the two practically collapsed on the ground, not from regret, but from too much drink. Only later, when they came to with the citation in their hands and found the motorcycle impounded, did they begin to understand something..."
Seems that the Assessor of Tourism and Decorum Augusto Salvadori has yet to really comment, but that may just be because he's apoplectic! :-)
--------------------------------------------------
*This, BTW, is done by the locals!
Categories: Venice, Humor
1 comment:
Sometimes it seems that Americans get the obnoxious (tourist) award. It just goes to show you that everybody has some stinkers. I hope that when they are sober they decide not do do this kind of thing anymore anywhere.
Post a Comment