Sounds Like Weird
26 December 2011
Bridges crossed: 0.
Maybe because I heard it a lot in Liverpool, I can only think of the John Lennon song: “So this is Christmas.”
(I also heard more than one’s fair share of “Wonderful Christmastime,” but as Scalzi points out, at least it doesn’t have Yoko on it.)
Truth is, I’m kind of wrung out from yesterday’s adventures. I take non-stop flights when I can for a simple reason: the stress of pressurization and depressurization is wearing on the bod, not to mention the stress of rushing through airports.
Worse, I didn’t just take one connecting flight yesterday, I took two, and, of the four airports I visited in four different countries, the two in the middle were two of the five largest in Europe. Worse, they felt like it.
So, rubber legs that I had, I decided on a different strategy: I was going to walk around and not cross any bridges unless I felt like it. Given that my legs were sore and tired, I didn’t feel like it, so I simply stayed in my little part of Cannaregio for the evening.
Most restaurants here charge a cover charge for bread service, and many of them add gratuities, etc. The night before, I went to a self-serve place that avoided all that, plus I got to see the food before I ordered and felt better informed that I’d make a good choice for a celiac. Dining here isn’t as difficult as I feared; there is high celiac awareness in Italy generally, far more so than in the US. Unlike the UK, most of the breakfast cereals in my hotel turned out to be gluten free, and there were rice cakes available for those of us who can’t have regular bread. I’m going to have to hunt down the cornetti senza glutine that supposedly exist. I haven’t seen them in windows; everything looks pretty bog standard wheat-enabled, but I’ll try to find some before I go.
It’s nice to have a magic phrase: sono celiaco.
Tonight, I just didn’t see any place open that looked like it’d be good for celiacs, so I opted for dining from my stash brought from the UK and US. It wasn’t the healthiest of dinners, but if you can’t have jam-filled gluten-free cookies for most of your holiday meal on Christmas, when can you have it?
Because I was so tired, I slept most of the evening, woke up and stayed up part of the night, then got more sleep before breakfast. All told, I probably had about 14 hours of sleep. Not the most exciting Christmas, but I really needed the rest.