Day 50 - Venice, Italy

Our day began with a walk to the fish market, which is only open in the morning. Not only are there stands and stands of the freshly caught fish, but also rows of produce, bread, etc. This is where the locals come to shop.

For lunch, we decided that we wanted to correct yesterday’s errors, and sit down for an authentic Italian pizza. This was our last day in Italy, and we did not want to leave on a bad note. We took what we learned yesterday, and used these criteria to identify and weed out tourist-trap pizzerias that serve frozen pizzas. It’s much harder than you would think in Venice (Venice is VERY touristy). However, we came across one that seemed to fit the criteria. No pictures of food on the menus - check. Menu is in Italian only - check. Restaurant is operated by Italians - check. Kim was still a little skeptical, as we only saw tourists eating there (it is a good sign when the locals are eating there). However, when we saw three Italian “regulars” leaving the place and chatting it up with the owner, we were sold. We sat down and ordered our pizza. 15 minutes go by. . . 20 minutes. . . 25 minutes. . . uh oh! Out came our heated up frozen pizzas. What had we missed? Hindsight, I suppose we could have asked if the pizzas were homemade or not. We were so upset with ourselves, we decided we wouldn’t mention it the rest of the day.

Following lunch, we walked around Rialto and did some shopping, then headed back to St. Mark’s Square for some pigeon time. This time we brought some food with us! Want to know what happens when the pigeons find out you have food on you?

Kim later made a friend who became very territorial (he stayed on her arm for a good 20 minutes and fought any other pigeon that tried to sit on her arm):



Pigeon Fight 2 from Brian Burns on Vimeo.
Before dinner, we walked around St. Mark’s and took a couple more pics.



Kim: For dinner we decided to do a Venetian-style pub crawl. Many bars and trattorias specialize in cichetti, or little bites of food (kind of like tapas, but smaller). They make the cichetti ahead of time, so you have to go early to make sure they don’t run out of the best stuff. Each one costs around 1 euro, and you simply point to what you want. Still hungry? Just point to another. We went to four different places and had a couple of cichetti and a glass of wine or a spritz (a popular Venetian aperitif) at each place.

In the piazza outside one of our stops, there was a live band playing, vendors selling food and a pretty good crowd had gathered. If you know Brian at all, you know he had to get closer to check out the band. We were having a pretty good time, when I began to notice that the band was wearing t-shirts with red stars on them. Then I looked around and saw a bunch of other people wearing Che Guevara t-shirts. I leaned over to Brian and said, “I think we’re at a Communist rally.” With a little more investigation we confirmed our hunch – we were at, literally, a Communist party.

Well, Brian wasn’t standing around to watch any Communist band play, and I almost had to hold him back from trying to “talk some sense” into those who had gathered. I quickly guided him to our next stop.

Brian: After our pub crawl, we decided to sit out on St. Mark’s Square, have a drink, and watch the orchestra play at Café Florian. I put in some requests with the accordion player, but he always played a different song (I’m pretty sure he didn’t understand me, even though he acted like he did). It was still very fun and memorable.