Food

We had planned on going to Venice by train, but figured out it would cost around 120E and take 1.5hrs on the train, and driving would only take 2 hrs and not much in tolls. So driving it was.

We got to Tronchetto - the car park island on Venice around 11.30 and wanted to head straight to Burano to go to a little restaurant we had heard about that does a risotto nero.

So about 2 hours later we got to Burano, by ferrying, walking, more ferrying. Burano is famous for its lace, but a lot of it is now produced in China, so we didn’t get anything.

Lunch was at Da Romano, which specialised in seafood. We aren’t big seafood eaters, but had seen this black risotto on Anthony Bourdain’s “No Reservations”.

Unfortunately, it also was suffering the American tourist curse - it was ridiculous how many Americans were there. But lunch was still tasty.

We shared some salumi and then the risotto nero. It wasn’t too fishy, had a few little fish chunks in it, but was delicious.

It was also pretty hot so we were happy to spend an hour or two in some aircon. We headed back to the ferry for the 40 min trip back to Venice and we were on a mission - gondala riding!

We were pretty lucky. We spent most of our time in Venice on the back streets or on ferries, and the first gondalier we found was just emptying some passengers and he seemed quite friendly, so we jumped in.

I reckon he was the best gondalier in Venice - he sang, gave us a bit of history, took us to the Rialto bridge, took us to Marco Polo’s house, went under lots of bridges in back streets and was just a happy chap. We passed so many gondaliers that looked grouchy and upset so we were pretty happy to have got him.

After our ride was over we headed to a few of the places he had mentioned in his tour - the fish markets (In the movie The Tourist) and opposite it a rundown building used in a James Bond movie.

We walked around a few more backstreets and headed onto a few ferries to make our way back to the parking garage. By this time we had spent about 6 hours in Venice, which was a good time for us. 2 hour trip home, then out for a quick dinner.

We decided to go to Dal Bissanot again as we had a nice lunch there. It was pretty late - we got there just before 10 and they were busy as.

The lady remembered us from lunch before and laughed at me ordering the same thing - pasta with asparagus and ham, and Ben tried something new, tortolonni della casa - and we shared both of them. The main lady was really nice and friendly here.

Then it was back to the hotel to pack- tomorrow - Monaco!