First we want to start by following up on our dinner at Quatro Feri last night.  In a word GREAT!  It is a very small place near to where our apartment is and right off of Campo San Barnaba.  Luckily we had booked a table as up until 10 PM, people were being turned away.  It is run by a wonderful woman who we nicknamed Nonna (Grandmother) although she probably is younger than we are.  It was a private name just between the two of us, we never said it to her.  We decided on our dinner and then she told us what we actually were going to have, two orders of a single grilled scallop on its shell, pasta with duck sauce to split and then I had grilled squid and Alan had a seabream like fish with chiodini mushrooms.  It was all absolutely terrific. We also had an apple torte for dessert.  Definitely a place to visit again.

Today we had tickets to see The Magic Flute by Mozart.  It was at La Fenice Opera House which is always a treat to go to.  I had gotten the tickets last January and the seats we had were really good.  We took the vaporetto over to the Giglio stop and walked over to the area in San Marco where La Fenice is.  On the “street” from the vaporetto stop there were some interesting doors:

We ate lunch at VinoVino and finally had fegato alla Veneziana, better known as liver and onions.  They do a very good job of it there and we had peas with mint and pancetta with it.  We were also forced (that’s right, forced) to have panna cotta with a caramel sauce for dessert.

Afterwards we had plenty of time to wander around and window shop.  Prada, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Hermes, you name it, we looked in their window.  This was in the window of an art gallery and was rather haunting:

Burned viola in acrylic.

It made me (Alan) feel sad.  I hate to see abused instruments, but this may have been a casualty from the 1996 La Fenice fire, as described in the book City of Falling Angels.

As we walked across the many bridges, we noticed what a great day it was for reflections in the canals:

The opera was really good and instead of being set in a mythical forest was set in a schoolroom complete with students, headmaster (Zarastro) and nuns (the 3 handmaidens of the Queen of the Night).  Very interesting staging and it worked very well.

Tomorrow is laundry, home cooking and maybe a walk.  Nice not to have to rush around!