2023 Italy / Slovenia: Venice part 1

(see previous parts: part 0)

I’d booked us at the Hilton Garden Inn Venice Mestre.

Yes, that’s right… in one of the most romantic, most iconic cities in the world, we weren’t even staying in the fun part, and were in a chain hotel to boot. But before you get too out of sorts, consider that the stay was free (thanks to Hilton points) and that there’s a bus stop within about 25′ of the front door. At that stop, you can take a €1.50 bus ride for 10 minutes and be in Venice, or at the central station downtown, or at the airport, all of which we needed. Overall I was really pleased with the hotel, although it was absolutely jam-packed with tour and cruise-ship passengers. It was exactly what you’d expect from a Hilton property: clean, well-maintained, with decent amenities and a friendly, competent staff. We weren’t going to be there much anyway!

After dropping off our bags and a quick shower, we grabbed the bus to Venice and started, well, just wandering around. Let me stipulate once that it was super hot (88+ ºF) and very crowded the entire time we were in Venice. That way I don’t have to repeat it. Neither of us loves crowds, but that’s par for the course when traveling in Europe now. Anyway…

We didn’t have a real plan, so we just walked around. We managed to find some gelato for a mid-afternoon snack, as one does, and it was just as good as we both had imagined real Italian gelato would be. However, we had bigger plans for dinner– Erica had booked us a cichetti tour. If, like me, you have no idea what cichetti are, or is, or whatever: think “Italian tapas.”

The tour was superb. Our guide, Sylvia, was both a certified sommelier and an art historian; she moonlights as a tour guide. As we walked, she explained that Venetian nightlife centers around meeting your friends for small-plate snacking and drinking, in a sort of progressive-dinner style… thus the tour.

Each of the places we stopped had a different specialty. At the first stop, we were served small fried-tuna balls, fritto misto (mixed fried seafood), and squid cooked in squid ink (not a favorite for either of us.)

At other stops, we had baccalà (shown above– basically, dried fish which is then boiled to make a sort of cream and served on toast; I liked it, but Erica didn’t as much); a sort of Uncrustable-like sandwich whose name I forget, risotto, and the best tiramisu I’ve ever had in my whole life. The risotto and tiramisu were at a place called Sepa, where I would 100% return if I were to find myself in Venice again. Each place served us prosecco, wine, or some other kind of drink, too. Our tour group was mostly Americans, along with an Australian mother-and-daughter pair, but it was fun to see the varying levels of adventurousness as we tried different types of cichetti.

By the time we got done with the tour, it was twilight, we were jetlagged, and we were stuffed full of food, so we headed back to the hotel (again on the bus) and called it a night. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA NO. What we really did was take the bus to the airport to get Erica’s suitcase, an adventure in forced wakefulness and Italian standards of customer service that I won’t detail here to spare your delicate eyes, dear reader. Then we went back to the hotel to sleep.

The next morning we bolted down a quick hotel breakfast and grabbed the bus again for what would prove to be a super full day of sight seeing. The weather had changed a little overnight– it was overcast and occasionally raining, but we grabbed our rain jackets and headed to the bus stop anyway. This turned out to be a great decision, because the rain kept a lot of the tourists off the streets (at least at first).

We had a very pleasant time just walking around but the rain intensified. Coincidentally we were near Ca’ Rezzonico, billed as the only museum dedicated to 18th-century Venice, so we went in to tour. It was fabulous! Paintings by Tiepolo, Tintoretto, and more; amazing frescoes; statuary; sumptuous decorations; and lots more. I didn’t expect to enjoy it, or find it as educational, as I did, and it hadn’t even made our short list of must-do items. We wandered around until we had seen everything we wanted to, then headed over to St. Mark’s Square, where we had timed tickets for the bell tower and the basilica.

Pro tip: St. Mark’s is always going to be crowded. Just mentally prepare yourself. It didn’t help that there was construction all over the place, but that’s also part of the price to be borne for being able to see centuries-old monuments in situ; sometimes they need maintenance.

I didn’t take many pictures inside St. Mark’s proper, knowing that a cellphone camera wouldn’t do them justice. I did take several from the campanile and the balcony with the four horses, though.

Pro tip: 100% do not go to St. Mark’s unless you have bought tickets with the “skip the line” option, in advance. Don’t count on tickets being available same-day.

After St. Mark’s, we headed some distance away to have lunch. Erica had previously found recommendations for Osteria Alla Staffa, which was superb. The food was excellent and the service was warm, friendly, and fast. We chatted with a couple from LA who were in Venice as part of their honeymoon, and it was fun to compare notes. Then it was off to the Contarini del Bovolo (Italian for “snail”), where we had a 4pm ticket, for more unique views.

We hadn’t planned it in advance, but we decided to take a water taxi over to San Giorgio Maggiore. This requires us to go back through St. Mark’s, which was even more crowded than before lunch, then figure out which boat to take. Long story short, we took a bit of a detour to Giudecca before ending up at the desired spot. The views were very well worth it, though.

After another water taxi ride back to Venice proper, we stopped at a handy cafe for, you guessed it, more gelato. On the way back to the hotel, we decided to have a proper dinner, by which I mean “pizza,” during which we were serenaded by an honest-to-goodness accordionist. That was a first. The pizza was great though. Then we caught the bus back to the hotel to pack up and get ready for the next day’s trip to Ljubljana.