More visitors, Finn's birthday, Bassano del Grappa, acqua alta...

 So we're already up to and almost beyond the part where Finn's cousins Carey and Campbell come to visit. As it has been pointed out to me by several readers, yes, I am getting a wee bit behind. So here's a quick photo essay to get these latest excursions and occasions rattling along.
Well that format didn't go down quite so well, so I've gone back over it and filled in a few of the gaps.

The night C&C arrived we whisked them over to Giudecca, to Simone's restaurant previously featured in Mondays - fun days. It was a welcome-to-Venice / Finn's-birthday-eve dinner, as his real birthday landed on a Sunday-no-fish-day.

Campbell contemplates the phenomenal fish antipasto platter. 
The smoked swordfish (looking like thinly sliced ham there on the right) was amazing. It was dressed with olive oil, peppercorns, and tiny capers. Incredible.

My first selection from the platter. So delicious. 

The raw tiger prawns. Wow.

A few fried bits. 

The scallops.

Next morning, Finn and Campbell had a big birthday hug.

And Finn chuckled into his birthday breakfast crepe.
Probably all those birthday breakfast bellini.

Finn's birthday was also the day of the 26th Venice marathon. 

And the evening of another beautiful sunset. 

And the night of a cake (thanks to Svetislava and Arnel!) 

On Monday we caught a train towards the mountains, to Bassano del Grappa.

A small city in the north of the Veneto region, Bassano del Grappa's two specialities are grappa (obviously) and ceramics (apparently). Both seemed like good prospects to us, as did potentially getting a closer view of the ever-snowier mountains and visiting a town with hills (and therefore longer views than in the flatlands of Venice). 

Ponte degli Alpini.

Sure enough, there were various shops around town, and especially near the bridge, selling ceramics. But they were not appealing pieces, no rustic charm or fine porcelain precision, rather just a bunch of chunky clunky platters shaped like cabbage leaves or decorated with lemons or tomatoes or lobsters. You know the drill.

Finn and Carey on the bridge.

One of the things that it seems like we will never get used to about Italy is closing time. Or lunch time. Whichever you want to call it. Shops here open for a few hours in the morning, then close at 12.30 or 1 for the afternoon, reopening sometime between 3 and 5. As this is also the period of the day I am at work, I only experience it once a week, and on Mondays it is often compounded by Sunday closing running over to include Monday morning. Especially in smaller towns or less solely-tourist places, nothing much opens until sometime in the late afternoon on a Monday, and galleries and museums don't open at all. So our Monday excursions operate on a limited menu, so to speak.

The road up the hill from the bridge.

In the case of Bassano del Grappa, there was an appealing little grappa bar situated in the eastern entranceway of the bridge. It was open when we first arrived, but less than two hours since breakfast felt still a little early to begin sampling hard liquor. Our mistake. Of course by the time we had wandered over the bridge, walked down to the river edge, explored the town on the other side a while, and wandered back, the bar was closed for the afternoon. Our next challenge then was finding somewhere open and willing to serve us lunch.

A grappa distillery.

In the river below the southern side of the bridge there was a hover of huge trout, sunning themselves in the current. Actually we have no idea if they were just in that one spot, but there they were, and they looked delicious. So we wandered around, up and down (exciting!), looking for somewhere to feed us lovely river trout. But our options )as I said) were limited, most places being Monday/afternoon closed. Eventually we found a little trattoria with an appealing menu perched outside. It was impossible to see in through the lace curtains and it wasn't until our ears tuned in to the sound of cutlery clinking on china that we were sure it was open for lunch. They didn't have trout, but they did have bigoli with duck ragu, large salami with polenta, and pappardelle with venison ragu.

A baccala (salt cod) shop. 

After lunch we wandered up as high as we could, past the big old palazzo (now museums, closed on Mondays), old town walls, a castle, and the like. But we didn't find another such appealing bar. There was a big fancy deli back in the direction of the railway station, but they just sold the same grappa we can buy at our local supermarket for a fraction the price, which is what we did on out way home. A nice moscato variety with a lovely raisiny finish.

The picturesque view of trees and hills and cliffs, but without a recent rain to clear the air, we couldn't see the mountains.  

So a little disappointing to visit the home of grappa and not return with any incredible liquor finds, but it was a fun Monday excursion all the same.


On Tuesday night we ate what was probably our most delicious Venice meal, at Osteria la Zucca. But I completely forgot to take any photos, so we'll have to go back. Their house speciality is a pumpkin flan with mature ricotta - oh my god delicious!

As we have only a little more than a month left in Venice, we've started cramming in the museum and church visits. This morning we set off to see Museo Fortuny before I had to be at work, but after a day and a bit of almost continuous drizzle there is now too much water in Venice and nowhere for it to go. Meaning that today was the first day of acqua alta this season. Pretty exciting, but we couldn't get to the museum. We got really close, but there were no duckboards there yet and we were without gumboots. Tomorrow we will try again, with gummies.

Finn walking with the crowds on the duckboards in San Marco square.
Photo courtesy of C&C.

Tonight is C&C's last night with us, we'll probably make it a pizza night. From here they're off to our hot tubs in Bled, lucky things.

26 October 2011

More excellent company

Michael's three weeks with us sped by disconcertingly quickly, it was all far too much fun having a friend living in our extended apartment. On his last day we had a highly successful all-day excursion through Venice combining shopping (a great leather bag for Michael from Venice's one great recently opened leather bag shop, manned by a very friendly and very well mustachioed guy with really nice shoes, and the nicest bag of course), churches, and a crazy museum-grand canal palazzo-biennale exhibition. Somewhere in amongst it all there were spritz and gelato too. A lot of fun.

The view from the 3rd floor of Ca'Rezzonico where we'd just seen a painting of a monkey holding a lit firecracker under the backside of some kind of monster-monkey-creature. Turned out it was a Tintoretto - a bit of light relief from painting religious scenes and doges I guess.

Santa Maria della Salute 

Fantastic floors in there, especially under the huge central dome.
If only one could get up onto those high balconies to look back down onto it...

I visited a few biennale exhibitions while Michael visited Peggy Guggenheim's.
Found some nice pots at Future Pass, not actually brimming with blood, but...

Michael left first thing the next morning, catching the vaporetto through the sun-lit fog across the lagoon. It was an adventure over all too soon. A couple of hours later we were in in campo Santi Giovanni e Paolo, scooping up Fiona and Margo and bringing them home to fill Michael's rooms. After work that evening we met Damien and his boss Keir for a quick welcome to Venice drink at the greenhouse bar. They were staying nearby to us in Cannaregio, in a grand old hotel with what is apparently Venice's largest private garden. Very nice.

The following night we had dinner with Damien and Keir at L'Anice Stellato, an osteria in between them and us and the ghetto. Also very nice.

I started with scampi in saor, like sarde in saor but with scampi instead or sardines, and ginger and pink peppercorns instead of pinenuts and raisins. Finn had a sardine parmegiana - fresh sardine fillets and green olives layered in between the aubergine slices and tomato sauce. Yum yum. I can't remember what the others had.

Finn's beautifully presented butterfly gurnard.
Incernetta al forno con sformatino di radicchio di Treviso.

Damien and Finn looking jealously at Keir's lamb platter.
Damien had sea bass baked with fresh porcini mushrooms, mmmm. 

Me with sagne con scampi e fegato grasso d'oca (pasta with scampi and foie gras, oh yeah),
and Keir smug with his amazing spectrum of lamb.

There was berrylicious chocolaty spongy dessert too, a grappa at the hotel bar, and a late-night walk in the huge mysterious garden, including down into some kind of underground echo chamber with the most incredible acoustics.


The next night Finn cooked up a whole forest's worth of mushrooms and we somehow crammed six around our very narrow table in our tiny tiny house. Fiona, a friend of Amy's we met on out way through LA, and her friend Margo were super lovely and lots of fun to have next door. On her last night in Venice, Fiona had Finn spending some good canal edge sitting time, dangling bread laced with oil from Finn's home potted sardines to attract the fishes.

Finn and Fiona intent on fish gazing.

Beautiful sunset that evening. 

It's been super fun having so many friends! Next week we're hoping to make some new friends with a couple, friends of Fiona's, who are coming to stay for a few days before Carey and Campbell arrive. So much fun all at once! Then we will probably be on our own again until the end of November, and then on our travels until we get home. Well, that's unless any of you have a wonderful surprise up your sleeves for us!

14 October 2011

i feel sLOVEnia

That's the honest to god slogan for Slovenia. Awesome.


On Michael's second Monday we day-tripped to Padova, less than an hour train ride from Venice. (Blog post still to come...)

Last Monday all five of us hired a car and drove to Lake Bled in Slovenia. A significantly bigger adventure.

Lets just say there was a desire from within the group to avoid the tolled highways; no maps; a GPS tom tom with dubious route-planning capabilities; and five adult-sized people in an undersized hire car. Instead of the three hours from Venice it should've taken, we were driving for almost seven hours. Seven hours of incredible winding and climbing into the mountains on an extremely narrow road. The scenery was AMAZING, it really was beautiful and dramatic, just not the best best circumstances to appreciate it.

A quick stop at the top a long ziggy zaggy climb in a mountain village just before the boarder.

This reminded Finn and I of the mountain villages in the Sierra Nevada in Spain. Just a little bit earlier in the season on this trip, so while the air felt cool and crisp, there were no icy puddles. There was a huge walnut tree though and we picked them off the ground to eat later at the lake. Fresh walnuts delicious, but no honey this time.

M and A let off some five-adults-stuck-in-a-small-car-for-hours steam.

We (Finn) really did just drive endlessly, on the wrong side of the car on the wrong side of the road. Finn's only previous experience of right-sided driving was one day five years ago on a scooter in Majorca, and then in LA on our way here. After Amy's graduation, when everyone else was far too drunk, he drove five, or possibly six of us to Fiona's house in wild west territory. Wild west as in the area in LA where they have built a permanent movie set town for shooting western films in. Coincidentally, Fiona has just taken over from Michael in our next door apartment. Anyway anyway, back to the Italy-Slovenia mountain crossing... The hills were covered in apple trees and there were apples falling all over the road. There would've been another great foraging haul if we'd been travelling at a more relaxed pace, and if there had been any safe stopping spots. Instead we kept on, marvelling out the windows, and wishing for a lake.


Eventually we made it to Bled, and it was straight into glamping mode.

Our glamping hut on a hill above the lake. (Hot tub at the back on the left.)
Finn could finally relax (with his new tabby friend) after far too long a drive.

Lake Bled. Surrounded by mountains and with a castle on the other side.

We three take a refreshing swim.
Actually it wasn't that cold, not the Adriatic that we're used to, but not bad at all once you're in.

Back to the huts to warm up.
The hot tubs weren't quite up to it yet unfortunately, but the showers were excellent.

The fire is stoked.

Time to eat. Having anticipated arriving in Bled by lunchtime, we had not packed a picnic, and the pasticceria we searched longingly out the window for never materialised... and breakfast had been early and brief before rushing to pick up the car at 8am. So by the time we'd arrived and had a swim, we were all starving. We set off around the lake to make up for our food losses with a giant early Slovenian dinner. With the essential precursor of chips and beer, of course.

The other side of the lake, with a view to the island with a church and two houses .

Boats. Lake. Island.

Slovenian dinner on the upstairs veranda.
Five happy tummies.

After dinner it was back to our hot hot tubs for a long long luxurious soak under the stars. Finn and Michael spotted satellites and shooting stars, and I saw lots and lots of stationary twinkling ones. It was super great.

The next day was another early start to get me back to the pavilion by midday. This time we purchased a ticket for the highways and plugged the fastest route possible into the tom tom. Finn drove almost the whole way at 130km/h and we would've been back in perfect time had we not stopped for too long in Trieste... Nevertheless, Svetislava eventually got some documents stamped at the Slovenian consulate there, and we eventually found delicious apple-filled pastine and strong coffee for breakfast, and in the end we weren't terribly late...
But my goodness, for me at least, there were some fairly stressed out and frustrated moments for what somehow was also a very wonderful one night holiday.



i feel sLOVEnia alright.

6 October 2011

11 year anniversary

Yes, we are married now and have a new anniversary to celebrate, but two celebrations is twice the fun, and twice as delicious. And while we're living in Venice - the most romantic city in the world some say - we would be crazy not to continue our September anniversary dinner tradition. So, making a selection from the cena per due section in our osteria guide book, we made a reservation at La Bitta, near San Banaba (over Academia way), for 9pm.

Celebrations started at home first of course, sharing a bottle of prosecco, a jar of anchovy wrapped capers, and a wedge of creamy brie with Michael and getting a run down of the days adventures. (Walking for miles, getting lost in the maze of tiny calle, finding amazing museums, learning a lesson about handling fruit and vegetables at the supermarket - familiar Venetian experiences.) Then it was time for we two to set off across Venice.

Dinner at La Bitta

We selected La Bitta on the grounds that, not only does it get great reviews for food - deliciously well handled locally selected produce - but also for its cosily romantic atmosphere, and of course it's achievable price bracket. It's a small osteria comprising two tiny dining rooms (the one facing the street also housing the bar) and a tiny enclosed courtyard at the back. While the evening wasn't as warm as we became accustomed to during July and August, it was perfectly mild and we were relieved (especially after our brisk walk there) not to be seated in one of the small, overly warm dining rooms.

La Bitta is a no seafood restaurant, a rare occurrence in Venice. As an island in a lagoon inhabited by seafaring people, 'traditional' Venetian cuisine prides itself on the bounty of the local waters. Going by what you see these days at the Rialto market (Italy must be credited for their origin labelling), most of these stocks (as with fisheries the world over) have been seriously depleted and seafood is being imported from far and wide. (Although just out our door the other morning we passed a man carrying a bucket full of cockles, presumably freshly gathered nearishby. And during the summer days we spent at the beach on Sant'Erasmo, we saw many people out in the shallows of the mud flats with nets and buckets, likely gathering shrimps.) Whether the falsity of Venetian seafood is a reason for it or not, there are a small number of local restaurants opting to steer clear, and La Bitta is one of them. Instead they focus on land-based specialities and look further out to the surrounding Veneto region for larger-species offerings. 

Our night's one page menu, presented one per table on a small stand, offered a brief but nice selection of vegetable, cheese, and meat options. We chose meat. Their roast Treviso pork had been one of the dishes singled out by our guide, and on our night it was served cold, sliced rice paper thin, with a creamy horseradish sauce. It was so so soft, so soft. For mains we shared a rabbit stew with lightly smashed herby potatoes, and veal braised with red and yellow capsicums served with soft soft polenta. Both were rich, very tasty dishes. The rabbit was succulent and smoky from its pancetta cooking companion. The veal could've done with slightly longer cooking to make it melt, but the flavouring with the sweet peppers was delicious. We had a nice, although not incredible, bottle of light (in both colour and flavour) chilled red wine (recommended by the very friendly waiter), and one of us made a toast which made the other one cry happy love tears, but we're not telling who was who or what was said, just that we had a very lovely evening together.

A man ready for some meaty action.

A pink pork cloud.

A satisfying pile of bunny bones on my plate.

The atmosphere at the restaurant was very relaxed, and the staff were friendly and helpful and in no hurry at all to rush us out, it felt like we could've sat there all night. Eventually we felt up to ordering a sweet, and chose a simple panna cotta drizzled with a lovely strong dark caramel, soft and delicious. Finn had a nicely perfumed moscatello grappa to finish, and it was well after midnight by the time we finally left. The Venice we walked home through was almost deserted and it seemed like we'd been in the last place left open, everywhere else was dark and shuttered closed, which was a bit of a surprise since the restaurant had still been maybe a quarter full when we left. It was nice though and we lingered more than usual - stopping on the Academia bridge to watch the lights of the buildings reflected in the grand canal, stopping in the piazzas to admire the incredible weight of the dimly lit marble church buildings.

A caramel cream delight.

A happy man.

Looking towards basilica di Santa Maria della Salute down the grand canal.

Happy times for a lucky pair.

1 October 2011