Venezia, Take 2

We woke up the next day and Geoff declared that it was Kate Day. Which meant that we could do whatever I wanted to do. Which meant we were going to spend all day in Venice.

After breakfast at the hotel (you know how I love those) we headed into Venice on the train. Our plan was to take the vaporetto (water taxi) from the train station all the way to Piazza San Marco, see it, deal with the tourists for 10 minutes and then get lost in the back streets and back canals. Which is exactly what we did.

Headed into work.


I like to pretend this is our house in Venice


Turning off the Grand Canal into a side "street".


An Italian business lunch.


Venetian parking


Someone's roof balcony


One of my most favorites shots from the whole trip


We looked for this restaurant that a colleague of mine, the wonderful David Cash (who knows many things about many things), recommended - Ristorante al Covo, which was supposed to be amazing. And we finally found it - after asking an Italian brick layer for directions, which he gave us entirely in Italian (and we followed fairly well - at least the first few steps). Unfortunately, we discovered it was closed that day. Sadness.


We did find an adorable little restaurant in a mini-piazza and we had the whole place to ourselves. We enjoyed a wonderful late outdoor lunch and took our time, which was lovely, since we'd had a long morning of picture taking.


Writing in my travel journal



Our waiter was impossibly cool and Italian.


After lunch we did a lot more wandering about and taking pictures.

Actual gondolier


Actual singing gondola ride.


Some locals having a beer


A mirrored window we found


A really cool place to live


We also enjoyed some gelato. This is my favorite picture of Geoff from the whole honeymoon. I think it just says it all. He's married, he has ice cream, he's happy.


We went on a gondola ride, even though it's RIDICULOUSLY expensive and only lasts 20 minutes...how can you not? When in Venice...

View from the gondola


Going under a bridge


That's the Rialto Bridge behind us. Famous for having stores along the bridge. Pretty cool, if slightly Times Squarish.


We had a hard time finding a place we were excited about for dinner, (we wanted outdoor seating, ambiance, reasonable prices and a water view that wasn't a tourist trap. hard-ish to find. at least in the part of town we were in) but ended up at this restuarant at the base of the Rialto Bridge. We had a late dinner and watched the sun set in the distance over the grand canal. Not too shabby.

Quarto d'Altina

We made it to our hotel just outside of Venice (having heard nightmare stories about people lugging suitcases into water taxi's and never actually being able to find their hotel in Venice) by about 5pm. Quarto d'Altina is about 20 minutes from Venice and our hotel was practically right on top of the train station so it was perfect. We decided to venture into Venice for dinner, even though we hadn't planned it (look at me, working outside of the plan - thinking outside of the box! see, i can be spontaneous sometimes!), and we had a drink at the hotel bar while we waited for the next train. They had these cute little pretzels at the bar in the shape of "B", which we liked.


The sun was so pretty at the train station so we took some photos and Geoff tried out the "video" option on my little digital camera he got me as a wedding present. (video to be posted shortly - we're having uploading issues)

We got into Venice and it was REALLY crowded. Like, Times Square crowded. SO much so we couldn't really fully enjoy it, since we didn't want to get lost and not be able to find the train station, so we didn't wade in too far, but we took a few pictures.



We had dinner at a little restaurant that turned out to be a tourist trap and the food wasn't very good, so we tried to find our way back to the train station, but realized we couldn't make it to the train in time for the next one and would have to wait it out an hour. Geoff was a bit disenchanted with Venice at this point, for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was the crowds and the bad food experience, and he was talking about not wanting to come back tomorrow. I couldn't have disagreed more, knowing that Venice had amazing things to offer, if we ventured beyond the tourist traps. And I'm glad to say, I was right....

The Pearl of the Lake

The day we left Lake Como and headed to Venice, we spent the morning in Bellagio before we left. Just a quick 15 minute ferry ride from Varenna, it's known as the "Pearl of the Lake" and is one of the more popular little towns on Lake Como. This was our first sunny day so far and the ferry ride alone was absolutely breathtaking.

Leaving Varenna behind...


Approaching Bellagio...


Bellagio was far less sleepy than Varenna and a bit fancier. This is the place were all the super expensive hotels are, but we didn't go hunting for those. We walked, took photos, poked in shops, and bought postcards. We stopped in one wine store for a tasting and they had the coolest machine there. We had to take a picture.


After about two hours, we were done with ritzy Bellagio. Well, that and our parking meter was up. But it certainly had it's fair share of charm....

The steep, cobblestone streets we'd already grown so fond of...


The cute old Italian couples...

A sun-drenched lunch...with with a nice dry white wine, of course.

And plenty of friends...



We will certainly miss Lago di Como. It has been such an amazing way to start our honeymoon and we'll never forget it. Hopefully we'll be back. Maybe I could call George Clooney's agent and see how he'd feel about a house swap.

Lago di Como

Despite the crazy roads that Nigel wanted to take us on (and the traffic around the base of the lake), we made it up to the sleepy little town of Varenna, which is a bit tucked away from the touristy parts of Lake Como, and hence - EXACTLY what we wanted for the first few days of our honeymoon. It was raining a little bit and cloudy and stayed that way both days we were there, which was also PERFECT. It made everything so sleepy and slow and romantic and made us feel like we could be just us.



We got to our hotel, Villa Cipressi (meaning Cyprus, as in the trees that were all over Italy) around 5pm and checked in and went up to our room. At first I was a little nervous, because we'd paid for a lake view, but we opened the door and the room was sparse and dark and the window seemed to look out on a brick wall. As I got closer I realized, of course, that there were shutters on the outside of the window, which were closed (hence the darkness). We opened the window and then the shutters and beheld the view in the bottom post. Except a little cloudier. Which was just as amazing. We rested in the room for a while with the windows open, looking out at that gorgeous lake and listening to the rain come down outside and just basically being in bliss. Pure bliss.


Then we went downstairs and had dinner at the hotel's restaurant and had an EXCELLENT bottle of red wine and a WONDERFUL meal. Maybe it was just the glow of the first real day of honeymoon, but we think it was one of the best meals of the whole trip. Top 5 for sure.


The next day we woke up late and missed breakfast at the hotel, which was a little dissappointing since 1) i love a free hotel breakfast and 2) i was looking forward to my first authentic Italian espresso. But we wandered about the little village looking for a place to have breakfast and instead found a yarn shop. It was right by our hotel and we popped in because my mom had mentioned she was going to knit us a blanket at some point and if we found any yarn in Italy we liked, she'd weave it in. Well, we went back and forth on color for AGES and the nice little lady in the store, who spoke no English, but we did pretty well understanding her, was so patient with us and SO sweet. We took a picture.


By this time it was after 12noon and we'd eaten nothing so we went into this little pizzeria and shared a greek salad (wrong somehow, but REALLY good feta) and a pizza. And then we popped into the tobacco shop on the corner (half bar, which in Italy means bar plus sandwiches plus ESPRESSO and half...bodega, for lack of a better word. You can buy tobacco, train tickets, film, etc) and had our first Italian espresso. LOVED it.



We spent the rest of the day wandering around taking photos of this little fishing village. We started in the historic gardens at the Villa Cipressi, which were gorgeous and the path led us down to this little boathouse that I loved.



Then we wandered the opposite way into town and loved all the steep side streets and brightly painted houses. You actually can't change the color of your house in Varenna without asking permission (we learned that from Rick Steves).




We loved the cobblestone streets and flowerboxes in every window (this is true of all of Italy, we'd come to find out - which I love. Makes me want some on our fire escape) and cool doors everywhere and shutters on every window.


Why don't Americans use shutters the same way Italians do? It's so romantic.



I just really loved these blue shutters. Can you tell? They are MY BLUE.


We had lunch at this cute little bar with outdoor seating where there were some very bold ducks and yummy sandwiches. And wine, of course. Two things that were required of virtually every lunch and dinner on our trip. Outdoor seating and wine. Yes please.

We went back to the hotel in the late afternoon to clean up and warm up before dinner and then we wandered around looking for a restaurant. We tried the Albergo Milano, which is supposed to have great food, but it was the one night of the week that they were closed. We wandered over by the ferry but weren't feeling it, so we ended up back at the same little bar/trattoria that we went to for lunch. We sat overlooking the harbor and it was pretty fantastic. It wasn't raining on the 2nd day here, but it was still overcast and cool and we watched the mist clear over the mountains across the lake. Gorgeous. Stunning. Amazing. Loving every second of it.