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Venice

22 October. The mid-term school holiday has arrived and we’re off to Venice. We were here in 2004 and everyone was keen to rekindle our memories of this amazing city. This time we flew into Venice whereas in 2004 we arrived by train from Verona. We also rented an apartment this time versus staying in a hotel. Through a convoluted set of emails we were recommended a place on Venetian Properties by Truly Venice and the instruction was to take a water taxi from the airport to the San Samuele pier. All very cryptic and a leap of faith that their representative will be waiting there. It’s a perfect plot for an episode of Hustle. All was well and Andrea from Venetian Properties greeted us and took us to a lovely property called Porta Sola San Samuele just a few streets back from the pier. He also spent lots of time with us telling us about his favourite restaurants and wine bars. So we went to Cantinone Storico for dinner and it was truly good. Excellent produce like a sea bass cooked simply over a charcoal grill. Bellissimo.
Venice - Italiy - 21 October 2011
Venice - Italiy - 21 October 2011
Venice - Italiy - 21 October 2011
The next morning we were able to see our street properly. Most places in Venice aren’t really identified by street names – but our place is in the Corte de la Vida. Our first task was to get some Vaporetto (water bus) tickets. The informative web site Europe for Visitors has an excellent summary on the options and we chose two 7-day passes for the adults and the Three-day Young Person’s Travel Card for the girls. The nearest place to get these was at the Accademia Vaporetto Station. Armed with the tickets we floated off to the Rialto area and lunch at Trattoria Alla Madonna, a place we remembered fondly from 2004. The food and ambience was just as we remembered and we had a great lunch of pasta and fish. One of their specialties, the seafood risotto, was fabulous. They even have a web site now.
Venice - Italy - 22 October 2011
Venice - Italy - 22 October 2011
Venice - Italy - 22 October 2011
Venice - Italy - 22 October 2011
A view of the entrance to our apartment.
Venice - Italy - 22 October 2011