elnap, I wondered when I read your report! I think Venice would have seemed even more surreal while jet lagged. :)

annhig, we pretty much ate cereal and toast with Nutella in the morning - didn't think about going to the bar for a cornetto! My loss. We got so spoiled with Gelateria del Teatro - anything over €3 would have felt like a ripoff, but paying $8.50 US for a little cup of ice cream that wasn't even that good? I felt like we got had. ;) Glad I'm not those German tourists, though!

PS - annhig, your sayiing "un etto" turns on a huge light bulb. I think that's what grumpy deli man was saying when I first said "un meta"!

Hi

I'm enjoying this even more, now that you're in Venice.The photos are great.

I hope you won't mind a wee comment on a couple of your photos. The church you have labelled "Santi Apostoli", is, I reckon, San Giocomo di Rialto. The clock faces on these churches are quite similar.

Oops, that should be "Giacomo"

Oh, thanks, Yvonne! I took a picture of the sign and it says San Giacomo Apostolo (so I would have been wrong anyway - not sure where I got Santi Apostoli!), but judging by Google I guess it's usually called what you said? I'll correct it.

No worries. Maybe you got to SS Apostoli, in Cannaregio, later on? Cheers.

annhig, we pretty much ate cereal and toast with Nutella in the morning - didn't think about going to the bar for a cornet! >>

oh no...i obviously wasn't that much help then. this is one of my and my family's favourite things to do in Italy. On out first stay in Rome, DS just loved going over to the cafe opposite our apartment and buying our breakfast - all without a word of italian. We were happy for him to do it too, as there were 89 steps back up to the apartment front door!.

seriously, my advice to all apartment dwellers [and those in hotels where breakfast is not included] is to find a nice little bar nearby, make sure that the coffee and pastries are to your liking, and adopt it as your breakfast venue. They will soon get to know you and greet you as you come in through the door. if they don't, find somewhere else!

ref the prosciutto, your poor deli counter man was trying to help you. if you'd wanted more, for example half a pound, you could have asked for "due etti" but that's quite a lot of prosciutto! better luck next time!

The deli man's general attitude was <i>not</i> one of helpfulness (from my first entrance into the deli area to the time I left - he looked like he'd rather be doing anything else other than slicing meat for people). But I'm sure he was trying to tell me what normal people do, and that certainly would have been helpful if I'd realized it. :)

Every morning we had somewhere to be at a specific time, especially that first day when we were still getting over jet lag and didn't know where we were going, so it was just easier to grab something and go. (We definitely enjoyed the cornetti in Venice and Lake Como, though!)

What a great trip you and M had! It makes for a delightful report too.

What lenses did you take?

Great report - we're planning a return trip for next spring!

suz, thanks! I'm already plotting a return. :)

Leely, I just took one lens, and best I can tell it's this one. I bought the whole setup from my brother when he upgraded, so I didn't do the research personally and don't know enough to compare one vs. another. But I've had this one for two years and have never felt a need for another one, for general amateur photos. I did have a polarizer on it most of the time.

http://www.amazon.com/Canon-17-85mm-.../dp/B0002Y5WXO

Hub always felt so bad that the "do not" signs are in English!

Sweet pix of the older couple.

Loving this report.

Still enjoying your adventures and your pictures.

I am enjoying your trip report so much! We are doing many of the same locations next April, also renting an apartment in Rome and staying at a B&B in Venice. Looking forward to reading the rest!

Thanks for taking the time to write this and share it!

Jen, your trip report is a fun read and provides good info for my up-coming trip to Italy this Fall. Also, your photos are great! Thanks for posting!

Thanks, y'all, and janetd, I'm so glad it's been helpful! I"ve had a "friend-family" emergency come up the last couple of days, but am hoping that tomorrow will be calm enough to edit some photos and write a bit more.

TDudette, I felt the same way your husband did - I couldn't help but notice that all those signs were often only in English! And that couple is still one of my favorite things that we saw. I still wonder whether they live in Venice, or visit there often - they looked too relaxed and at home for it to be their first trip.

<b>Day 7: Burano, Murano, and Squid (Saturday, May 14)</b>

Breakfast at Ai Tagliapietra doesn’t start till 8:30. Have I, a non-morning person, mentioned that I love it here? We each have a cornetto, a roll, and blood orange juice, with coffee for M and tea for me (he has tea!). Lorenzo offers us cereal and yogurt too.

M and I looked at the weather and, though we just got to Venice the night before, we figured that if we’re going to go to the outer islands, we should do so during today’s lovely weather rather than the heavy rain predicted tomorrow. Lorenzo tells us the best way to walk to the vaporetto stop on Fondamente Nuove to catch the FN line to Burano and Murano. We meander up there after breakfast, enjoying the quiet of Venice away from San Marco.

We head to Burano first, which is a pretty dang long ride. We get there and, in sort of a “well, what now?” fashion, just start walking. We get to a canal and head right, stopping at a shop where we met the one and only person we encountered who did not speak English. I’m assuming she was the owner of the shop and saw us looking at the scarves outside. She came over to help us decide, and we had a fun time trying to communicate that I wasn’t looking for a scarf for me, but for the redheaded friend keeping an eye on my house while I was gone!

A little more shopping, then we wandered toward the church and what I guess is the main part of the town. As a knitter, I was interested in the lace museum, but it was closed for renovations. Eventually we got hungry, but we weren’t in the mood for a restaurant meal. Honestly, I was in the mood for something... not Italian. So we stopped by a random pizza/sandwich shop near the main piazza and got sandwiches and chips. Yum. Burano was really fun to walk around - I liked the colorful houses and small-town-(albeit-packed-with-tourists-in-spots) vibe.

After lunch we headed to Murano, which honestly felt like a little bit of a disappointment after Burano. It was nice, but I just didn’t enjoy it as much. I was hoping to see some glass actually being blown, but we went in a couple of furnaces and it didn’t seem like that was an option. (I had a friend tell me later that usually the people at the furnace shops invite you back, but I didn’t realize how that worked - more failure in research on my part! - and none of the two or three we went in made any move to invite anyone in the shop back to the furnace.) We headed back to Venice around 4ish, nearly getting on the wrong vaporetto and heading back to Burano! I figured out we were on the wrong boat just in the nick of time. That would have been a loooong ride. Torcello was on my “maybe” list but we didn’t make it out there - next time!

We went back to the room to regroup for a bit, then headed to the Campanile, since if we were going to “climb” it, today was the day. The line was quite long, but they were still going to be open for awhile, so we went and got gelato and came back. The elevator ride to the top (climbing the stairs didn’t really seem to be an option) is &euro;8. We stayed up there for probably half an hour or so, looking all around at Venice in the late afternoon sun.

Saturday night and it’s time for dinner. Nono Risorto was on my List O’ Restaurants and sounded like a good place to try, so we headed that direction. After a few false starts, we found it. I really liked it - it felt like a local place, which seems like it would be tough to do in Venice! It was literally the only menu we saw in our wandering that did not have an English version. We figured this was a good sign, although it led to some adventurous food choices. The staff were polite, helpful and quite busy - we got there just after 7, I think, and didn’t have to wait, but by the time we left there was a line out the door.

We looked at the menu for awhile and decided to each get one of the two set menus they had that night. M’s, for &euro;15, had penne with pomodoro or bolognese as the primi, and bresaola as the main (though neither one of us had any idea what that was at this point). Mine, &euro;17, was a complete mystery - spaghetti “al Nono” (or something like that), and “seppie con polenta.” Well, I know “polenta,” at least. I asked the waitress if she knew what “seppie” was in English. “Cuttlefish!” “Hmm,” I think. “I’m pretty sure that’s British for squid. And I think that Venice is the place where you get that dish with the squid ink. Well, why not be adventurous and see what I get?”

M’s penne with pomodoro was good, and my spaghetti al Nono was quite good - turned out to be spaghetti with a tomato-y sauce (though I could taste some mussel broth or something along those lines in the sauce as well), with mussels lined up along the perimeter of the dish. Next up were the mains. M really enjoyed her bresaola. My seppie... well, it was definitely an adventure! My plate contained a side of white grilled polenta and a pile of black liquid with meaty chunks. Yep, this is it. The taste, especially for someone like me who’s not crazy about seafood, was okay - I ate about 2/3 of it. It was hard for me, a certified picky eater, to get past the black sauce, though! Once our dinners were done, I decided I was glad I’d tried it once, but I haven’t craved it now that I’m home or anything. A cultural experience!

More meandering back to the b&b and some relaxation before bed.

Pictures from today: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jenthom...7626886955694/

Glad you liked Al Nono Risorto. Congratulations on braving the seppie experiment. When I traveled with my young-adult niece to Venice, at one meal I ordered linguini alla seppie—replace the polenta in your dish with linguini. When my dish arrived, my niece who had patiently tried many new foods on this trip exclaimed, "I'm sorry, Aunt Ellenem, but it looks like they dropped your pasta in the dirt and put it on your plate." To each her own.

ellenem, I think your niece and I might be kindred spirits. :) It's so funny how differently foods are perceived. I posted an iPod photo of that dish on my Facebook page, and most of the comments were along the lines of "holy moley what IS that?? That looks digusting!" But I have two friends from northern Italy, and they both posted about how awesome the dish is and how one of them craves it as comfort food. (Meanwhile, of course, I'm from the South, where we traditionally eat all kinds of things...)

I must say, I would have to think long and hard before I tried the squid 'n ink!