Another beautiful day here in Venice. Are we lucky, or what? One half day of rain so far and that has been it. Gotta love it!
Today our friend Noelle flew in from England to go to the Opera with us on Saturday and to spend a little time with us in Venice. We met her on the Fondementa Nova at the LineaBlu stop, brought her to the apartment to drop her things off, and then set out to no where special. Well, that’s only partly true because, once again, we had to go to the Vodafone store. Alan got a text yesterday that they would now be charging us 3 euros a week for internet access. Since our phone doesn’t really handle the internet and since we don’t want it anyway, we needed to stop it. Of course the instructions were all in Italian which was too rapid to understand, but the people at Vodafone fixed it for us.
We then found a restaurant Nan had recommended called Osteria alla Botte. We walked in and, as the first table was full of gondoliers, we thought we might be in for a treat. We were right. I realize that most of these blogs are devoted to what Alan calls “food porn,” but we have had such good luck in getting such wonderful food, we feel it is our duty to share it at least verbally with all of you, “dear reader.” We started off with tiny grey shrimp cooked with lots of garlic and served over soft polenta. Then Alan and Noelle each had a wonderful dish of scallops, tomatoes, garlic and tagliatelle and I had anchovies and onions over bigoli (which is a thick spaghetti-like pasta). We finished up with a ricotta and nutella torta. Sorry, no pictures this time.
Because of eating so much, we decided to walk around. We just started walking with no goal in mind, crossed over the Grand Canal at the Rialto Bridge and wandered through parts of the four sestieres on the Southern side of the Canal. We stopped in at Chiesa di San Polo. We were finally able to get our Chorus Passes and can now get into many of the Venetian churches without having to pay again. I did not remember having been there in 2008 but then we went into a side room where Tiepolo’s Stations of the Cross are exhibited and I remembered it. After we left, we wandered many back streets and alleys and all of a sudden, there was the Frari church in front of us. Noelle had never been there and it was one of our favorite churches last visit, so using our brand new Chorus Passes, we went in. It was every bit as awe inspiring as I remembered from 2008. Everywhere you look, there is another work of art or a magnificent tomb. It was certainly worth a second visit.
We then decided to head back to the apartment and got here about 5. Both Noelle and Alan fell asleep and I played on the computer. We had bought pizza at the local bakery so Alan heated his up. He had to meet Giorgio at the Piazzale Roma. Alan had been in contact with Giorgio for about two months or so and they were planning on playing music tonight. Giorgio is a professor at the university in Padua and lives in Mestre. He was picking him up and driving him to his home in Mestre. So that’s where Alan is right now and I bet he is having a ball. I think he misses music when we are traveling.
After Noelle and I had our pizza and had cleaned up, we got down to the business of catching up on each others lives. Isn’t that what visits are all about?

Osterie alla Botte

Grand Canal from the Rialto Bridge

Ca d’Oro

Inside Chiesa di San Polo