Last night we went to a little tiny restaurant right around the corner from us just off Piazza SS. Giovanni e Paolo. It was called Osteria alla Staffa. Five tables, three guys including the bartender and the cook, but what great food! We started with a single serving of Misto dell’Ostaria (Italian grammar gurus, please forgive me if I got that wrong). It was a mix of all the cichetti (think tapas) the restaurant served. Then we had fresh pasta with chanterelles, fresh porcini, and black truffles. This was followed by a platter of four small roasted fish and roasted vegetables. All the servings were supposed to be for one but we split each of them and then couldn’t move much less face having a dessert.
Today it was up and out early for us since we were meeting a fellow SlowTrav participant and her husband. Maria is in Venice for another two weeks but her husband is leaving soon so we wanted to at least have a coffee together. We all then walked in a rain storm to the Rialto Bridge where we parted. We were going to do the first Brunetti walk but the rain was so hard and we just kept getting more and more wet. So home we went to wait it out. The afternoon turned cool but the wind and rain stopped so we walked in Brunetti’s footsteps from La Fenice to the Rialto. Brunetti is a detective in a series of mysteries by Donna Leon that many of us on SlowTrav are fanatics about. Afterwards we “discovered’ where the Marco Polo Bookstore was, bought just one book, walked another hour or so and then went to Alla Strega for a Harry Potter Pizza.