“So, you can either risk getting seasick or walk a bit further.”
***I realize you thought you were coming here to read about Greece, but this trip started by way of Venice as our cruise departure was just south of Venice in Ravello. I promise, we’re going to Greece! As a reminder, this trip was myself, my lovely, 20-something daughter and my folks.***
In the end, I think we made the right choice in how we got from Marco Polo Airport onto the island of Old City Venice. There are several options: A water bus across the lagoon which would drop us off very close to our Airbnb, a road bus which was MUCH cheaper, but involved a fairly long walk to the station, and an even longer walk to the Airbnb on the other side, or a train, which we weren’t ready to tackle quite yet. The problem was that Mom is very prone to seasickness and we were worried about her having issues with that. In the end, we left the choice to her and she chose the water bus which was about $15 per person. Honestly, not bad.
Praising the Powers that Be, all of our luggage made it, and we quickly found the Alilaguna ticket kiosk and got our tickets. The agent was very nice and polite and with 4 tickets for the Orange Line, off we trotted, shlepping our bags behind us. Alright, we weren’t trotting. We were pretty much dragging. But we did make it.
Naturally, we just missed one, so stood there for the next 40 minutes. But once it arrived, we were quickly settled into the belly of our watercraft and on our way. It was no Disney Friendship. But it seemed watertight, and the seas weren’t rough. I’m happy to report that no seasickness ensued.
35 minutes later, we made the precarious disembarkation at the Guglie stop. It was late afternoon by then and the fatigue was thick. To say we were too tired and bordering on cranky to deal with the frustration of finding our Airbnb would be an understatement. If you’ve ever been to Venice, you understand that getting lost is the rule. There literally is no possibility of NOT getting lost or making at least several wrong turns when going anywhere. This was our baptism into the blackhole-of-Venice phenomenon and with too little sleep, the hangries, and sore bodies it wasn’t going well. Things, I admit, got a little testy.
Eventually, we made it to our digs for the night, but the check-in process didn’t go very smoothly. The Jewish neighborhood of the Cannaregio District just doesn’t have much cell signal and my messages to the host letting us know we’d arrived weren’t going through to her. UGH!! I think it took almost half an hour to reach her and we finally got into the apartment.
Here’s the Airbnb link to where we stayed if you’re interested!
https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/607725528169620872?source_impression_id=p3_1773498784_P3qT6EaLf57VX9Ak
It was cozy and adequate. In fact, it was really spacious and quite well decorated. The bidet is a lovely feature that Americans simply, for some unanswerable reason, refuse to embrace.
Not a fantastic view, but for the price, we sacrificed:
We dumped our stuff and claimed our spots and then sat down to take care of the important business of the proctored Covid tests. I had done mine in the airport, but the other 3 still had to do it. After some (more) frustrating technical difficulties Mom and Dad (with a LOT of help from Mikki) finally got connected to the proctor and were done in 15 minutes.
We were all starved, so feeling a little negative in more ways than one.
Ahem…
Time for cicchetti!!
If you’re new to Venetian stuff and things, Cicchetti (pronouced chi-ket’-tee) is basically happy hour on the canals. On the canals, over the canals, sometimes IN the canals. It’s what you do from 4-7PM. Clearly Mom was absolutely done with walking for the day after the extremely difficult trek over bridges and stone streets with heavy bags, so we basically found one of the nearest Osterias we could. There were several right near the Airbnb, but I was insistent that we find one on a canal for a bit more of a picturesque happy hour view which is never very far away in Venice.
Now, another lesson we quickly learned about Venice and well,… basically everywhere in Europe was that if you want or need to eat a real meal before 7:30 or 8:00, you will starve.
Period. The End. As we sat down to order and nibble (that’s what we’ll call this), the server literally laughed at us when we asked to see the menu. Basically, it was like, “Are you serious?! No one eats a big meal at 4:00!”
“Oh, okay, can we get ANY food right now? We’re really hungry!”.
“Oh sure, but all we have is cicchetti.”
“Wonderful! Bring a lot.”
We toasted our trip, finished our delicious hors d’oeuvres and drinks and sent Mom and Dad back home to bed. Mikki and I were ready to explore though. I mean how many occasions in one’s lifetime will we be in Venice? This was my second, but I squandered the first in high school and this was my do-over. Best do it right.
We followed the rules of Venice and got lost while enjoying the unique and beautiful setting. We vaporetto’d (water taxi) around here and there and when it was finally dark and we were just too worn out to venture any further, we headed back towards our neighborhood.
But first enjoy the photo gallery from our first little walkabout:
Just around the corner from our apartment, we found a trattoria that was seating people and, too tired to hunt anymore, we sat down and ordered Aperol spritzes. I’m pretty sure this is the official drink of Italy. From 4:00 on, at any given café, there will be a sea of laughing, chatting people surrounded by neon orange cocktails in stemmed glasses with warm Mediterranean breezes carrying the melodies of hand-rung church bells through the squares.
We were both quite hungry still and decided we’d liked the cicchetti from earlier enough to order another round. We got mixed results. You be the judge:
Instead of crostini topped with a variety of super yum-yum goodies, we were served heaps of cream of wheat with super yum-yum goodies.
Like… what?!
One was the VERY traditional creamed cod, ubiquitous around Venice, another with a pile of sauteed onions with pine nuts, and the last some eggplant ragu. The cod was average and comparable to the one we’d gotten earlier, and the veggie ones were surprisingly wonderful. But… just… really? Cream of wheat? We scrolled past that with the same disinterest as we would a FB post about Sephora’s latest lipstick.
Now… onto the entrée. Again, mixed bag.
Here is the menu so you can peruse along with us:
Perhaps you’ve heard of squid or cuttlefish in its own ink. Apparently, that’s what’s done in Venice. We wanted to do what’s done in Venice. So, we did. But you learn quickly while dining internationally that what you might be picturing, what you might be expecting, what might have even been described on the menu in detail is often not what you end up with. Case in point…
We ordered the Tagliatelle with Cuttlefish in its own ink. This is tagliatelle:
This is what we got.
My Tagliatelle-o-Meter is registering a ZERO…
It looked like a plate of something terrible that happened after a long night of drinking. But I am not one to let a $20 meal go to waste no matter how disgusting it looks. And the travel mantra calls strong: “Embrace Adventure”. We gave each other a look of resignation and rolled up the proverbial sleeves and each took a tentative bite.
“Hey, this is actually pretty good!”
It’d been a lot better with some pasta, of course, but it wasn’t bad at all. In fact, we both really enjoyed it, but even betwixt us both, did not finish it. I think we were simply too wiped out to give it its due justice and knew we had to be up early to catch our train. We called for the check and made our way back to the apartment for our first night’s “sleep”.