krkapple

BridgetMc

When are you going to Venice?

krkapple

We were actually there last week.  It was so amazing--way better than I remembered from high school.  I so wish we were still there.  I miss my two hour lunches with wine and my afternoon spritz and gelato!

BridgetMc

Oh, I thought I saw someone mention that you were there last week, but you didn't say anything on your blog or FB so I thought it must be wrong.

What did you do?  What was your favorite site?  What was your favorite meal? 

Did you do the barhopping dinner thing (cichetti, or whatever)?  

I want to hear all about it! 

krkapple

Oh my gosh, we were all over.  I think my favorite was Chiesa Maria Frari.  It was such a gorgeous church.  We downloaded the Rick Steves audio tour, which was really fantastic.  I also really loved the Guggenheim.

 For meals, we ate really, really well.  For our anniversary, I didn't know where we were going (another surprise date!) and we ended up at the Met, which is at the Metropole hotel.  It was amazing.  We both had the traditional/modern tasting menu with wine.  Some course took one dish (sarde in saor for the appetizer) and presented it two ways--one traditional Venetian and one updated.  Other courses were modern takes on traditional dishes.  Amazing.  It was amazing.  

Our other fave was a place called beccafico.  Everything was so good.  We ate there twice, actually.  It was in a square three minuted from our hotel.  We had dinner there our first night and lunch there our last day.  I wish I could go back right now.

We did do cichetti our last night, though we only went one place.  We'd had a huge lunch at beccafico and didn't need too much to eat.  It was great.  I just told the bartender that we really didn't know what some of the things were but we'd eat anything and let him pick.  It was great.  We had fried sardines, squid, and calamari along with a baccala spread, marinated green beans and artichokes, olives, and several types of polpete.  It was a whole bunch of salty goodness.

What were some of your faves?

BridgetMc

That sounds awesome!  We were only in Venice for 2 days, so we didn't do as much as you.  I loved the Maria Frari church as well, and that was actually the first Rick Steves audiotour we did - although there were a lot more after that!

Some of the things in Venice that stood out to me as super cool:

• the Rick Steves audiotour of the valporetto ride down the Grand Canal
• the fish market, which we passed through way too quickly for my preference on our way to the train station on our last day in town
• the cichetti, although I wanted to try a bunch of different places, and of course I got a drink at eat one, so I ended up hungover the next day, which totally sucked. We generally just pointed to the weirdes stuff we could find on display and ate that.  I particularly remember the teeny octopi.
• We got lost (in Venice, shocking!) after dinner on our first night and ended up wandering into St. Mark's Square.  It was such a surprise to turn around and see the Duomo.
• Our hotel room window overlooked one of the canals, so we could lean out and watch the gondolas go by.
• The restaurant we wanted to go to the first night had a line to get in, and we ended up chatting with the people in front of us, from New Zealand.  When they got seated, they said they were a party of four and invited us to eat with them.  They were a lot of fun.
• The lunch I told you about in a blog comment
• One afternoon, we were killing some time, so we stopped for a (bad Italian) beer in a square.  It was cool watching kids play soccer, bouncing the ball around in a concrete square against what are surely 1000-year-old buildings.

Wow.  More Venice memories than I was expecting when I started thinking about it.  Since we were only there for a couple days and the city was so unique and interesting, we wanted to experience as much as possible while we were there, so mostly I remember rushing around trying to do everything, which doesn't sound fun, but it was. 

BridgetMc

krkapple:

For our anniversary, I didn't know where we were going (another surprise date!) and we ended up at the Met, which is at the Metropole hotel.  It was amazing.  We both had the traditional/modern tasting menu with wine.  Some course took one dish (sarde in saor for the appetizer) and presented it two ways--one traditional Venetian and one updated.  Other courses were modern takes on traditional dishes.  Amazing.  It was amazing. 

This sounds so much fun!  Yum.