10/17/18: Bologna

Got up early to get to the train to Bologna. Slipped through the streets with the ease of Ezio in Assassin's Creed 2, hopped onto the water bus, and showed up at the train station. Rode 1.5h to Bologna on a high speed train, the likes of which don't exist in America. Acela has nothing on this bad boy. 

The countryside is mostly flat and reminds me of the helicopter shots of any European bike race. The houses certainly look like people who were once ruled by Romans would live in, with plaster walls and tile roofs.

Upon arriving at the Bologna Centrale station, we dropped our bags off at the accommodating BnB and set off to tour and eat. Well, eat first then last. Lunch was randomly picked and adequate. 

We climbed one of the Two Towers and get some very nice aerial views of Bologna:

This is the medieval radial plan that supplanted the grid imposed by the Romans, with Renaissance architecture filtering in in bits and pieces. 

After the rousing climb up, we come down from 300ft and headed over to the walking tour. This was a fascinating mix of history, art, and engineering. As much as I bag on eurocentrism, what I learned was really fun. Probably the biggest two lessons:

- if there's one person who's really big in Italy, it's Jesus

- Bologna tried very hard to remain its own independent city state and succeeded for most of history

Well worth the 5 Euros it would have cost, if we hadn't plunked down for the blue all access Bologna Welcome card, which was 30 but makes a lot of things free. We'll be updating our savings tally tomorrow. 

Oh, we also ran into some local friends at the top of Asinelli tower. What a charmingly chance encounter. 

Navigating Venice by map

This is the map the hotel gave us:

It captures pretty much every walkable path in the city. And since there are no cars or bikes, that means pretty much everywhere you can go. Like all good design, the map's features emphasize important details like which waterbus lines pick up at which stations, and minimize unimportant ones. 

Sure, you have your choice of being a sucker tourist by consulting your GPS every minute or looking at your paper map, but at least the map works a different part of your brain. 

We were able to walk most of the city north to south at night using the map. The city helpfully cooperates by posting up street and square names on most corners, like so:

Between these signs announcing the area you're stepping into and the extremely regular density of walkable paths, the walking experience quite felt like a video game. Taking the wrong path and stumbling into some steps descending into the canal, with no getaway gondola waiting for you -- you only have your poor map-reading skills to blame. 

10/16/18: Venice day 2

We made a reservation yesterday to eat at Venissa, a Michelin-starred restored restaurant on the nearby island of Burano. Ok, not the restaurant with the actual star, but the adjoining osteria, which is actually open today. Some had said to go to Murano, but our concierge Andrea made it pretty clear in this markup of our map:

He panned Murano as a whole island of tourist trap shops. So we were bent on spending the bulk of our day in Burano to complement the lunch. 

We got up fairly early and ate a pretty good breakfast in the hotel. The charcuterie spread was solid, as were the croissant options. Could have paid for worse outside. 

Took a fast walk through various narrow Venetian neighborhoods. 

And took the ferry to Burano. It was a relaxed 40 min out. Burano's sleepy townhouses and farmland were, in a word, bucolic. There were few tourist knocking around, and with no cars, few boats, and little wind, the streets of Burano were very quiet. It was an extremely relaxed atmosphere. 

That last pic is of a church bell tower from the 14th century looking out over Venissa was private vineyard, the only one growing Dorona golden grapes. And for 25 Euros, you can have a glass. Which we did, at the osteria. 

I thought the dishes were nicely refined and had some new flavors mixed in with classics. We got as much seafood (in honor of Venice) as we could. The amberjack dishes showed a mastery of preparing fish. The pasta and pagu was possibly the best I've ever had.  The Dorana wine, not as much of a hit with Muslimah. 

It was about 2:30, and we wanted to see if we could use our 24h tickets for this special Burano route, even though we paid explicitly for that fare. We could, so we know we could go to Murano and then go back to Venice without paying more. So we went to Murano after all. It was more touristy than Burano as expected, but at least it's claim to fame, glasswork, was quite varied across all the stops we saw, instead of every kiosk having the same trite inventory. 

For dinner, we took a water bus back into the Jewish Ghetto part of Venice's Cannaregio district. This dates back to the 1530s, easily several decades before Shakespeare penned his play. Ghetto of course did not refer to poverty back then, and except for seeing the occasional Orthodox Jew and some Hebrew signage, the Ghetto looked like the rest of Venice. 

We dined in the Ghetto, at Gam Gam, a kosher Italian Jewish restaurant. The entrees were decent, but the appetizers were real stars. Eggplant 4 ways (jazzed up as Ghetto Style on the menu -- groan) was great in each way: grilled, cubed and roasted, sliced and in olive oil, and babaganoush. The hummus with chopped beef was hearty. Using the fat pita as a conveyance, I was reminded of beef stroganoff. 

After dinner, we hoofed it all the way back to the hotel. Muslimah got a "spritz" mixed drink, which was not all that. 

10/15/18: Venice

After just some brief sleep on the plane, we were up and at em, stepping off the plane at 11am local time. The customs procedure seems a little permissive, with me not asked anything except for getting a picture taken.

We took a long but meaningfully scenic water bus ride around Venice, digesting the scenery and style. 

We spent a good 15 min getting prepped for our dog by the concierge, which made our first day pretty packed. 

Lunch was a long walk down to Al Bottegon, a cicchetti spot away from the main tourist trap strip in San Marco's "Las Vegas" district right around the hotel. Andrea the concierge turns his nose up at generic Italian cuisine meant to placate the tourists -- pizza, carbonara, bolognese. These out of town dishes didn't reflect his Venezia. But Al Bottegon did. We piled on the various fish paste on bread bites and got a feel for Venetian seafood tastes. 

We then walked and water bussed up north into the San Marcuola area. First was another cicchetti joint that had some excellent fundamentals despite the cousin of The Situation behind the counter and the ambiance music being a mid-career Tupac record.

We walked a few blocks over to Paradiso Perduto for dinner proper. Our appetizer was as expanded form of the Saor bites we'd already tried, with superb polenta. 

 

But the main courses, a seafood mix stew and pasta, were disappointing. The pasta had a king crab shell in it, which wasn't warned by the server. The pasta was great, but the meats were only so-so. 

Walking around without mobs of tourists everywhere lent Venice a relaxed and civil atmosphere. It was great to see gondolas cruising down the charming canals with stereotypical Italian architecture all around.