We were on our way back to Matrei from Innsbruck, we were tired, and we had a few more hours to drive. What to do? Stop in Munich for coffee, naturally! It was only a short detour of a little over 100 km from our route, so why not?
Coffee turned into a nice little evening walk through historic downtown. We arrived in Matrei really late and extra tired, but it was worth it.
Part 1 of the Venice leg of our Italian road trip ended with our entrance into the Piazza di San Marco. That’s where this story begins.
As you can see on the map, the city of Venice isn’t made up of a single island, but multiple ones. This will prove interesting later on in the post, when you’ll see photos from the Campanile of the Piazza di San Marco (the Bell Tower). For now, let’s see what there is to see in the Piazza. As with the previous post, you can see the photos in the slideshow embedded below, or you can scroll down to see each photo and read my accompanying thoughts.
On the third day of our Italian road trip, we left Florence and started on our way to Venice.
This post contains 50 photos, so get ready to spend about 15-20 minutes here. You can see a slideshow below, or you can scroll down to see each photo alongside my thoughts.
First, we needed to find a place to stay for the night. We kept driving and driving, through Modena and on to Ferrara, but no decent hotel or pension presented itself to us. We veered off the highway, hoping to find a nice, quiet pension in the countryside, but we couldn’t see anything. It was getting darker, and we were getting desperate. We were tired after a long day of walking and driving, and we wanted to rest.
Back in September of 2008, we were stranded in Frankfurt because of negligence on the part of United Airlines, who did not properly coordinate the transfer of passengers from a connecting Lufthansa flight. The whole ordeal is a nasty mess I’d rather forget. One bright spot in that whole filthy experience is that we got to spend a beautiful evening in Frankfurt, and I took the photos you see below.
It was a case of making lemonade out of the lemons we’d been dealt. We had to find a hotel, which we did, by ourselves, and it was a really nice one too, a Holiday Inn about 7 minutes from the airport. After a nice, hot shower to wash off the nastiness we’d just experienced, we headed downtown, where we were treated to some very beautiful architecture and gorgeous river vistas.
We had dinner and walked for a few hours on the shore of the Main River, cris-crossing from one side to the other via the many bridges that span it. I took photos with my 50mm f/1.4 lens, which works great at night due to its large aperture.
Sometime between 11 pm and midnight, we got back to the hotel and had a wonderful night’s rest. Those beds were the most comfortable beds we’ve ever slept in. I don’t know what brand they were, and what they used in the mattresses and the comforters, but we’d have loved to sleep a few more nights on them. My wife still raves about them.
In the morning, breakfast awaited, after which we prepared ourselves mentally for some more nastiness from United (we weren’t let down) and the long flight back to the US.
There are more photos from Frankfurt in my photo catalog. And you’ll also see some photos from Munich in there.
Q: What insect from the Gryllotalpidae family burrows around people’s gardens and eats the roots of freshly planted vegetables?
A: The mole cricket.
This nasty critter, which grows to 2 inches or more in length (I’ve seen some that were over 3 inches), has strong forelimbs that it uses to dig around in gardens here in Europe. They’re supposed to be omnivores, and they feed on whatever they find. In the spring, they feed quite a bit on the roots of the planted seedlings of tomatoes, peppers, spinach, cabbage and other common garden vegetables and fruits, which means the seedlings die. They wither and dry out, unable to extract food from the ground since their roots are gone. This also means that your crop, which you, as a gardener, took great care to plant and nourish, is wiped out by some filthy creepy-crawly thing that gives nothing in return and only gets fatter and uglier with each seedling root it shoves in its ravenous mouth.
It is for this very reason that these ugly critters are considered garden pests, and people do what they can to get rid of them. Some put out pesticides, but then you’ve got poisons on your vegetables, and that’s not healthy. Others, like my grandfather, used to go out at night with a flashlight and squash them when they reared their heads from their burrows. Thankfully, they have plenty of natural predators, though you wouldn’t want most of those guys around your garden either — I’m talking about rats, skunks, foxes, armadillos and raccoons. Birds are another of their predators, and they’re definitely welcome in my garden.
My wife caught a mole cricket recently (they’re called “coropisnite” in Romania), and I recorded a short video clip. Sorry the focus isn’t that great — my Nokia N95 doesn’t focus very well in video mode at close distances.
Updated 7/6/09:
Images used are public domain. Source: Wikipedia.
Raoul Pop 