Angela's Blog: Venezia

Reader beware: It's a long one...

It's vacation time in the Chaney household and we chose to visit Venice. We haven't been to Italy since 2003 and I'm not sure why it took us so long to come back. Why Venice? Why not? It's a group of islands connected together by hundreds of bridges. It's thousands of years old and full of history. Quick travel tip: If you're planning on going to Venice, bring your walking shoes. In the 5 days we were there, we walked 36 miles.

The main attraction is St. Mark's Basilica.

It was built back in 839. Rumor has it that St. Mark was visited by an angel who told him that he (St. Mark) would be buried in a city by a lagoon. He was actually buried in Egypt. But then, an enterprising bunch of young Venetians crept into Egypt and stole St. Mark's remains. They put him in a barrel of pickled pork so that the Muslim guards wouldn't check. Seriously! It's on the internet and if it's on the internet, it must be true.

Anyhoo, they have a beautiful basilica. Normally, you have to wait for hours to get in. It's free but everyone wants to go. Here's a quick travel tip. You want to walk right into museums? Go in the off season. We walked right into the church, no waiting.

The inside is beautiful. Technically, no photos but...no one was looking. Quickly, in my defense, everyone was taking pictures.

We also got to go up to the loggia (balcony) where we could step outside and get a beautiful view of the square. Behind me in the shot above is the clock tower. The two "people" on each side of the bell pivot to "ring" the bell. The clock keeps perfect time.

To get there, you have to climb some serious stairs. They were incredibly steep. One couple hiked all the way up there and then found out they had to pay a Euro or two to get into the museum and went back down. Not me. I climbed all those stairs - I wanted everything I had coming to me!

Another travel tip for you. You want to go to Venice? Be prepared to climb some stairs!

Down below is Piazza San Marco.

As I mentioned, it's usually cram packed full of people. But this week? Only what would be considered a "handful" of Japanese tourists, a few Germans and...us.

Our first drink in the city...

We started walking down random alleyways and found this little cafe

We had Chianti (me) and Peroni (John). We had a little chicchetti snack of cuttlefish, sardines, buffalo mozzarella and salmon... Yeah, I said sardines. Not something I'd order again but when in Venice....

A couple of weeks ago, the city had the worst flooding in a hundred years. The water in the piazza was waist high. (Google it!) Our concierge told us the flooding had subsided and to come on over. Imagine our surprise when we walked out of our hotel on Monday to knee deep water! The scaffolding was up and ready.

The locals weren't panicked. They called this "high-tide".

Apparently, there's mild flooding in the plaza most days due to global warming. But, we were not prepared. As luck would have it, an enterprising young Venetian was selling foot covers for 15€. We did not take photos. They were so ridiculous.

You could tell which people were tourists. They were the ones with the silly shoe covers wading out in the water while the locals were wearing Wellies (waterproof boots) and sticking to the scaffolding or the dryer areas.

By the end of the day, the piazza was clear and the water had receded.

We stayed at the Hotel Danieli, which was fantastic. It's three buildings joined together by bridges (as is everything else here). This is one of the "bridges" that links our hotel building to the original.

The original building was built in 1750.

The lobby, shown above, looks like a grand ballroom entrance. Our room was in one of the newer buildings, which was built in mid-1800's. Our room is super nice. Check out our room key. It's an actual key!

We're up on what is technically the second floor. (In Europe, the ground floor is called Floor 0-go figure!). They have elevators but you can barely fit two people in there so it's easier to just take the stairs...two flights.

The location is perfect! We are about 150 yards from where all the action is. Our first full day here, we had breakfast in St. Mark's at a place called Caffé Florian.

John found it on yelp. Luckily, we were able to get a table. Turns out, this place was opened in 1720 and is one of the most expensive places to eat. Too bad that wasn't on yelp. The coffee was 10€. At least the food was good and the view was spectacular. Check out this quiche Lorraine!

After that, we went on a quest. Have you ever watched Somebody Feed Phil? Phil Rosenthal was a writer on Everybody Loves Raymond and now he has a travel/food show on Netflix. Well, Phil was in Venice and had some recommendations. First and foremost on our list was the pork chop at a place called Da Arturo. So we wanted to find it and make a reservation. We found it on google maps and saw that it was closed but headed over there anyway so we'd see where it was.
It wasn't there. We thought we were in the wrong place and headed back to the hotel to do more research.

On the way back, we stopped in the Campanile, which is a huge bell tower right next to the basilica. It's the highest structure in Venice.

It was originally built in 1514. It collapsed in 1902 and was reconstructed in 1920 using the same materials.

The view from the bell tower is amazing.

Back at our hotel, we remembered we had a rooftop bar. Intrigued, we went up for a drink and had the most expensive cocktails ever!

I had a sidecar and John had a martini. The drinks were 25€ each. The view was fantastic and that's what you were paying for.

The next day we went to the Museum Correr. It's on the far side of the piazza directly facing the basilica. No line. The inside looks like it was a palace but I believe they were used for government offices back in the day. The exhibits were cool, pictures, sculptures (my favorite was this foot). Seriously? Who does a sculpture of a big toe?

But then we were on a mission. Remember the pork chop? Today was the day.

It was pouring down rain but that didn't stop us. We'd done our homework. We watched the show, paid close attention to the stuff that was around the outside and made note of the street signs. We googled it up and went right back to where we were the day before. Google said the place was open. Unless it was invisible, it wasn't there!

Foiled again, we found a little pasta shop nearby and settled for pasta olio and spaghetti with meatballs.

The next morning the sun was shining and all was right with the world. In our previous wanderings, we found this neighborhood that was behind our hotel. Not very touristy and quite charming. We went over for coffee and a sandwich for breakfast. Next was the Doge's Palace (on the right in the photo below).

This was the palace where the rulers of Venice lived and worked. People then must have been super thin because I've never climbed so many steep stairs!

There was lots of dark wood inside and some pretty fantastic views. This was the room where the senate met. All the rooms looked like this with the dark paneling and the gorgeous paintings.

Down in the basement, was the prison. Rumor has it that some of the graffiti on the walls is from actual prisoners.

Also here is the "Bridge of Sighs", so named because this was the bridge the prisoners crossed from the palace to the prison and were taking their last sigh of freedom.

After that, we decided to try for that elusive pork chop once more just in case. We trekked over there once more and confirmed...the elusive pork chop just doesn't exist. Disappointed we decided to try another of Phil's recommendations: Boutique del Gelato. The place is tiny. There is barely room for two people to stand in there to pick their gelato! That was not a deterrent.

Two scoops! I got some kind of raspberry fruit and, of course, chocolate.

John got a couple of Italian flavors that he thought were delicious.

Oh kids! This made up for the hours of walking and hoping for a pork chop. This gelato was a little bit of heaven.

After gelato, we headed back toward the hotel and saw the boat tours. So we signed up for a Grand Canal tour. The Grand Canal is the main canal that snakes its way through Venice. It's like the 635 of canals. The boat tour was an hour. The guide was explaining all the sights along the way. She also mentioned that because the canal was so busy in the morning with people conducting business (trash barges, delivery boats, etc), they couldn't do any tours until after 2pm.

Seeing Venice from the water is a completely different experience from seeing it from land.

A random bridge/side canal off the Grand Canal.

Rialto Bridge - One of the original bridges in Venice. There are shops on either side of the bridge.

Ca Rezzonico.

Basilica di Santa Maria della Salute

Il Redentore.

Piazza San Marco.

San Stae.

On the way back to our hotel, we actually got a clear shot of the Bridge of Sighs. On the weekend, the bridge where you stand to take the photo is so crowded you can barely get across. Now that the cruise ships have left for the week, we can walk right up. When you pass under it on a Gondola, you're supposed to kiss your significant other.

Another of Phil's recommendations was a place called Cantine del Vino Gia Schiavi. This was over by the academy, which is an art museum that houses a lot of religious paintings.

These are chicchetti. Small bites of food on fresh French Bread. The one up front is some kind of fish salad...similar to tuna salad but not tuna. The one with the shrimp is buffalo mozzarella. The first dark one is tuna salad with cocoa powder sprinkled on top. The one in the back has brie with a pesto sauce on top. Then then there's a piece of cheese. These were so good we went back and got another round.

Meanwhile, in the Accademia (museum), there was this painting done in 1570 of St. Mark's Basilica. The plaza looks exactly the same today as it did in the painting done almost 500 years ago!

Venice is a marvelous place to get lost. They have all these small passageways and alleys. Sometimes you wander down a passage and it dead ends into a canal. Other times it opens into a huge plaza that is dominated by a church like this one:

This is Chiesa San Zaccara built in 827. St. Zachariah was the father of John the Baptist. Who knew?

One afternoon, we left our hotel and went left instead of right and found this cool little neighborhood. This became our new hang out. One particular bacarro was our favorite and we spent a lot of time there. We got coffee in the morning. Once we got a full breakfast of coffee, orange juice, eggs, bacon and toast. Quick note: When you order food in Venice, it's never what you expect.

The bacon is Canadian bacon, which I think we consider ham. It tasted like ham. If you ask for ham, you'll get proscuitto, which is also quite tasty. I had that on focaccia bread on another morning. We came in once and they had these beautiful cannolis. John got one of those for breakfast on our last day.