Other than a meal reservation, we did not have any fixed plan for today. We did know we wanted to go up the 📍Campanile di San Giorgio Maggiore, the church tower across the lagoon from St Mark’s Square. Everything else was fair game and subject to our whim.
The weather was beautiful: sunny and warm. With the sun came the people. What we observed last night: when the sun comes down people exit the city. Walking around gets much easier and travel time more or less follows what Google estimates. While the main thoroughfare still has people, the smaller streets are essentially deserted. In the daytime however. We have to slalom around people like it’s the Super-G at the Olympics.
After breakfast we made our way to coffee, only to find it in the middle of a park taken over by art exhibitions. As we arrived in Venice, we learned we’ve chosen to visit the fair city during its Biennale, an international art festival that occurs every other year. Not feeling like paying the entrance price to an art exhibition just to get coffee, we changed our plans and went for a backup location to grab some focaccia and coffee before soldering on.
Our first stop after breakfast was the 📍Galleria Giorgio Franchetti alla Ca' d'Oro. It had the benefit of being across the city from where we were, giving us plenty of walking time and offered views on the canal and a wonderful terrace. Some of the art was interesting but the majority remained the classic religious art mix of Madonna e Bambino (Mary with baby Jesus) and Jesus’ crucifixion.
We aimed to be at across the lagoon from St-Mark’s square around 18:00 to get pictures with something other than a bleached out city under the noon day sun. With plenty of time to spare, we elected to make our way to St-Mark’s for the Apéro. The experience was exactly what we expected. Great people watching but expensive and subpar cocktail. We cannot blame the caffès in the square. The rent and the expected “white glove” service cost quite a bit. Like with any restaurant in a prime location, it’s the quality of the food and drinks that gives in to the necessities of the profit margins.
After the early-ish apéro we made our way to 📍San Giorgio Maggiore’s island only to learn that access to the Bell Tower is cash only and we have no cash on us. We walked the island in the hope of finding an ATM to no luck. Vaporetto tickets are 9.50€ each: we paid 19€ to learn we had to try again tomorrow. Not our best moment.
We trekked back to our Airbnb to recharge until our diner at 📍Ai Mercanti. Located in a small plaza off the main roads, it’s the perfect restaurant. It has a small menu and each dish was executed perfectly. Most of it is imaginative at the exception of the slow cooked chicken breast with carrots, which was well executed, but lacked something to make it special. It very closely rivalled our previous diner at CoVino, but in the end it took an honorable mention.
On our way back from the restaurant, we were accosted by a lost lady. She’s French Canadian like us and got lost trying to make her way back to her hotel. Her phone’s GPS dated quite a bit and could not follow. She seemed so lost that Karine took pity on the poor woman and choose to rescue her. We found her destination on our map and escorted her home, a mere five minutes away from where we found her. She insisted on paying us for the service (5€) but asked us to wait for her to contact her sister so she could open the door. To our delight the sister answered the phone. If she did not we were unsure what she expected us to do. Maybe she hoped the two nice people would adopt her and bring her with us on the rest of our adventures? I can reassure the readers of this log that, as we refuse to do it with stray kitten (even if our heart bleeds a little each time) we’re not about to pickup a stray human.