Venice Day 3

Our last day in Venice is a foggy one! It lingered while we ate breakfast and dissipated a little bit as we head out for a morning walk.

We decide to do a map-free wander again this morning. Except even trying to take different routes...the alleys and bridges all seem to circle back to the same spots so we end up in the same places we started. Twice. All bridges lead to the campo, apparently. Pretty hilarious. But it was fun to take random turns and side streets and see where they pop out. Venice is definitely a place you want to explore and get a little lost. You never know what you might find - like a boutique dog clothing store. Excuse me while I get an alligator skin, fur-lined, dog bed for my four-legged nephew. Just kidding, but they actually did have an alligator skin, fur-lined, dog bed. No joke.

During one of the meanders where we didn't actually repeat our steps, we come upon the leaning tower of Venice - Santo Stefano Bell Tower. It's quite tilted and shares a very narrow canal with residential homes. Definitely an iffy prospect living so close.

The time is nearing 11:00am by now so we head back to the hotel to collect our things and checkout. We end up storing our luggage with the front desk and head out to enjoy one last restaurant in Venice. Boy was it a good choice. We walk back over to Campo San Polo to Birraria La Corte. They have more than just pizza on their menu but we couldn't settle on the other sides so went for two pizzas. And oh my days what a good choice. Surprisingly, the pizza on the left which only had a cream of some kind of cheese, was the best one. The right-hand pizza was very similar to a margherita. The left-hand pizza was tomato sauce, a cheese cream, rosemary jelly drops and, I forget the name, but basically pureed salami? Okay that sounds very weird but think umami. It was ono! Both were so simple but so delicious. The crust was paper thin but the edges fluffy and soft. What a winner for the last Venice meal.

On our way back to the hotel, we stop at Grom again for gelato. Mom meant to order an affogato with hazelnut chocolate but ended up with hot chocolate with hazelnut chocolate. I chose pear, so it was more life creamy sorbet than gelato but it was like eating a pear, such pure flavor!

Back on our way to the hotel again, it's time to collect our bags and wait for the water taxi to take us to the train terminal. The water taxi is prompt at 2:00pm and off we go to the station. It's no time at all before we're at the train station and waiting for our train.

We're reading the high speed Frecciarossa train today from Venezia Santa Lucia to Bologna Centrale. Nice easy ride. Four stops between Venice and Bologna for a trip time of an hour and a half.

Hopping off at our stop, we come out of the Bologna train station into chaos. Oh boy talk about hustle and hustle. I already miss the peaceful waterways of Venice. My brain is immediately signaling - get me out of here. But as I'm the navigator to the hotel, I bust out my phone and get navigating. The Airbnb is less than a 10 minute walk from the station - talk about convenient. The upside - and also the downside - of being so close to the station is it's bustling. Too much for me, quite honestly. But thankfully the apartment blocks all the sound so we'd never know how busy it was outside. Getting into the apartment...that was a fear unto itself. And it makes a difference to read instructions. And follow them. First, you buzz into the main doors under the portico. Then using a virtual key on your phone, basically "answer" the buzz to unlock the door. Then once inside, after taking the stairs or the elevator, use a physical key to unlock the next set of wooden doors to get to a set of units. I've never had to turn a key so many times to open a door. And the reason - there are three deadbolts to unlock. Then once thru that door, we use the virtual key again to open our unit. Just getting inside the apartment is a marathon. Now to unpack and get our bearings.

It's getting close to 6:00pm by this point so we decide to grab dinner from a sandwich shop - Mo Mortadella. Yes, their primary ingredient is mortadella. What I call fancy bologna. True Bologna (not the American kind) originating in, you guessed it, Bologna. So it's a must-try for us. Freshly sliced meat, very thin, with various toppings. Yum! One is mortadella with grana cheese (like Parmesan), arugula and balsamic glaze. The other is mortadella with roasted eggplant, truffle cream (which tastes very garlicky to me) and arugula. The grana cheese was the winner for us. They serve the sandwiches toasted so it's nice and warm, but we took ours to-go as we needed to stop at the market for provisions tonight.

Conveniently there's a market on the other corner of the building we're in. Unknowingly, we walk in with sandwiches in town to get beer and milk. Basic provisions for the Jeffs'. Dad goes off to get his brew while mom and I look for milk and yogurt. It's at that point we notice none of the labels are in Italian. Interesting. At this point we wonder what kind of market we walked into. Nevertheless, we look for the most recognizable labels for yogurt and milk. There are only two milks and one coffee creamer to choose from that we can tell so we pick the "latte intero milch" and "jogurt naturalny". Good enough for now. No produce to be found so no fruit to choose from. Beer, milch and jogurt in hand, we checkout and head back to the apartment. Back upstairs, I Google the " Mix Markt" we just visited and yep - Eastern European. We found ourselves at an Eastern European grocery store where all the labels were Ukrainian, Polish and other such languages. On the plus side, dad enjoyed his beer and we managed to pick - of the two choices - the whole milk from Italy and natural yogurt (just milk and live cultures) from Poland. So all in all, it was a successful trip.

Our heads are nodding off early tonight so time for bed.

Ciao!