Dolomites to Venice

day 8 – giorno otto

We awoke this morning to the bells of the campanile tolling outside our hotel and a bright blue sky. A very happy switch from yesterday’s weather, my goodness. Mom and I packed up our bags, ate a quick breakfast, and took one last brief stroll around Castelrotto before grabbing our bags and loading back on the bus. It was 9°C this morning as we headed down from the mountains; chilly but refreshing.

Overnight there’s been a few alterations to our tour schedule – a strike in Florence and a bit of chaos in Rome – but we are in the very capable hands of Sarah and I’ve no doubt she’ll keep our itinerary very exciting.

From our temporary home in the mountains, we drove to our next home in the lagoon; Venice. We had a quick stop to use the toilet on the way and saw these cutesy cigarette holders with a comical advertisement.

The city of Venice is actually much more than the islands in the lagoon that I generally picture in my head; there’s an expanding area on the mainland that’s also part of the city. Sadly, the costs of living on the islands has gotten so expensive that many Venetians are moving to the mainland and commuting to work. Hotels are taking over and the place is being overrun by tourists. I can’t complain too much, we’re part of that. The good thing is that Venice is protected since it’s a living museum and there are a lot of restrictions as far as renovations/remodels.

To get to Venice (Venezia), we had to ditch the bus and walk to where we could catch a vaporetto to “old Venice”. Everything in Venice is done by boat because there are no cars or motorbikes in the city – I really enjoyed this. A vaporetto is basically a ‘bus boat’. So we squeezed on to a boat headed towards our hotel and enjoyed the gentle rolling of the boat. The vaporetto drivers are very skilled, as they are constantly parallel parking the vaporettos at the ‘bus stops’ in sometimes choppy water. We got off at the Accademia stop and had a short walk to our hotel, Hotel Ala. We immediately crossed multiple waterways and saw the beautiful gondolas taking tourists out on short rides. Everything here is so beautiful, I feel like I’ve been taking pictures around every corner.

Venice, being on a lagoon, is subject to very high waters every so often in the fall/winter season. To cope with this and keep people from having to wade to work, they set up these temporary walkways everywhere that get submerged. They’re only a few feet wide so I would imagine it takes a lot of patience to get around in that situation. For now they are just staged in stacks everywhere.

After we got checked in and settled, Sarah took us out on a little orientation walk so we could start getting our bearings. Apparently getting lost in Venice is the thing to do, so we’ll see how we do. We headed straight for Piazza San Marco since many of the major sights were very nearby. Piazza San Marco is huge, bigger than at least 2 football fields side by side, maybe 3. It’s ringed with shops and restaurants and a handful of the nicer places even had live music. Of course the main event was St. Mark’s Basilica and the Campanile di San Marco. We’re going to go inside the Basilica tomorrow so we didn’t spend a ton of time checking it out. We hung a right out of the main piazza and walked towards the Grand Canal and Doge’s Palazzo.

Somewhat familiarized with at least getting between the hotel and Piazza San Marco, we headed for our next appointment, a gondola ride. We were originally going to do it tomorrow night but the forecast doesn’t look so great so Sarah worked her magic and got it moved to this evening. It felt a bit like a carnival ride but it was very interesting to see how the boats all navigate around each other and see all of the doorways that open right off the water.

Immediately after our gondola ride, it was time to head to dinner. The cruise ships that stop in Venice cause the city to get very crowded during the middle of the day, but after about 4:30 pm, the crowds significantly thinned out since a lot of people were getting back on their cruise ships. We came into view of the Rialto Bridge for just a minute before we ducked into a little alleyway which led to our restaurant.

The city now has another water supply, but historically, they used to bring water down from the Dolomites and fill these cisterns which were in every little square we passed. They are now just locked up, but a great reminder of how spoiled we are today.

Here come the food pictures…

This dinner was AMAZING. Mom and I sat at a table across from Kathy and Evelyn, from Bonney Lake, WA (there’s 3 pairs of us from WA on the tour). The wine came first, quickly followed by a beautiful and oh so delicious caprese appetizer. I don’t know how, but I’m definitely going to try to recreate this at home. We then had a choice of spaghetti with mixed seafood, cuttlefish (regional dish), or a more traditional meat sauce. I want to try to eat food specific to the regions we’re visiting so I went for the cuttlefish. The waiter did warn us that the cuttlefish would turn our mouths black temporarily which I think turned a few people off of it. I didn’t care and I’m so glad.

I don’t know if I’ll ever have something quite like it again. I made sure to clean up my plate of every last bit of sauce.

Given that we (Americans) generally eat pastas as a main course, it’s hard for us to adjust to the Italian mindset that pastas are appetizers, to be eaten before the main course of meat or fish. So, surprise surprise when, after clearing our pasta plates, the waiters come out with not one, not two, but three more plates of food; beef, calamari and shrimp, and then salad. Fortunately each plate was to be shared between four people, but it was still way too much food. Everyone had filled their stomachs with pasta so they couldn’t fully appreciate the following courses. It was torture to have so much food in front of me and know it was going to go to waste, so I ate as much as I could. I wasn’t a huge fan of the shrimp because they were whole and a pain to deal with but everything else… Mwah!!

Finally came the dessert, tiramisu. Kathy was having too much fun suggesting that the waiter was interested in me… And of course I turned red at the suggestion. I blame the multiple glasses of wine we kept pouring each other. I think if anything, he was wondering how in the heck I was eating so much. Such an awesome dinner. Definitely don’t do things like that at home!

On the way back to the hotel, we passed this pastry shop with these awesome chocolate waterfalls… drool. Norm, the goofball he is, ran in and made it look like he had his mouth under the streams. So great. I feel like everyone in the group is really meshing well and having a lot of fun together. We passed lots of stores selling masks in our walks today. One goal for tomorrow is to find a reputable merchant and get myself an authentic Venetian mask.