Oh So Simpatico!

The flight from Amsterdam to Venice was wholly uneventful.  However, after such a long delay that more than inconvenienced us, you would think that Transavia would have bent over backwards, at the very least, to offer passengers a complimentary drink, a free package of peanuts or a sip of water, yet that was the furthest thing from their mind. 

Thirty minutes into the flight, the pilot made an announcement that was a long time coming.  Our original flight had been delayed because of a food service truck that crashed into the plane on the tarmac back at Schiphol Airport, thus effectively breaking the plane.  It sounded like a scene straight out of Laurel and Hardy—something that Stan and Ollie would have tried to pull off.  The pilot offered his apologies on behalf of Transavia for the delay.  Still, I didn’t hear the first thing about a complimentary cocktail.

Once we landed at Treviso Airport and boarded a shuttle bus for the hour-long drive into the heart of Venice, we arrived at the water taxi/water bus depot.  Maarten and I were both too tired to fight the throngs of people on the water bus—which we later found out was a moot point anyway because the water buses had been closed for the evening prior to our arrival—so we opted for the much more direct route of a water taxi. 

My poor wallet is still screaming from that experience.  I didn’t want Maarten to be the one pulling money out of his wallet the entire trip, so, in good faith, I offered to pay for the taxi.  While the water taxi ride was a relatively short one, it was inordinately expensive.  Forty euros, to be exact.  Maarten is still living in that no-man's land called denial, but I thoroughly believe we were royally hosed, Venetian style, on that one.  As long as I am black, my bank account will never forgive me for that.

Finally, after twenty-seven hours of travel from door-to-door (Maarten’s house to the front door of the hotel), we had reached our intended destination.  My first thought was ‘Good gracious in heaven alive…what in the world is that stinky smell that so vehemently assaults my tender nostrils?’  This is not a slight on the entire city of Venice, mind you.  It turned out that the swamp-esque odor was fleeting; however, it would materialize from time to time because of mossy water that would wash up on the concrete stairways leading from the canal to the walkways.

Forty euros lighter, we entered our home-away-from home for the next five days.  Ca’ Dogaressa was a quaint little six-room boutique hotel located just off the Grand Canal.  To be honest, at a quarter past midnight, and as fatigued as we were, we could have been arriving to a glorified cave with crappy indoor plumbing, a dirt floor and sporadic electricity and I would have been satisfied.  Tunnel vision had hit me hard and all I could see in front of me was a bed on which to lay my tired body.

The front desk clerk was nowhere to be found in the unassuming lobby.  My heart sank like the Lusitania.  I had no choice—it looked like I was going to have to resort to breaking down the door marked “Privato” and dragging somebody out of their cozy bed.  Lucky for the hotel the clerk materialized moments later and we were checked in rather swiftly. 

As Maarten was signing the guest log, I looked around for an elevator.  Sadly, Ca’ Dogaressa didn’t have one, and all of the crying, kicking and screaming in the world was not going to make a little silver box that travels on a vertical path magically appear before my blood shot eyes.  Jimmy-rigging an elaborate pulley system from the outside through our room’s window was out of the question at that late hour, so the stairs was our only viable option.  Thankfully, we weren’t totally left to our own devices and, with the help of the clerk, we schlepped up two flights of stairs heavily laden with two sixty-five pound bags, one twenty-five pound bag, two carry-on bags, one very tired Dutchman and one extremely exhausted American woman.

Have you ever been so tired that even your hair is pooped, and you know in your heart of hearts that you should go to sleep but you just have to be nosey and force yourself to stay awake for fear that you might miss something of such monumental importance that it makes the Seven Wonders of the World pale by comparison?  Yeah, me too.  So for the next forty-five minutes, I didn’t miss checking out a single, solitary thing in that room. 

It was a tiny room, but neat and distinctively Venetian.  The elaborate wall coverings—more tapestry than wallpaper—nicely complimented the curtains, which complimented the desk, which complimented the floor, which complimented the bed.  It was all so Martha Stewart matchy-matchy.

The bathroom was almost as big as the room so I had a safe refuge in the likely event that Maarten began to snore like a drunken sailor on a three-day shore binge.  The bathtub was long, slender and deep—just the perfect thing if I wanted to pretend I was trapped in a porcelain time capsule. 

Now might be a good time to mention that most Americans do not subscribe to the concept of a bidet.  In fact, as common as a bidet is in Europe, to most Americans it’s an ill-conceived concept and one that is a well-kept secret invented by someone with way too much time on their hands.  I had come to know of the elusive bidet’s existence on my trips abroad over the years, yet I still needed to be reminded and educated on its full potential. 

“Maarten, a bidet is used to wash the butt, right?”

“Yup.”

“So the water just sort of squirts up and, um er uh, refreshes your butt, huh?”

“Yup.”

“What else does it do?”

“Huh?  Whaddaya mean?”

“I mean, what else can it do?  You know, can it do stuff? Like, can it bring you breakfast in bed?”

“Uh, that would be a no.”

“Well, it’s not good for much then, is it?”

“Of course it’s good for something.  You know what else it can do?”

“You just said it didn’t do stuff.”

“Well, this isn’t exactly normal stuff.  It’s more like useful stuff.”

“Okay then, what else can it do?”

“Well, you can also wash your feet in it.”

“Hmm.  Wash my feet?”

“Yup.”

“Wash my feet and my butt?”

“You got it.”

“I’m going to take a shower.  I feel positively soiled now.”

Gathering up my shower accessories, I was ready to wash off twenty-seven hours of grime.  I stripped down to nothing, stepped into the deep-dish tub and discovered I was standing knee-deep in crisp, white porcelain.  As I reached up to close the shower curtain, my hands stopped in mid-air.  I spun around wildly in a circle of confusion.  The whole time I was wondering what manner of thievery had taken place in that hotel bathroom.  Where in the world was the shower curtain?  Oh my goodness . . . there was no shower curtain!  What the . . .?!?  There was a tub in which to catch the water as it trickled down the body.  There was a showerhead equipped with a long, flexible neck to reach those discreet spots usually reserved for the eyes of spouses and the family doctor.  There was even a soap dish strategically placed high enough on the wall to lead one to believe it was put there specifically for someone taking a shower.  But there was no shower curtain.  I was in a veritable pickle.  How was I going to actually take a shower sans shower curtain?  Sure, the tub was deep, but it wasn’t that deep.  I had no choice.  I was forced to improvise. 

Carefully wielding the shower wand like a delicate instrument, I turned the water knob from off to on and began to moisten my stinky body.  I didn’t even get through one minute of so-called showering before I realized that water went darn near everywhere.  I mean everywhere.  Water had squirted on the ceiling, on the walls, all over the floor, and on the mirror.  I even had the audacity to get water in the bidet.  My carefully crafted plan was failing miserably.

I am a proud woman.  I am loath to admit failure.  However, wrapped in a cloak of humility, I must admit I failed miserably at the simple task of taking a shower.  Without a shower curtain, it was a damn near impossible feat.  I was forced to place my bare naked butt in a foreign tub.  A tub where hundreds, dare I say thousands, of other butts have sat before me.  It was a profoundly creepy feeling, given that I was too terrified to take a shower without wearing my trusty shower shoes for fear of contracting shower cooties on my feet, let alone having my rear end smashed all over the tub.

I’m sure Maarten was hunkered down on the other side of the bathroom door laughing uproariously at my shenanigans, but he didn’t fare much better when it was his turn to try and take a shower.  I had succeeded in getting water pretty much everywhere in the bathroom, but I thought I was going to have to hire a gondola just to get around the bathroom after Maarten finished in there.  Water was practically seeping under the bathroom door and I was afraid that he had burst a pipe on the bidet.

After our pitifully sad attempts at the basic 1-2-3’s of personal hygiene, we looked each other in the eyes, sighed heavily, and feeling waterlogged and soggy, spoke the four little words that our bodies longed to hear.

“Let’s go to bed.”

And off to bed we went.  Our bodies thanked us profusely.