Italy 2021 part 1 (where are the cruise ships? we don’t care!)

I’ve been terrible about keeping my blog up to date. Fortunately I have notes from our previous trips and will be posting them over the coming weeks.

We were invited to join friends in Italy in early July 2021, just as travel restrictions were starting to ease up there. We left almost a week early to visit Venice for the first time…

Monday

We went to the airport earlier than usual because I had a work call that I couldn’t reschedule. Unfortunately, we were flying out of O’Hare’s Terminal 5, which has pretty much no private space. So I found a corner that was unpopulated and took my call.

In the meantime, our flight was getting delayed, and then delayed again. As a result, we were going to miss our connection in Amsterdam. Virginia was getting increasingly anxious about it until we realized we could rebook our connection for the following day. After all, that first day’s agenda was “crash”, followed by “work US hours.” So Virginia booked a room at the Hyatt Place Amsterdam Airport and we both started to relax.

The flight itself was fine and uneventful.

Tuesday

We arrived in Amsterdam and went immediately to the hotel. Thankfully, we could get into our room immediately. We could also book a second room so we each had a private workspace. All that taken care of, we got some much needed sleep.

We woke up in time to get lunch from downstairs, which exceeded our expectations on quality. We then both worked, with a dinner break from the downstairs restaurant, before crashing again. We ended up seeing nothing of Amsterdam itself, but that wasn’t in the plan anyway.

Wednesday 

We woke up early for our flight to Venice, one day later than expected. The flight was easy and we arrived with no problems. We took a pre-arranged (and expensive) water taxi to the apartment off Campo San Trovaso in the Dorsoduro, which took us through a stretch of the Canal Grande and was a wonderful introduction to Venice. Enrico, who worked for the rental company, showed us to the apartment, which was just right for our needs. Bedrooms were separated by the living/dining/kitchen space, with a rooftop deck to enjoy our mornings.

We dropped off our bags and walked out to lunch at Pizzeria OKE, enjoying eating outdoors by the water. We shared a carbonara pizza and insalata Capri before walking back and working for the rest of the day. Virginia had some time to pick up some provisions – pasta, pesto, sun dried tomatoes, cheese, wine – that easily came together for a late supper.

Thursday 

Ah, Venice! I headed out early and walked to pasticceria de Tonolo for pastries, then back to eat them with coffee on the terrace. The apartment had a Moka pot, which I hadn’t used before but (thanks to YouTube) quickly got going. We kept commenting on how quiet Venice was with no cars, and then could hear workers starting promptly at 9am.

After getting ourselves ready for the day, we walked up to lunch at Gam Gam at the entry to the Jewish quarter on the Cannaregio Canal. We shared sardines Venetian style before having mussaka and pasta diavola for our mains. Sadly, no wine because of upcoming work.

Fortunately, it was the last day we were working from Venice! Plus, Virginia had arranged a splurge on a private chef through the rental. It turned out that the chef came to you with all the ingredients and literally cooked in your kitchen. So around 5pm, we welcomed Anna in, and she was wonderful! She’s an expat from the UK who moved to Italy to learn all about Italian food and cooking. I had to go back to work but came out for a break to pulpo and pasta with more seafood. Anna gave us a lot of good intel about living in Venice (and laments on how open air markets aren’t nearly as prevalent as she’d hoped). We went back to work and she prepared two more courses — veal with lemon wine sauce, and panna cotta — to enjoy after work. We were extremely well taken care of!

Friday

Vacation at last! We started as we so often do, with bread and coffee. We wanted to keep it light because most of our day would be food-related.

First up was a food tour with Silvia. The only other guests were two men from SW Switzerland, so we spent time comparing notes on travel availability in COVID times. In between, so many goodies! We enjoyed a variety of cicchetti in two places, then risotto, then squid ink pasta and tomato pasta duo, before finishing with tiramisu. (Did I mention this tour took some four hours? We were so full!) We were also introduced to Select aperitivo, which for us hits the right balance between the sweetness of Aperol and the bitterness of Campari.

After bidding our tour companions goodbye, we walked around a shockingly empty Piazza San Marco before heading back to the apartment to rest and refresh.

We walked out again for dinner at Local, a restaurant Virginia had found during her planning. It was exquisite!

Saturday

The day started with pastries from Pasticceria Toletta and coffee. We were supposed to expect the garbage crew to come by (sanitation has to be tightly managed in Venice), but we never had anyone show up. So we went to lunch at Osteria alla Bifora in Campo Margherita. We sat outside for some great people watching while eating bresaola with cheese and salad with a glass of Valpolicella, while Virginia had squid in ink with polenta and a Soave.

While we were eating, we saw two young women walking and eating pizza, until a bird swooped down and took the pizza right out of one’s hand! Apparently the birds had gotten more aggressive because of the lack of tourism and outdoor life, so there was less to scavenge. The poor woman was semi-traumatized and kept peering around in case more birds were incoming.

After lunch, we walked back past our apartment and stopped for gelato at Gelateria Nico on the waterfront. It’s a must-do while walking around. We took our cups and walked along the lagoon to the very tip and back to the Salute vaporetto (water taxi) stop. We had previously purchased 24-hour unlimited ride passes on our phones, which was perfect for our purposes.

We took the vaporetto up the Canal Grande and around the north islands, which gave us a view of some places we didn’t have time to visit due to our work schedules. We finally hopped off around the Biennial Gardens around 5pm for a spritz and some water and people watching. There were maybe six to eight tables in a row, all looking out toward the canal. We all saw a cruise ship start to loom over the city in our view, which no one liked. One person next to us stood up, walked to the edge of the canal, and flipped off the cruise ship with both hands, to applause by the rest of us. Thankfully, that was the only one we saw and Venice banned them altogether a month later.

We resumed our vaporetto ride back toward the apartment. On the way back, we picked up cicchetti and wine from il Botegon o Cantine da Schiavi, which was all lovely. Unlike the locals, who hung out with each other and ate next to the canal, we took everything back to our apartment to enjoy on the rooftop. A wonderful day all around.

Sunday

We went for a final round of pastries from Pasticceria Toletta and enjoyed them on the rooftop. We then packed up and took one last walk around the Dorsoduro before locking up and taking the vaporetto over to the Ferrovia train station. We were a little confused about which train we had booked but were able to clear that up. So we picked up pressed sandwiches and wine at the shop and took that on the train to Rome.