Camp Champions Blog

I have no idea what just happened.

This will be a shorter entry today.  Not because yesterday was uneventful, but because it was too eventful.  We woke early, walked almost 2 hours from our apartment near the Coliseum to Vatican City.  We were on our feet for 7 hours and than drove 4 to our next location.

Our stroll took us past a wide array of sites that helped exemplify the odd history of Rome.

After walking around Rome for a very full day, we have learned many things.

For the second evening in a row, we have shared a meal with friends from camp.  Last night, we saw lifelong Champion Laura Hill (and 3 time Senior Camper division leader).  Tonight, it was an equally delightful gathering of new friends.  The Troisi-Bonfils family (Amelie and Luca) hosted us with half of the De Angelis crew (campers Elettra and Edoardo, but Edoardo was under the weather) joined us as did Maddalina Ferrari and her 2 children.  Maddalina is a woman that helps European children find summer camp programs in the US.

The food was superb and the company even better!  Here are the CC kids:

Susie loves water.  Like a dolphin loves the water.

To a normal human, Venice is a bit of a tourist trap.  Here is a city of 60,000 that often has 150,000 tourist descend upon it.  They have all the hallmarks of hyper-tourism.  They have posted prices that apply only under very narrow circumstances.  For example, a $5 sandwich becomes a $7.50 sandwich if you sit down rather than order from the counter.  But if you attempt to pay at the counter, they pleasantly encourage you to sit down and wait for your panini.  Since there is not indication that price varies with the location of my posterior, we all sit and incur the $15 penalty (6 times the extra $1.50 per sandwich).

Susie was not happy to join a club that most of us have long been members of - the legions of drivers who have received a speeding citation.  She managed to get through high school, college, graduate school and many years in Marble Falls where driving is a way of life.

Yet she has managed to maintain a pristine driving record.

We learned an important lesson today: plans are helpful.

Before I write my usual blog, I want you to know that the apartment we are staying in has been a little bit of a disappointment.  In addition to the fact that it is not (as noted yesterday) actually IN Vienna, it has proven to have less than ideal amenities.  By “amenities”, I mean “a working toilet and lights”.  We discovered rather quickly that the toilet does not really flush.  Luckily, there is another option 30 feet away in the compound we are staying in.  Last night, as we were turning on some lights, a breaker popped and all our lights went out.  Also, the bed makes us long for the relative comfort of college days when we crashed on the lumpy futons of friends.

Finally, the promised wi-fi internet connection is essentially nonexistent.  I can, for brief periods of time, walk out of our apartment, across a courtyard and up a flight of stairs to a balcony.  From this perch, I stand outside the door of another renter and hope to get the necessary signal.  If I stray more than 4 feet from this unknown occupant’s door, I lose the signal.  This high level of internet connectivity came AFTER a 30 minute discussion with the owner of the compound.  For this reason, the last blog and this one are without any pictures.

I think we might need to slow down a touch.  We have been approaching this trip like it is a week long junket and it clearly is not.  We are like a runner that has become skilled at 10km races who then decides to run a marathon.  If she goes out at her 10km pace, she will implode before the race is over.

We had a full day yesterday and a travel day today.

I would like to do two things in this blog.