Day 6, we traveled by train from Florence to Venice. In general, I found Santa Maria Novella much more pleasant compared to Rome Termini. The platform numbers came out about half an hour rather than 20 minutes on the dot and obviously it was smaller so less mad dashing across platforms. Also, by this time, I had learnt a couple tricks including just boarding the train at the closest door and then walking to my cabin on the train and in general just going through the entrance gate ASAP. I picked a hotel very close to the arrival wharf from the line N San Marco ferry outside Santa Lucia train station but we still got lost a bit because we were reluctant to go through what in our eyes was an alleyway (but considered a normal street in Venetian eyes).
The intention was to visit Burano and walk to the Fondament Nove ferry wharf which, according to Google maps, was only 15 minutes away from our hotel. So at first, I was confident that we could make it by always going left and in the direction away from our hotel. But after several turns, I admitted that we were lost and we gave up and backtracked to our hotel. We had a pizza lunch nearby- we ordered a Daviola pizza. It was not as spicy as Mum liked it- quite mild tasting, but not bad. It did leave us very thirsty afterwards, though. After lunch, we spent the time taking pictures of the Doge Palace and Basilica San Marco (they were supposed to be included in the day tour I reserved through Viator tomorrow, the only day trip I booked this time around but we had a whole afternoon to kill and they were very close to our hotel).
We had dinner at Ristorante Principessa, the restaurant that was part of a 4-star hotel just around the corner from our hotel. We had an assorted seafood plate (assorted prawns including what I assumed was the Norwegian lobster with the flat body, small spicy octopi, squid meat dyed by squid ink and fishmeat on bread) and seafood spaghetti (I originally wanted to order the prawn and crab meat gnocchi but the waiter must have incorrectly deduced where my finger pointed). Both were excellent and the best meal we had at Italy so far.
The second day at Venice was spent with a walking tour that brought us across 5 or all 6 neighbourhoods of Venice and included the gondola ride (as I’m sure I’ve said before, I mainly joined the tour to avoid the hassle of needing to haggle with gondoliers over prices) as well tickets into the Basilica San Marco and the Doge Palace. We had the afternoon free after the tour and I was going to talk Mum into taking the line 1 ferry to visit more attractions but Mum was too tired from all the walking we did from the day tour. So back to hotel for rest and then onto dinner at 1000 Gourmet Venezia. We originally had our eyes on the Boscaiola 2.0 pizza which had grounded black pork meat and black truffle cream but apparently by the time we got to Italy black truffles were out of season. The waitress suggested the Burrata pizza when we asked her so we ordered that. The crust was the high and soft variety which was not what we were used to but the burrata cheese added to the pizza was something new for us. It tasted good and we were very happy that we chose to visit this pizzeria. Overall, we had the best food at Venice out of our 3 chosen Italian bases. And that almost concluded our Italian trip (well, not quite, a little bit carried over to day 8 when we had to travel by plane from Venice to Zurich. But that goes into the Switzerland leg of the trip so tune in for that next month).
Moonlake's Fiction Space 