Venice Day 1

Today is a day of exploration. But first, breakfast. The hotel has a buffet with a selection of yogurt, meats, pastries, cereals, fruits and vegetables. And coffee, of course.

A simple but satisfying breakfast. Then it's time for walking!

A lot to see in Venice. It's an old and worn-down city and yet at the same time everywhere you look is picture worthy. It's a strange dichotomy.

The destination this morning is Piazza San Marco (St. Mark's Square). Quite a bit of construction going on but thankfully we get there right before the mob of tourists. Literally, only minutes to spare. Once they arrive it's time for our escape.

We also walk past Palazzo Ducale (Doge's Palace) which is right next door.

By now it's nearing 11:00am so time to head towards a lunch spot. Uncle recommended a restaurant - Ristorante da Cherubino - only 5 minutes walk from the square. We order the lasagna, sea bass with vegetables and spaghetti "mamma mia" which was a surprise as to what would be in it - apparently it's meatballs. Works for me! The food was simple but delicious and the wait staff friendly. And the "house wine" and "house beer" were fantastic, according to the parents.

Even though we're full, gelato is sounding pretty good so we walk to Gelateria Gallonetto. We ordered a grande which would have been a good size to share between the three of us except for the fact that choosing three flavors was an extra scoop on the top - a wee bit more than we needed. All this for just over 4€. Flavors are chocolate, hazelnut and yogurt. Surprisingly, yogurt was the winner.

Definitely full this time around, we traverse the many alleyways of Venice to find a bacaro that we saved in our list of places to try. Gotta make sure it still exists! And that we can find it again. We passed it up the first time around but found it tucked in a side alley on our second pass - I' Bacaro de' Bischeri.

On our way to the bacaro we pass by a chocolate shop - who could resist the chocolate fountain?

We also pass a store that literally only sells rubber ducks. Talk about a niche market.

Bacaro found, time to head back to the hotel for a rest. After a few hours, our feet rejuvenated enough energy to get dinner and dessert. We head back to I' Bacaro de Bischeri and get two focaccia sandwiches - Fiorentina and Verdi - to share amongst the three of us. Good thing we're sharing because the sandwiches are quite large, but the bread is very thin so didn't make it feel like a heavy meal. We walked 2.5 miles for these sandwiches - and worth every bit of it. Absolutely delicious.

For dessert, we had passed a bakery during our earlier walk that had a pastry I wanted to try - sfogliatella. It's a flaky pastry from Southern Italy but it seems to have made it's way up north. We stop in on our way back to the hotel and get one with ricotta and orange filling and another with pistachio filling. It's pretty good, not too sweet which I like. Here's a picture of them partially eaten, I wasn't fast enough to get an untouched picture.

Now time to rest the feet before more fun tomorrow.

Ciao!