Venice and Soccer, just another Italian Weekend.

Saturday morning Dave, Sami and I took off for a casual unstructured day in Venice. Upon our arrival we loaded up on a vaporetto. Since Venice does not have much land for a bus system the vaporetto is the equivalent for the water. We cruised the Canal Grande to Piazza San Marco, the largest and most famous piazza in Venice and home to an overpopulated pigeon population.

We looked around, attracted birds and then Dave and I conspired to buy and throw birdfeed on Sami. Like hunger vultures the pigeons swarmed to her in all direction attacking her for the food. After Dave and I shared celebratory high-fives and laughs were exchanged over the perfectly timed pictures Dave took. We continued on our way coming across an overly capitalist American restaurant for lunch, McDonalds. I will shamefully admit for 6.80 euro (plus 10 cents for ketup), that is $9.81 for you non exchange rate geeks, I ate an overpriced undersized burger, some fries and drank an un-iced Coke Cola light.

After our health and tasty lunch we purposelessly walked around Venice, the main idea of our day. We shopped through the plethora of glass stores, rarely used a map to check our course, ate gelato, walked a lot , crossed many canals, pretended not to be tourist and arrived at the train station well before our planned departure. We came back to Ferrara and called it a night.

Sunday morning the majority of the CIEE gang joined the Ferrara A.C. Milan Fan club on their pilgrimage to Milano to see the afternoon game. Nearing Milano the bus organizers raffled off a jersey, pens, scarves and a lighter. Ironically Allen, my roommate and one of the few non smokers on the bus, won the lighter. Closer to Milano we stopped at a road side gas station and Auto Grill populate by many North bound Milan fans and clubs. There we were provided a wide selection of pizza, one that included sliced hot dogs and French fries on it, and restaurant quality desserts. A minimal distance of driving had us arriving at the San Siro, an ancient iconic stadium in Italian soccer. The large group did our best to remain cohesive as we meander our way through the vendors, riot geared police, throngs of Milan fans and derogatory yelling Roma Fans. We finally arrived at our separate seats but remained in the same section. My seat was not to far up and ideally position behind the goal squarely between the sideline and goal. I could hear the repetitive chants of the Roma fans 30 rows above me.

The game:

The game started with lots of action as Milan attacked in my direction, the half finished with no goals and a yellow card or two. With the start of the second half the game got under way with offense movement by Milan. Milan and Roma being rivals the game started to get a feisty, to counteract this the referee started throwing up yellow cards like a second grade nerd raising his hand at every opportunity to answer the teachers question. The rowdy Roma fans cage behind plastic wall and netting erupted when their team scored in front of them.

Milano came close to getting an equalizer and escaped certain defeat when the Roma captain missed a PK. Upon the defeat we made way back to the bus, slowly making our way out of the crowed parking lot. During the raffle on the way back, luck struck and I won a sciarpe which is synthetic scarf used for decoration, Allen was doublely lucky and won a soccer ball. We stopped again on the same place, opposite side of the road for more unusual pizza and delicious desserts. A straight shot back to Ferrara had us home by 9:30. It was an enjoyable weekend with an unstructured trip to Venice and experiencing a soccer game the way Italians do.