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Goodbye lovely Florence, hello exquisite Venice. From the moment the train seemingly skims over the water to pull into Venezia St Lucia, it is apparent that the city likes to make entrances. You never know what might lie around the next corner, though it is a sure bet in some areas that you will have high frequency of mask, fine glasswork, or jewelry shops.
Our mediocre hotel is on the edge of the Cannaregio district, and we walk down the winding alleyways and across bridges towards Piazza San Marco, passing numerous touristy shops, pausing to watch the expert glass blower make shimmery scarabs with delicate spindly legs. I'd be tempted to buy one if I thought it would survive transport. Past many familiar chain clothing stores, with throngs of people on the main commercial street we turn onto the smaller alleys to hopefully avoid the crowds.
We see restaurants with homey interiors, but very little vegetarian on their menu - seafood is the food of choice in Venice. We see a selection of the same few vegetarian options: caprese, pasta with tomato sauce, pasta with pesto, pasta with 4 cheese sauce, gnocchi if we are lucky, roast potatoes or
Sweets shop
lots of torrone spinach. We tried pizza near our hotel but the pizza was subpar and boring, turning me off to the idea of pizza in Venice.
As we emerge into Piazza San Marco from an archway, the drama of the buildings unfolds, and we are spellbound by the ornate basilica facade, the repetition of arches around most of the piazza, with the square meeting the water between the Doge's Palace and an equally impressive library. The queue to the basilica is manageable so we do it. As you stand on the threshold looking up, golden mosaic on all arches and domes amaze. Then you go inside and realize this theme continues throughout the inside of the basilica, and there are beautiful geometric patterns made with various shades of marble and other stone in sometimes circular themes. The signs say no photos but no one seems to be paying them heed, and no one seems to be controlling this. We still only take a few furtive photos. This is probably the most comprehensively impressive basilica yet.
After that big wow we walk in the sun along the canal banks towards Arsenale in the Castello district. Every bridge is photogenic, we walk
to the end and veer off onto Via Garibaldi. The restaurants look touristic, and there are little shops selling postcards, yet it is very empty and has a more residential feel. We see a closed vegetarian shop, which is the only Italian-food themed vegetarian restaurant in Happy Cow in Venice, so we linger and take a look. There are just a few casserole dishes with pasta salad and zucchini salad. Disappointedly we wander off and decide to seek dinner elsewhere, which turns out to be an expensive but good restaurant on the water. There is a premium on the view, and we linger over beer and wine, before taking a vaporetto back to our neighborhood to try guidebook recommended gelato at Suso. We were not disappointed, I highly recommend the marscapone caffe.
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