We left beautiful Cinque Terre in a cool pre-dawn. We boarded the commuter train, again at no cost, at 7:14 a.m. We made it La Spezia in time to catch the 8:06 to Pisa, where we caught yet another train to Florence, and then yet another to Venice, arriving at a respectable 12:30 p.m. We bought a 1-way water bus ticket, somehow found the right dock, and were soon on the Grand Canal. How exciting! We stopped at Ca' D'Oro, per the instructions given by the hotel. We found our street, Calle delle Vele, that had the look of a dingy, deserted alley. I've come to learn is not a sign of a bad neighborhood in Italy. When we buzzed to enter the hotel, Ca' le Vele, we weren't disappointed. We entered into a small, open courtyard, then up some red-carpeted stairs and into a charming interior. Our room, opened by a skeleton key, has cloth covered walls, red-orange with a gold pattern. The furniture is ivory with painted flowers and gold trim. It's lovely, with a window that opens into the courtyard. At the entry, the bathroom was on the left, and down the hall is the bedroom. I feel as though we are in a suite of sorts.
At the recommendation of Evan (eevan), our host, we went to a neighborhood pizzeria, La Perla. The list of pizzas was extensive, at least as long or longer than the list for Le Pioli, in Arlington, VA (for those of you who are familiar). We each ordered one, which might have been overkill. I had one with spinach and ricotta. Tenar had tomato and cheese. Our waitress was friendly and the wine good. After lunch, we took our city map, also complements of Evan, and headed for St. Mark's Square. This map had the same lilliputian sized printing that our Rome map had, so I was pretty much out of the running for finding our way. Guide books say to get lost, and we did that plenty, once ending up back on the main street near our hotel, in the opposite direction of St. Mark's. We finally happened upon the square because I could see the enormous white marble facade at the end of an alley. The plazza itself is enormous and was full of people. We went into St. Mark's upper level, walked out on the terrace, then went through the museum. I was particularly impressed with the mosaics. We were able to see them at a very close distance and they weren't beautiful. I stepped back, and they were amazing. Then we went down into the sanctuary. It is indeed a beautiful church.
After a long day, I was ready for some downtime. We left the plazza, made a few turns, and were back on the plazza. I decided we had to go east to get northwest, as going directly north hadn't worked. Even with reading glasses, none of the street names matched the streets we were seeing. We were in the Twilight Zone. I asked a shopkeeper where we were on the map and showed where we wanted to go. He pointed to our current location, then pointed us in the opposite direction of our goal. I knew enough to know he was wrong (or just plain mean?), so we went the opposite way that he said, and we did end up where we wanted to be, back at our hotel. Whew!
We spent a couple of hours catching up on journals and blogs, then went out to find a place for dinner. We found a lovely place one block over that was very busy, but they had one 2-person tiny table, so we were in. Tenar had small shrimps with polenta. The shrimp were extremely small a a little rubbery, a specialty of Venice. I had linguini with squid ink, a very black dish. It was good, and I soon became tired of it. I think it was the whole pizza a short 5 hours before, that shortened our interest in our meals. Or perhaps we're not rubbery shrimp and squid ink people. But we persevered and ate most of our meals. Then home to our venetian palace and bed.
