The past two days and tomorrow also we are lucky to have our good friends from Slow Travel Tery and Greg staying in Mestre, the next town over from Venice.  They arrived yesterday and while they were getting settled and getting ready to take the train to Venice (a ten minute train ride), Alan and I decided to wander around and slowly make our way down to the train station to meet them.  Here are some of our favorite Venice landmarks:

After their train arrived, we set out walking through Cannaregio to da Alberto where we were going to have dinner.  By then, it was dark but there were lots of beautiful buildings, hanging laundry, and people to keep Tery and Greg looking in all directions.  Before we went into the restaurant, we showed them the apartment we had previously stayed in, the Chiesa di SS Giovanni e Paolo, and the astounding Ospedale (hospital) which is housed in the Scuola Grande di San Marco from the 15th century.  We then had an amazing dinner at da Alberto, but were so hungry, there are no pictures.  There is a reason this is one of our favorite restaurants!

Today we again met them at the train station where they bought two day vaporetto tickets.  We were very lucky and got the back outside seats on the boat, so Tery and Greg got their first glimpses of the Grand Canal.  We only took the boat to the Rialto Mercato stop and got off to see the fish and vegetable markets.  The fish market was closing down but there were some merchants open.  The variety of fish is always amazing and it is all fresh caught.  Being around food reminded us all that we need lunch so we took them over to Al Garanghelo.  Again the food quickly disappeared but we did manage to snap this picture of the tiramisu. BJ had the Sole Muniere and Alan had spaghetti with lobster.  Greg took Alan’s advice and had the Zuppa di Pesci and Tery had a veal cutlet with lemon and capers.

After that we walked them over to San Polo where we went into the Frari Church.  They are now allowing pictures of everything but the altar so here are two:

We also wanted to go into the Scuola of St. Rocco but the line was too long.  We walked over to the San Toma vaporetto stop and caught the boat to Piazza San Marco.  It was after 5 so the crowds were a little thinner.  However the Basilica was already closed.  We wandered around the Piazza, decided that 6 euro for a single espresso was too costly so skipped Florians, went over and saw the Bridge of Sighs and had the pleasure of seeing a beautiful sunset over the Salute Church.

We then caught an extremely crowded vaporetto back to our home stop and settled down in the Campo San Barnaba for our first spritz of the visit.

Tery and Greg then stopped by to see our apartment and then were on their way back to Mestre.  We’ll meet again tomorrow to do more exploring in and around Venice.