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Published: October 7th 2013
Sunday morning, September 29, we walked around the parks near our place with Kenn & Karen then stopped for lunch at Restaurante Biennale on Via Garibaldi. We each had a different pasta dish and they were all great! And they had free wi-fi with a really strong signal with great high-speed service; our new favourite restaurant! The great internet service sure helped me upload my blog update with 107 photos.
It started raining after lunch and we headed home to play “Heads-Up” on Chris' iPad and card games and had lots of fun, snacked on cheese and meat for supper then headed to bed early.
Monday morning Kenn & I headed out early to walk all the way across Venice to the San Croce neighbourhood to see about the stove repairs. Incredibly, they were able to order the replacement glass top to our gas stove and I paid them for the parts, delivery and installation and then emailed our Intervac host to tell her of our arrangements. Kenn and I headed home and Chris and Karen had been at the market and made up some sandwiches for lunch. We wanted to head out to the Leonardo DaVinci musem but
Garth and Sue were due back soon from their 6-day tour of Italy so I hid the keys for them and texted Garth then we head out back across Venice to the Dorsoduro district.
The Davinci exhibit was pretty good; they had his books of left-handed, mirror-written notes on display and they had built working models of many of his drawn inventions that we could actually play with. Kenn and I bought souvenir t-shirts and we stopped for beer and coffees on the way home. We wanted to stand at the bar, which is normally cheaper than getting a table but apparently we get a free table when we drink beer. Guess we need to drink more beer!
We headed home to reunite with Garth and Sue and hear about their trip and the girls made fresh Gnocchi pasta for supper.
Tuesday morning Kenn & Karen caught a bus out to an outlet mall, Garth & Sue headed out to Rialto district and Chris and I did laundry. Okay, Chris did laundry and I was productive in some other capacity which I have somehow forgotten. In the afternoon, Chris and I headed out to search for the
Gothic and Renaissance spiral staircase of the Contarini Del Bovolo Palace. We finally found it; it’s very well hidden in a small courtyard at the end of a tiny, narrow alleyway that branches off of another small alleyway. It’s a very unique building so I was really happy to get a chance to get some photos of it.
Chris cooked a great pork roast for supper and we all stayed in for the evening.
Wednesday we all bought 18 Euro 12-hour Vaporetto passes and headed out to explore the Northern Islands. Our first stop was on San Michele, the innermost of the northern islands. A church was founded there in the 10
th-century and a monastery in the 13
th. Unfortunately there are no photos allowed on any part of San Michelle but basically, the entire walled island is a cemetery, described in some books as the most beautiful cemetery in the world. The cemetery was established here by a Napoleonic decree which forbade further burials in the centre of the city.
Because of a lack of space, Catholic dead are dug up after ten years and their bones put into storage in an ossurary. There are few enough
Protestants here that they can stay buried in their sector on the island while the Jewish cemetery is on Lido island.
After walking around the island cemetery for 40 minutes or so we hopped back onto the Vaporetto to continue our island tour with our next stop about 15 minutes later on the glass-blowing island of Murano. Because of the risk of fire, Venice’s glass furnaces were moved to Murano from central Venice back in 1291.
Back in the 16
th century, Murano had a population of 30,000 and was a favourite summer retreat for Venice’s upper classes. But the glass-blowing industry is what made Murano famous world-wide and those businesses here now constitute Venice’s sole surviving manufacturing zone.
The main thoroughfare, or fondamente, of Murano is almost entirely one glass shop after another and you will find everything from spectacular works of glass art to all sorts of little touristy glass junk. But the island shops really are an incredible sight and you can also watch glass-blowers in action at any of several workshops around the island, attached to a storefront of course.
After a couple of hours on Murano we were back on the Vaporetto
to visit Burano, the island known for lace-making. Although the population of the neighbouring island of Torcello was decimated by malaria back in the 15
th century, being surrounded by swamps, Burano was far enough away to avoid the worst of the mosquitos and became a prosperous fishing village, and is still largely a fishing community today.
Burano is known for all of the homes being well kept and brightly painted making a visit here a very colourful experience. All of the shops lining the streets here sell lace, most of which used to be made by hand here as was still the case when we were last here 14 years ago. Apparently today, virtually all of the lace on display here is made by machine, abroad.
Our first mission here was to find Al Gatto Nero restaurant, highly recommended by our friends Nicolas and Sylvia. Although it was a little off the beaten path, it was still very busy when we finally found it at nearly 2pm. In fact the only table left had a reserved sign on it. But after talking with the Maitre ‘d, I discovered the people were 45 minutes late so he agreed to
seat us there. They poured us all a complimentary glass of Prosecco as soon as we sat down and it was immediately apparent that we were going to have a great dining experience with exceptional service. We all had wonderful meals sitting in the outdoor sidewalk area of the restaurant along a canal and agreed that everything exceeded our expectations even though it was too cool in the shady north side of their building to be comfortable enough for coffee or dessert; we were all anxious to get back out walking in the sunshine.
We spent a couple of hours, all going our own ways, walking around this charming, colourful island and looking into the dozens of lace shops on every street. The island has park area as well and we found that even the back streets which were all residential and well off of the shopping streets, were also clean and just as colourful.
We caught the Vaporetto once again for the 20 minute or so ride home, stopped at the house for a quick pit-stop ,and we were off again to use the last couple of hours on our passes to take a night-time ride all
the way through the Grand Canal and back again.
Venice at night is quite nice, with only a few of the more elaborately built buildings well lit, but restaurants, bridges and hotels all at least partially illuminated. The Vaporetto stopped often enough for me to have slightly more solid ground for some quick long shutter-speed photos and it was a beautiful ride to end our day.
When we got back we stopped at Restaurante Biennale on Via Garibaldi for a late dinner. I had a pizza and most of the others ordered various pasta dishes and as usual in this restaurant, all the meals were great.
Thursday Chris and I headed out with Kenn & Karen towards the Rialto bridge to find a lingerie shop she had spotted a couple of days before. That took a while but with a couple of different locals directing us we did finally find it. And despite my offer of an unbiased opinion, Karen left the shop with a purchase but did not model for us!
We found the Pizzaria 1251 restaurant for lunch, situated in a small square on the other side of Ponte di Rialto. Reasonable prices, a
fun atmosphere helped by the owner taking special attention with everyone and bringing us free appies, twice!
We headed home from there with Chris feeling a cold coming on and Garth already sick for a couple of days back at the house, to all meet up for dinner and drinks and drinks and drinks……for medicinal purposes of course.
Friday morning was much cooler, feeling like Autumn is definitely here now. We all slept in a bit; Chris is fighting off a cold and Garth is still a bit sick too. Each couple headed off in different directions, wanting to walk through districts we hadn’t explored too much yet. We were all back by early afternoon, all getting a little worn out by all the walking and not too inspired to do much in the cooler and cloudy weather.
Karen cooked up a seafood feast for dinner that her and Kenn bought fresh at the local market this morning, we opened another bottle of champagne to celebrate Karen’s birthday again, their anniversary again, being in Venice again, etc., etc., and anything else we could think of then we continued on with wine, scotch, and whatever else we could
find.
Saturday morning I woke up with a cold so now Garth, Chris and I are all a little sick but not too bad and still up to going out at least a little. Garth and Sue headed out early for a walk and Chris and I weren’t ready til later, and headed off into San Marco district with Kenn & Karen to just wander around a bit. Kenn & Karen did a little shopping and we found an Asian run, Italian restaurant for lunch and all had pretty nice meals. We were back early and stayed in for the evening.
Sunday morning and the tide is really high, within 6 inches of flooding and the rain is pouring down hard so all the sidewalks are getting pretty full of water even without the sea flooding in. Kenn & I walked down to Via Garibaldi to get a wi-fi signal and catch up on our email then it was straight back into our warm and cozy home again.
For our final lunch out in Venice we decided to go to Trattoria dai Tosi at 738 Secco Marina, just around the corner from our home. The Rough Guide
had a good recommendation in their Venice book for this restaurant. You have to be careful to not confuse this restaurant with the one of the same name right across the street from it!
Our waiter was the son of the owners and his mother cooks the meals. There is a photo on the wall of him as a baby which is when they first opened the restaurant he told us. The prices are very reasonable and the service was warm and friendly and our waiter was very knowledgeable about the food and its preparation.
After lunch, Kenn & Karen walked down to Via Garibaldi to buy some staples, to replace various things we’ve used up in the house, then we settled in for tea, naps, and packing to leave tomorrow. Chris and Karen emptied the fridge and bought chicken to make our last fantastic Italian home-made meal.
Monday, October 7; Arrivederci to Venice!
We all got up in the dark about 5:30AM to find another cold and rainy day. We were out of the house before 6:30 to catch the 5.2 Vaporetto to the bus station, except for Kenn & Karen who caught a different
Vaporetto to go to the Marco Polo airport. Once at the bus station, you have to buy a one Euro ticket to get on the People Mover (a slow speed tram over a canal, railway, etc) and that takes you to a bus pickup area. We waited there for the Barzi Bus (our ticket said Shuttle Direct and we booked through Ryan Air so don’t miss the bus because of the different name) and about 45 minutes later it dropped us off at the Treviso airport for our Ryaniair flight.
We mostly snoozed for the 2 ½ hour flight to Dublin and then called the shuttle for the Clarion Airport Hotel (you could probably walk it’s so close) and got checked in here for our last night in Europe. We all had a late lunch in the bar then headed up to our room to read, write or nap. Supper at 7pm in the hotel restaurant and we fly home tomorrow.
It’s been a fantastic 68 days travelling around Europe, mostly using Intervac Home Exchanges so we could experience actually living in Europe and to be able to do it affordably for such a long period of time.
And although we had colds the past few days, they were mild and didn’t really stop us from doing anything. The weather the past few days in Venice has gotten colder and rained heavier each day. Coupled with increasingly higher tides, we could see that much of Venice would begin flooding at least a bit, within the next few days. (In fact, after we returned home I learned that the flooding started the day we left). I would definitely recommend visiting Venice at least a couple of weeks earlier in the year than we did. And next time I think we will avoid the Easyjet and Ryanair discount airlines as there are too many hidden costs such as travel to smaller, further away airports, luggage charges if over very small sizes and weight limits. Other than that, there’s nothing I would change about our travels and I would do it all again in a heartbeat.
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Adrienne
non-member comment
OMG-Thanks for the great trip journal/ blog and all the wonderful pix. Enjoyed it all vicariously as I recovered from my 580Km of road running the last 4months in prep to leave this week for the Chicago MARATHON, (then Toronto). Definitely should be Europe again in 2014....! Hopefully you won\'t be too bored in SASK and can recoup before leaving again.....!! A x