When in Rome……or Venice

When in Rome………………or Venice

So, it was my birthday last week and to celebrate this fact we went to Venice for a few days which was really exciting.

I’ve always dreamt of visiting Venice – in fact I would love to go to all of the main Italian cities and eat my way around the whole of Italy. Three years ago when I was doing my Alphabet of Adventures for my 50^th year on this planet I had hoped to do “V for Venice”, but if the truth be told we essentially ran out of funds to indulge in this pursuit so I ended up squeezing in a cheeky “V for Via Ferrata” when I done my “Z for Zugspitze” but that is another story to be told some day.

When our friends Tony and Tess told us recently, they were flying to Venice and the flights were really reasonable, we decided to look in to this – and were pleasantly surprised. We booked return tickets with Volotea for just 88€ and the hotel was just 50€ a night including breakfast – so we figured that this would certainly be a cheaper option than to drive over in the motor-home. The only snag with this was of course The Doggos! We would need to leave our precious fur babies behind. Obviously in the future we will be able to do what we have been doing but in reverse – I.E get house sitters to come over and look after them – but we didn’t think the prospect of staying in our motor-home would appeal much to people, so we didn’t even attempt that option. Instead we booked Luka and Lillie into a Doggy Hotel about an hour away.

Our trip was amazing – we absolutely loved Venice – and clocked up a whopping 40 miles of walking in just 4 days (hence the less than traditional use of a bidet). All of in within the city of Venice and a few surrounding islands. The weather was stunning! Warm enough to go without a jacket for the first few days, then a bit nippier but still dry and bright. There are precisely 391 bridges in Venice and I reckon we managed to walk over most of them – some multiple times! Many of the bridges overlook Gondolas with hopeful Gondoliers waiting to get a fare! At 80€ a shot they weren’t successful in tempting us though!

We don’t much like organised tours so we opted for looking up the walking tours on the Internet and simply using Google Maps to go and find the iconic sites within Venice. I’m sure we missed a few sites but the things we did see include St Mark’s Square, Doge’s Palace, The Rialto Bridge, The Bridge of Sighs and lots and lots of pizza restaurants!

One of my highlights of the trip was spotting this awesome piece of graffiti which Sian had already found in her earlier trip to Venice in the summer!!

We also visited the Islands of Murano, Burano and Torcello. We did actually opt to do the organised boat trip for this – which on reflection was a mistake – we felt like a herd of sheep disembarking the boat straight into a glass blowing display and then held to ransom in the shop afterwards – we did escape though and found a quiet little shop where I bought the cutest little Murano glass Xmas tree. Perfect for our motorhome!

We found the Venetians either really friendly – or the polar opposite – really quite rude. There does not seem to be any mid ground. Many seemed to feel that customers were in the way, but we just ignored them and focused on the friendlier experiences – such as the delightful young lady who served us in what turned out to be our favourite restaurant Taverna San Troversa. Great gnocci, and pizza and then a really divine chocolate and pistachio cheese cake to finish it off!

My top tips for visiting Venice would be:

• Be aware that there are two prices for a coffee – one for standing up and one for sitting down – and there can be 3€ or 4€ difference between the two
• Check if your hotel has a kettle in the room – ours didn’t – and also the bar was not open nearly often enough so every time we fancied a cuppa it meant venturing out – which got costly. Next time we would take a travel kettle
• Public toilets are in the most popular spots but cost anything between 1.50€ and 2.50€ but there are nice toilets in a shopping centre called Fondaco dei Tedeschi – free to use, otherwise it’s an endless cycle of go to a café to use the toilet – pay 9€ for 2 drinks and then when that drink wants to depart – repeat process!!
• Check the small print for cover charges at restaurants – this can vary between 1€ and 2.50€ per person – and then they also add 12.5% service charge as obligatory. It all adds up.

It isn’t necessarily cheaper to eat the main meal at lunch time as is frequently the case in France and the UK. Most restaurants do a set menu which is good value and includes a Primi and Secondi (first dish then second dish) and usually a drink – sometimes a desert. However, we never did find one of these menus that gave a vegetarian option on both the Primi and Secondi – so we couldn’t take advantage of the good value deal. We did however find plenty of veggie pizzas, and some veggie pasta dishes – it just always annoys be that we spend the same money on one dish when people who will eat meat and fish get all the bargains!! Such is life I suppose!

However, we did find Venice’s only Vegan Restaurant – La Tecia Vegana – and went here on my birthday for a lovely meal. The food was lovely – and very reasonably priced – well worth a visit if you are veggie, vegan or just wanting to try something a bit different at a very reasonable price.

The hotel that we stayed at was the Belle Arti – fabulous location in Dorsodoro – really close to a choice of two Vaporetto stops. It was typical Venetian décor – and by that, I mean it was hard to enter the bedroom without sunglasses on!! We nicknamed our room “The Red Room” – and it really was “When Cindy took an LSD Trip” sort of loud! Red panel on the ceiling, red flock wall paper, different red pattern on the carpet, and yet a different on the bed spread. But we soon got used to it – and of course it was great to have some normal sized living space and a shower that we could run to our hearts content!!

Whilst we were away the Geometre expert came to do the Topographique Report and we now have had the report back on that so hopefully we can now take the plans to the next stage. And we came back to find a letter all in French, which after a few struggles with Google Translate appears to be telling us that we can indeed erect our garden house where we want it as long as we keep the surrounding scrub cleared up to 50 metres away. So, lots more strimming for Martin to do!! He’ll be kept busy for the rest of his life with the strimmer around here – that’s for sure!

I had a lovely surprise birthday High Tea on Saturday afternoon as a treat from my friend Frieda. She took me to a local village called Goujenac where an English woman and her daughter do a monthly English style afternoon tea! It was really lovely and a total surprise of the very nicest kind. Our tea was served with a sparkler and everyone in the restaurant sang Happy Birthday to me.

Saturday night was our third (and biggest to date) bar crawl – 13 of us ventured out on a cold, damp December evening to tour around the 3 bars that remain open. We started at 6.30pm and the hardiest of us continued until 1.30 am! Needless to say, a light weight like me struggled with that the next day – and I’m a little embarrassed to admit that I was sick in the morning and needed to go back to bed in the afternoon!! 53 is clearly way to old to be drinking for that long!!

So, now it’s back to normal life!! Well as normal as our life ever is at the moment! We have a raised deck to put up, then a garden house – and all before we leave for the UK for Christmas.

©Sharon Rees-Williams – wordpress.com/thislittlepieceof.land, 2018 

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