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July 17, 2007— to Venice and San Vito

Swampy today.

Well we made some more friends today in a place called San Vito. But first, we drove into Venice in the morning. The traffic was awful. We got to Venice and took the equivalent of the public bus (a boat of course) to Piazza San Marco. Venice was hot, humid, and crowded, as it has been every time I've been there. We got a tour of the Doges' Palace (And seemed to have been invited to skip the line in front of all the other tourists). The tour was the perfect length. Page has done a great job pacing the tour, the perfect blend of sightseeing, recreation, rest, and singing. After the tour we broke into chaperone groups for lunch and shopping. We had about four hours in chaperone groups in Venice.

My group went first to update the website, then to get some pizza and gelato. We played hackkeysack in one of the smaller piazzas and shopped amongst the crowds and windy streets. It was so hot and humid everyone is soggy and smelly. Swampy. The "bus" ride back to the car park took an hour and was as bad or worse than the city as far as it being hot and crowded. Many of the boys fell asleep. We got some water on the way back to the bus; a guy gave me a deal on six cold 2L bottles of water. A little Italian and a smile certainly help, which is probably true everywhere you can use the local language.

Flavio had already been cooling the bus with the a/c and with the shades drawn. We had rest period on the bus on the way to San Vito, about an hour. We had ample rehearsal time, which was good since we had some things to work on. The cathedral in San Vito has great acoustics for our choir, and the place was packed. The audience was incredibly enthusiastic, buying CDs before the concert and clapping at length when we entered, before we even sang a note. During the rehearsal the concert presenter and our host padre at the church were very complimentary and pleased, and the concert was no exception. We actually got a couple people that have come hear us twice now. We didn't nail the Barber Agnus as we had hoped, but everything else was quite good, and we even had a decent organ which Marcia worked out with short time. Everybody was just dripping from the humidity, and we gave up any hope of smelling presentable. French boys choir style. We gave up on concert uniform many concerts ago and just perform in slipshots now.

The audience for whatever reason was the most enthusiastic yet, and were blown away. People kept saying they had never seen or heard anything like it, and how it was "incredible" and "marvelous." After the concert was a reception at the bar/pub/restaurant next door, and we even got compliments from the people there for the boys picking up after themselves. They're doing quite a good job with their tour jobs. We sold dozens of CDs and were invited back, so we'll have to be sure to visit the kind people of San Vito on our next trip to Italy.

We put Over Yonder on the rep lists but didn't really work on it, so we had to go with somebody who knew it before. The difference this time is that Fletcher is not a treble anymore and is a tenor. Here's a short video of him singing in the San Vito concert.

	Fernando, our tour guide
Alex reflects on seeing Piazza San Marco
Pizza!
Gelato!	Hackeysack!
In dressing room in San Vito	The concert in San Vito
At the reception after the concert	Mr. Tarango makes announcements on the bus after the concert