Venice : Grand Canal, Ombre & Cicheti

After a morning spent visiting San Marco & the Doge's Palace and a quick lunch at Bacaro Risorto, rain was still pouring, so we decided to go to the Guggenheim. But while walking towards it, rain finally stopped!!

We enjoyed instead a beautiful walk in Venise, passing through Accademia bridge...

 ^ Hubby working even during our romantic getaway ;)

...from where you have one of the most beautiful view of Venice, in my opinion.

We crossed canals & little streets...

Some leading nowhere…

...To emerge again on the Grand Canal. Simply stunning.

Look at the beautiful buildings...

I’d like to be a princess and then I would go every night at a ball in one of those beautiful palaces with my prince, we would dance all night and at dawn a gondola would take us home...

Back to reality, we really wanted to go on a gondola (that we could really have done ;p) but the rain stopped us... Nevermind, we'll be back! 

After all this walking, I think we deserved some rest, before going out for dinner.

Obviously before dinner it's aperitivo time!

We tried not one, but two bacaro for aperitif. As they say, the more the better!

First one, Ca' D'oro - Alla Vedova. Cicheti were really good, mostly seafood based. But they didn't have spritz and ombre (glass of local wine) was horrible. The place was very small & crowded so that it wasn’t enjoyable to have drink there and finally the price was quite high. All in all, not a good pick.

Second one, La Cantina was another story :) 

Less crowded and with younger & nicer crowd, very good ombre and cicheti were good as well (although we didn’t taste all that we would have loved to as in the first place we were supposed to go out for dinner after the aperitif ;p).

We could even get a table ;)

For dinner, we had a reservation at Vini da Gigio and old Venetian tavern. 

They're  maybe victims of their own success, but I was quite disappointed: the place was full of Japanese & French tourists, not anymore a local restaurant, the room was poorly decorated and food was good, but nothing exceptional, and totally overpriced!

We shared a seafood entrée, that was very good! 
Whatever has scallops in it, it's very good to me ;)

And then spider-crab tagliolini and pesto & monkfish tagliolini 

And of course pudding! Chocolate and nougat semifreddo (nothing exceptional)

We had a very good evening, but I wold not reccomand you Vini da Gigio. Even though much less elegant, I would rather recommend you Osteria al Portego, the place we had dinner the night before.

And tomorrow I'm taking you to Murano & Burano islands! :)

Venice: San Marco & Doge's Palace

So when I left you yesterday, we were ready to explore Venice, heading to San Marco square from our hotel, crossing little canals & cute squares...

To finally emerge in San Marco square!

Despite the rain & the grey sky, the place was magnificent!

In fact I hadn't been in Venice from quite some time & I had almost forgotten how beautiful it is!

Plus, the advantage of visiting Venice under the rain is that there was almost no queue to enter San Marco Cathedral.

The downside being that I had to buy and wear one of those awful, touristy, plastic poncho (no, I won't show you a picture).

The interior of the Cathedral is huge and gold. There isn't an inch of the wall that isn't decorated. Everything is gorgeous. It made me think of the Church of the Savior Blood in Saint Petersburg.

Actually I found many similarities between Venise and St. Petersburg.

We then went to the bell tower to see Venice from above. 

There there was even a smaller queue of tourists... Maybe it was because up there wind was unbearable, rain was swirling and it was freezing...

The panorama was worth it nonetheless, don't you think?

Anyway we couldn't resist up there more than 5 minutes...

Eager to stay in a dry place, we visited the Doge's Palace.

Doge's palace is a gothic beautiful building that was the residence of the Doge, the supreme authority of the former Republic of Venise.

We began our visit with the courtyard 

To continue to the institutional Chambers where the governors of the Republic met and all decisions were taken, in a very modern & democratic way for that time.

All the Chambers are richly decorated and you can see paintings from all the most important artists from that time, like Tintoretto, Veronese...

Unfortunately, Doge's apartments were closed; we finished our visit with the prisons. The prisons were connected to the Palace through the Bridge of Sighs : prisoners would sighed at the last view of Venice they had while crossing the bridge.
No pictures of prisons: they were creepy...

By the time we emerged from the Doge’s Palace it was lunch time.

As you can imagine around San Marco there are lots of unappealing touristy restaurants… But I have a hidden, little gem for you, the Bacaro risorto.

A cute little bacaro, 5 minutes away from San Marco square. Plus going there, you have a beautiful view over the Bridge of Sighs.

No need to say, we shared some cicheti ;) 

And I'm gonna leave you with the Bacaro Risorto advice for different ills you could have: love, loneliness, lost keys... And don't worry there's a specific alcohol to treat each one of them ;)