Day 3: Venice to the Cinque Terre

On our third day in Italy, we woke up early at 6:00 am. We were a little overzealous, as we knew we had to walk to the train station to catch our 8:30 am train.  Although we knew which way we intended to go, by now we knew better that it doesn't always work out that way in Venice.  So we wanted to leave ample time in case we got lost once again. We went downstairs to check out, which ended up being a fairly lengthy process.  As I have mentioned in this previous post, I had verified with the owners that I could pay in Traveler's Cheques in American dollars.  Although these are not commonly used anymore (and almost impossible to use in many places), several private B & B's such as this still take them, since they have a cash-only policy due to high costs of accepting credit cards.  Since we were staying in many places such as this on our vacation, we got traveler's cheques to lessen the amount of actual cold, hard cash we had to carry. Although the owner had pre-approved this- and of course he was not here- the man on duty seemed extremely confused by this.  He made several calls (at 7:00 am) to the owner because he was not sure of the procedure or how to handle the exchange rate between dollars and euros.  After about 20 minutes of figuring this out, we were on our way toward the Santa Lucia train station with only one wrong turn. We even stopped by a small bakery in an alley and picked up two pastries to go for only €2.40. 

At least the cappuccino was pretty...

We arrived with plenty of time to spare so we decided to stop by a small coffee shop next door- just at the stairs of the Scalzi Bridge. It is called Bar Olimpia.  See the full review here. Never. Go. There.  We got suckered into this high-tourist trap since it was so conveniently located next to the train station. Sam ordered a cappuccino, and I ordered a small bottle of Coca Cola Light.  We sat down and relaxed as we waited for boarding time.  When our bill came we were in shock!  His cappuccino was €3 and my soda was €6!!!  Those are insane prices, and I don't think I will ever forget my diet coke that cost me about 8 bucks!  We grudgingly paid and left, griping all the way back to the station.  Lesson learned!  


We still had quite a bit of time, so we sat on the train station steps and watched the world go by...brave squatters sleeping on camping mats on the station steps, vaporetto buses carrying the rush hour load, and travelers entering the city for the very first time.  Here are a few more Venice pictures before we depart: 

Gondoliers..we only watched.  They are quite expensive! 

The fresh produce boat outside our hotel. 

Musicians who were playing songs from the "Pulp Fiction" soundtrack in front of a church????

A boat full of wine! 

Leslie boarding the train.

We then easily boarded the train and found our seats.  The trains are very well-kept and super easy to figure out.  Actually, the train travel ended up being a very enjoyable part of our trip.  With no security lines and easy do-it-yourself machines to buy your tickets, it is fairly hassle-free. Just don't forget to validate your ticket (time stamp it) in one of the small yellow or gray and green machines on the platform before you board!  Trenitalia employees came through and checked our tickets for validation on every single train we rode.  If you do not, there are hefty fines.  Luggage is stowed overhead or behind your seat and the seats are fairly roomy- about double the size of an airline seat.  Most newer trains have a table in front of you as well.  Once you are moving (and they go pretty quick!), you can simply enjoy the scenery, read a book, or chit chat with those around you.  In fact, we met so many different people from all over the world during our many train rides! On this trip, we met a woman from North Carolina who used to live in Italy.  She gave us several useful tips about the culture of the country. This particular train ride was our longest, as we were headed to the opposite coast- from the Adriatic Sea to the Ligurian Sea. Our route included two legs that totaled about 6 hours- from Venice to Milan and from Milan to Monterosso al Mare.

During the second leg of our trip, we were in a small cabin with four others- a young couple from Canada who were traveling Europe for the summer, as well as a couple vacationing from Switzerland.  We had nice casual conversation. Sam and I lunched on a mozzarella and tomato sandwich that we bought at the Milan train station.  We both read books on our iphones and soaked in the scenery of the mountains of northern Italy. Once we rolled into Genoa (Genova) and along the Ligurian coast, it was simply breath-taking landscape!  Here is a taste of what was to come...

Monterosso al Mare is the northern most town in a series of five (Cinque) small towns (Terre) clustered along the Ligurian Sea and within walking distance of one another.  The Cinque Terre is absolutely beautiful!  Monterosso is probably one of the most popular and touristy towns because it is the only town that has an accessible  beach.  The other towns (going from north to south)- Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola, and Riomaggiore-

La Spiaggia Hotel

The private hotel we stayed at in Monterosso al Mare was La Spiaggia, meaning "The Beach" in Italian.  This is because the hotel sits directly on the beach, literally 12 feet from the sand, 10 feet from a gelateria, 10 feet from a bar/restaurant, 10 feet from an Enoteca, or wine store, and about 40 feet from the local grocery store. What more could you need?!  In addition, our second floor room had a balcony facing the sea.  See the review here.  I must say, this hotel had by far the BEST service of any place we stayed.  They were more than accommodating. Both Ella and Andrea, the owner, made you feel right at home.

Our room at La Spiaggia

The bathroom at La Spiaggia

Our balcony overlooking the beach 

Check out this video featuring the view from our hotel:

This hotel, like others, was very energy-efficient.  In order to turn on the lights or use any electricity, you have to place your key card into this holder.  Therefore, you cannot leave with the air or lights on.

We decided to walk ten minutes along the coast to old town Monterosso.  The old town is just charming- definitely a small village feel!  There are less tourists on this side of town, winding small streets and locals selling their wares.  We stumbled upon Ciak, a restaurant.  I recognized it from the reviews, and we thought we would give it a try. We sat outside in a small, shaded alley amidst the locals.  I had the BEST salad I have ever eaten.... with fresh mozzarella, corn, lettuce, tomato, onion, and carrot. (By the way- the only salad dressings available in Italy are olive oil and vinegar.) Sorry- no ranch here! The salad was perfect! It was the freshest salad I have ever had, and I remember thinking that even the lettuce tastes better in Italy! Sam had the bruschetta Romana with anchovies.  Both were excellent and the cold beer hit the spot on a hot day in July! When we were done, the waiter offered us complimentary shots of Lemoncino and shared the history of the restaurant with us- as well as gave us the honest low down on Italian tipping. See the review here. 

Lemoncino is liquor made from fresh lemons from the CT.  It is VERY sweet and VERY strong! 

Tipping in Italy is a bit more complicated than here.  First of all, servers do make more there than they do in the states.  Several "upscale" or touristy restaurants include a "cupertino" (cover charge for the extras such as water and bread) or "servizio" (tip) in your total bill.  Do not feel as if you have to tip beyond this.  However, if your service was outstanding (and it was at Ciak!), then you may leave a tip if they went above and beyond. 

Walking in old town Monterosso 

Wonderful lemons are produced here! 

After dinner we strolled through old town and visited several shops and Sam even bought some of his own lemoncino. Later he admitted he was still a bit toasty from the shot of the lemoncino at dinner, otherwise he probably would not have bought more! It was a bit too strong and sweet for us.  We couldn't even bring it back to the U.S. since we only brought carry-on's.  We ended up leaving it unopened in our room in Tuscany for some lucky travelers. 

 We then walked along the beach, dipped our toes in the water, and hit the local grocery to stock up on snacks and cheap beverages.  We bought more water, 2 small cans of coca cola light, several cans of Peroni beer, a bottle of wine, some local cheese, meat, crackers, and bread. We then took it back to our hotel, and enjoyed the drinks from our balcony with a great view!  We picnicked on the balcony and ate the cheese, meat, and crackers as a late night snack. Thank goodness for that multi-tool we bought in Venice! 

Later we chose to grab some gelato from the place literally at our hotel's doorstep, Gelateria Produzione Propria.  Horrible.  I had the hazelnut and Sam had the mora, or blackberry. I do not recommend it. The girl behind the counter could not be more rude and inconvenienced. See the review here.  The gelato was not anything to rave about- so much so that it left Sam so dissatisfied that we walked down to another gelato place (Once again...do not judge.) and tried new cones from the place down the street, which was much better.  We continued to sit outside on our balcony and people watch.  Here are some of the views of Monterosso:

We decided to go to bed at about 10:30 pm.  I had just started to fall asleep when...  along came the marching band!  What?  A marching band at 10:30 pm you say?  Yes.  At 11:00 pm on a Tuesday night.  What was the occasion?  I have no idea, but apparently this was not unusual.  They stopped directly below our balcony and almost serenaded us while a crowd gathered.  Check it out in this video: 

 Although fun, new town can be pretty loud at night.  Since we slept with our window open (no air-conditioning), it got quite noisy.  There were people drinking at the bars and restaurants below, and it was quite difficult for me to sleep.  I would guess that we had about two good hours of quiet between 3:00 am and 5:00 am before the street crews came in to empty the garbage and clean up the litter (Litter is much more prominent in Italy than that states.) and the construction crews started to arrive to work on rebuilding the parking lot across the street quite early as well. (The Cinque Terre was hit by torrential flooding and mudslides last fall.  They should be commended on their brilliant recovery! Check out Rebuild Monterosso for more details.) 

Day 2: Venice

Typical Italian breakfast

On the second day of our vacation, we slept in until about 8:00 am and then went to breakfast in the back garden of our hotel, Casa Rezzonico.  For those of you who may not know, Italian breakfast is nothing like American breakfast.  Rather than eggs and bacon, it is much lighter fare such as yogurt, croissants, fruit, prosciutto and cheese, or pastries. 

One view of the back garden at Casa Rezzonico

When reading some reviews online, we realized that the church or "library" from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade took place at San Barnabas Church.  According to the map, the church should be right around the corner....  so after breakfast we took off in search of the famous church where one of our favorite old-school movies took place.  We managed to get all turned around...big surprise! We could not figure out where in the world this church could possibly be...  We broke out the map and tried our best to re-navigate toward San Barnabas.  Eventually we ended up circling around and found Campo San Barnabas....RIGHT next door to our hotel, but in the opposite direction than we originally headed.  Ooops.  It is even funnier that we had walked through this campo at least six times already and by this church several times, but I guess we never took a good, hard look at it straight on (we were almost always walking into the square from behind it...) , and once we looked at it in a new light, we realized that this was the church from the movie!  We laughed so hard that we had totally missed this detail every time we saw it before and that we had just spent over an hour tracking down a church that was 100 meters (Like that metric touch?)  from our hotel! It was open so we entered the church, but it is now used to display an art exhibit on Leonardo Da Vinci.  Very interesting to me, but there was a hefty price tag to enter, so we chose not to.  Cool connection though!   

Where "X" marks the spot in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade...

Typical narrow walkway in Venice

Speaking of wrong turns, this may a good time to discuss navigation within the island of historic Venice.  First of all, let me say that maps should only be used "loosely" in Italy- especially Venice.  Venice is comprised of one main Grand Canal and several smaller offshoots-smaller canals. These are the main thoroughfares.  If you are not on a boat, you need to take to the walkways of Venice.  There are no typical streets or cars or land buses on the island.  These narrow alleys wind all over Venice- around buildings, around water, around anything.  None of them are straight.  Many of them are not even marked.  On a map, it may appear that you come to a crossroads where you can either go right or left, but when you get to that actual crossroads, it is more like your choices are to continue straight or veer to the right.  So we just learned that you have to just choose one.  You will most likely be faced with this decision about 30 times in a typical walk which leaves a lot of room for error.  To complicate things, you can usually not get a bearing of where you are located based on landmarks (if you are unfamiliar with the area as we were), because you are sandwiched between tall buildings and cannot really see out in the area around you.  8 times out of 10, you will "choose poorly" (Get it??) and end up on a completely different part of the island than you originally intended. However, the good news is that you are on a small island.  You can only go so far. We quickly learned to take this lightly and just enjoy getting lost and finding our way back.  It became a sort of an adventure.  We felt very safe in Venice everywhere we went- even in the back alleys as long as we were together.  However, as a single female, I would not be caught in these skinny walkways alone at night.  

Our next step was purchasing a day (12 hour) pass for the vaporetto, or water bus.  In hindsight, we wish we had purchased the three day pas to begin with, as then we could have just hopped on and off the vaporetto to get here or there without getting so lost. It is good to know that there are no direct walkaways immediately adjacent or following the Grand Canal.  You will have to enter the maze that is Venice and it will take a lot longer than you think.  Also, there are only four bridges that cross the main canal so you have to find your way to the next closest bridge to cross- if you can find it... This is where vaporetto pass comes in handy. No matter where you are, you can almost always find a stop along the Grand Canal. Let me add that the vaporetto can be quite pricey, but it is very worthwhile if your time is limited in anyway or if you want to venture out from the main island at all. A single-use vaporetto pass- good for 90 minutes or one trip- is  €7.  However, if you plan to be around and sight-see for at least one day, I recommend that you buy a pass, saving you a chunk of money and time.  See this sight for a list of the current prices, which by the way were raised the very day we arrived in Venice...go figure! We wanted to have free reign of the island that day and even leave the main island, so we each bought a 12 hour unlimited pass for  €12 each. 


Watch this great video of our ride along the Grand Canal from the vaporetto bus... 

We hopped on the vaporetto and headed for St. Mark's Square once more.  There Sam found his hat.  And it was another perfect picture opportunity. 

Next we jumped a vaporetto to the island of Murano- a smaller island of Venice.  There are several, but Murano is well-known for its Venetian glass.  We decided to see some glass-blowing in action.  It was a fun 25 minute boat ride out there for a fairly short (and HOT) glass blowing demonstration, but it was something different to do.

Venetian Glass Blowing Demonstration

Sam enjoying Murano

Church of Santa Maria e Donato

The island of Murano was small and somewhat uneventful, but did we take a stroll into the Church of Santa Maria e Donato. With that, we decided to head back to the historic district, find our way back to the hotel and find some grub. 

More Murano

Next we took the vaporetto back to the Ferrovia stop by the Saint Lucia train station. We stopped in and bought our train tickets for the following day to Monterosso al Mare.  This was our first time using the self-service machines, but were glad to discover that it is pretty easy (as long as you find one in working order) and they take American credit (non chip and pin) cards just fine.  For more info on how to do this, I found this site particularly helpful.  After buying our train tickets for the next day, we ventured towards home and stopped at a Snack Bar.  Unfortunately, I did not write down the cross street, but it was somewhere on the corner of Calle de Mezzo near San Polo.  There are several restaurants called "Snack Bar" throughout all Italian cities, and most of them I would not recommend, but this one was OK. There are the type of places that several pre-made sandwiches, pizza, and pasta. You pick out what you want and then reheat it for you.  We chose to sit and relax, while others get it to go.  This one was quite nice. Sam chose to get a ricotta and spinach cannelloni, while I chose just a simple pasta pomodoro (with tomato sauce). 

It was at this restaurant that we found ourselves in a conversation with other Americans- truck drivers in town from Georgia.  They had just come from Milan.  They had a bit too much to drink and invited us to tag along with them to St. Mark's Square. Although we were honored by their invitation, we politely declined and continued on our way to our hotel. Or so we thought...  We stopped by a second snack bar along the way for some very mediocre gelato.  Sam got banana. I had chocolate. We ended up getting completely lost once again- ended up somewhere in the area known as San Polo.  Here we found our very first grocery market.  We were in love!  In Italy there is almost a complete absence of any commercialism-no Home Depot, no Wal-Mart, no large grocery chains, and we only saw one ritzy McDonald's and a Burger King awkwardly crammed into some historical buildings all throughout Italy.  It felt so good not to have to rely on these franchises and just get back to basics.  This was just a family-owned market, stocked with the freshest ingredients.  We wandered through the store and bought a couple huge 1.5 liter bottles of water.  (We were seriously dehydrated.) We explored the market and bought some random items to snack on during our train trip in the morning.  We were amazed by this boxed wine that looked like a giant juice box, so we had to buy it.  And note this boxed wine only cost €3 (not €10)!

Check out the price for THREE balls of fresh mozzarella!  Outstanding! 

I think Sam's favorite part of the whole trip were the grocery stores! 

We headed home and took a one hour break in the blessed air-conditioning of our hotel room. Then we sat on the back patio of the hotel and drank some wine in the nice, cool shade. It was so hot, so Sam was desperate to find a linen shirt.  The guy at the front desk of our hotel recommended a department store near the Rialto.  The store is called "COIN". We thought we would check it out after our visit to the Rialto Bridge.

Before we embarked for the Rialto, we were really in need of our own multi-tool/pocket knife.  We figured the corkscrew would be handy for opening wine and the knife could be used to cut bread and cheese when we snacked.  We found a tiny hole-in-the-wall hardware store just by our hotel in Campo Santa Margherita and bought one after much sign language due to an obvious lack in communication. It was an awesome cultural experience!

The Rialto Bridge

The Accademia Bridge

We took the vaporetto (using our 12 hour pass) to the Rialto stop, wandered along the insanely-packed shops of the bridge where I bought my one and only souvenir- a beautiful blue and white beaded bracelet.  We then continued around the corner into a very ritzy shopping area (totally NOT us), but we eventually found COIN.  They had a couple linen shirts, but as I suspected they were way more than we are used to spending on clothing, so we opted out.  Sam was disappointed, but now had made it his mission to find a linen shirt sometime on vacation.  While we circled stores on this quest we somehow ended all the way back at St.Mark's Square again- funny how this happens! We then walked back to the Accademia Bridge. From here, we hopped on the vaporetto down to the Ferrovia stop near the mouth of the "fish" (Look at a map of Venice here.)  We crossed the Scalzi bridge and immediately came across Bar Pizzeria Vittoria.  We had passed it a couple times prior and it just looked inviting so we thought we would give it a try. It has nice sturdy wooden booths outside.  We sat, each order a glass of wine and split a margherita pizza. The food and service were both fine- nothing spectacular, but definitely not bad.  See the full review here.  

Bar Pizzeria Vittoria

Margherita Pizza

We then hopped back on the vaporetto (Thank goodness for that day pass!) and rode it all the way down the canal, awaiting sunset!  We eventually circled back to our stop.  We once again (don't judge) grabbed a gelato at Il Doge- Sam had the Italian wedding cake, and I had the Crema, similar to a custard flavor. I just found this awesome website that decodes Italian gelato flavors!  If only I had read this before we left!  We were always just guessing...  

Finally back at our hotel, we indulged in our € 3 wine in a juice box, and it was much better than the selection from the night before!  

Tune in tomorrow for more adventures when we take one last look at Venice and then head for the beach! 

Day 1: Venice

I made it a point to try and document our comings and goings in Italy as much as possible.  I kept a daily journal. My hope is to take my chicken scratch and blog about our adventures. My reasons for this are three-fold. 
1) We didn't want to forget about all the wonderful memories- especially the small details.  
2) I know some of you- our family and friends- may be genuinely interested in our experience.  Hopefully this blog will give you a taste of what we experienced each day.  I plan to include pictures, videos, and links to reviews. 
3) Some of you may be first-time travelers yourselves and may be looking for someone's brutal honesty about navigating in a foreign country. If you are a seasoned traveler, please excuse my naivete in some respects, but I am hoping that my experiences- no matter how trivial- may help someone else feel more confident while traveling abroad. 
So I hope to write about each of the days we traveled in Italy.  Check back daily to read about the next big adventure!  


Day 1: Venice
By the time we arrived in Italy, Sam and I had spent more than 36 hours awake! We had a three hour car trip to Chicago O'Hare.  Thanks to Sam's mom who drove us up there, but not without a couple close calls! After security and the notorious wait to board the plane, we took off for London Heathrow!  Needless to say, we were excited, as this was our first trip abroad.  Our long flight on the 777 departed at 6 pm and we were so hoping we would sleep on the plane so we could arrive fresh and ready to go once we arrived in Italy.. wishful thinking. Of course airplanes are never comfortable and 8 hours on one is challenging.  However, I must say that the flight did go by fairly quickly thanks to the unlimited free movies and TV shows.  We each managed to watch 2 movies, and I threw in an episode of "The Office" and "New Girl" to boot (pun intended)! 


The service on both British Airlines flights was wonderful.  The attendants were very polite and accommodating.  I am not sure if it is specific to this company, but we received a full meal and drink service, including alcohol- if we desired- in flight.  I chose the garden salad, pasta, and cheesecake, while Sam had chicken curry with rice, salad, and cheesecake.  Not too shabby!  We both accompanied our meal with a glass of wine. 

 It was strange to be treated to this wonderful dinner, watch a few movies in the dark, and then suddenly have the lights flipped on and promptly served breakfast to accommodate for the seven hour time change. 


When we arrived in London, I must say that I felt that the airport there was a bit hodge-podge and somewhat disorganized.  However, there seemed to be airport employees strategically planted all over the airport, directing us this way and that.  


The flight from London to Venice was seemingly short compared to the first- maybe two hours.  I actually slept for a lot of it (finally), but Sam only slept for about 20 minutes.  I woke just in time to see some breath-taking views of the Swiss Alps out my window!  Amazing!


Upon our arrival at Aeroporto Marco Polo in Venice at 11 am, there was no need to retrieve baggage, as we both packed carry-on's only for our two-week stay.  I will post later about what and how we packed, as well as recommended or not-needed items. 

This is one of the convertible carry-on bag/backpacks that we carried. 

We immediately went down and bought a one-time combo pass for land and vaporetto, good for 90 minutes. This pass got us on the bus leaving the airport on the mainland to Piazzale Roma and then we hopped on the Vaporetto (water bus) to get us to the nearest point to our hotel. This combo ticket cost us €12 each. 

We boarded the #1 Line, which slowly inches its away down the grand canal from Piazzale Roma to the other end at St. Mark's Square, stopping at practically every stop along the way.  (By the way, the #1 Line goes in both directions.) This was a wonderful introduction to Venice, as we were lucky enough to get seats out back and it was a perfect picture-taking opportunity! We were able to slowly absorb it and take in Venice piece-by-piece... 

We exited at our stop and after only one wrong turn, we ventured only a few blocks away to find our hotel, Casa Rezzonico.  Please read here for a more detailed review. Our room faced the San Barnaba Canal and the view was very scenic- almost straight out of a movie! Although we were very tired, we decided that since we were here, we needed to get out and see a few things...and eat. 

Our room at Casa Rezzonico

The Key to our room 

View of the San Barnaba Canal from our room 

We immediately ventured over the San Barnaba Canal and into the Campo Santa Margherita.  At 1:30 pm, the campo (square) was not that active, but a few restaurants were open here and there. We opted to eat our first meal at Pizza Pier Dickens, recommended to me by my Aunt Nancy.  See the more detailed review here. We sat outside on the covered patio, ordered water and a Coca Cola Light- no Diet Coke here!  We opted to split some stuffed green olives (not my favorite) and a simple, but delicious margherita pizza.  The pizza was sensational!  It was so simple, yet perfect!  We both still agree that this was by far the best pizza we had anywhere in Italy (and that is saying something, because we had a LOT of pizza).  This particular pizza even inspired us to try to replicate at home...eventually. We need a pizza detox first. Both the service and the price were reasonable. 

We then stopped for gelato at Il Doge- again in Campo Santa Margherita- and a bit too convenient to our hotel.  I selected some sort of Italian Wedding Cake flavor (I think...it was in Italian, but this is the only way I could describe it.) and Sam tried the amaretto and dark cherry.  YUM!  Very good choice for our first gelato experience! See the official review here.

We then meandered through the maze of tiny walkways of Venice in search of the St. Mark's Square.  We amazingly found our way there and back with no big issues!  (Tomorrow I will write more about navigating Venice...) Sam was taken back by the enormity and beauty of the area, but especially liked the Campanile, or bell tower. 

St. Mark's Square

Leslie in front of St. Mark's Basillica

We went back to our hotel and reluctantly decided to nap... we slept for four hours.  Luckily we awoke just in time to go on a second jaunt about the island.  At 8:30 pm (20:30) we went back out to explore.  Venice at night is beautiful and fun!  Within just a few feet, we found ourselves back at Campo Santa Margherita and the place had completely transformed!  Being in the Dorsoduro and close to the university, college-aged kids swarmed the campo.  We forgot that tonight was the Euro 2012 soccer match! It was an interesting sight to see- every restaurant and bar filled with people- mostly sitting outside on the cobblestone streets, flimsy TV's set up clumsily on the exteriors, and people drinking and cheering on Italy!  Children played and people picnicked in the square. We mingled amongst them, walked, and just took in the entire scene.


As we made our way out of the Dorsoduro, things calmed down significantly. It was quiet and peaceful wandering from canals to "streets", hoping we were headed in the right direction- or that we would at least be able to find our way back again. We somewhat got "lost" on purpose and ended up by what we know now as the Scalzi Bridge- right by the Santa Lucia train station.  We wandered down the main road leading from the steps of the bridge, people watching and soaking up the Venice scene. We eventually saw a restaurant that had several people outside and decided to stop and give it a try. We decided to eat at La Pizzeria da Giorgio. See the official review here. 

La Pizzeria da Giorgio

We ordered another pizza- this time with prosciutto and a really yummy bruschetta.  We split a carafe of their house white wine, which was surprisingly good for a random stop.  This was one of our first tastes of European (or at least Italian) service and how it differs from the U.S.  Since Italians are not necessarily working for tips, they truly don't kiss your butt.  Our waiter answered his cell phone AS he was taking our order...  At first I was a bit taken aback, but throughout our trip, we found this to be fairly common.  Other than that, the service was average.  However, our British dining neighbors disagreed, as they were appalled by their check, thinking that they ordered one thing, when the waiter obviously thought they ordered something else.  There was a bit of an altercation and let's just say Italians (or at least at this establishment) don't always go by the motto "The customer is always right."  It provided some late-night entertainment for us, however. Luckily, we did not have the same issue.  

We successfully fumbled home through the winding streets. We figured we would swing by to Il Doge for gelato (Yes- for the second time today...). How convenient that it was just a few steps from Casa Rezzonico! This time I opted for the caramel (YUM!) and Sam went for a repeat of the amaretto and black cherry. It was that good. 

Since it was our first night in Italy, we decided we MUST have a bottle of wine to celebrate, right?  Well...  good luck finding a corner store or a gas station on an island where there are no road vehicles.  All groceries and shopping stores have very limited hours in Italy and close at around 7 pm (19:00) so we were out of luck there.  We eventually came across a take-and-go pizza place with a cooler- with wine in it! Hallelujah! We quickly exchanged €10 for what we later found out was the worse possible wine we had ever had in our lives.  We didn't realize at the time that  €10 is a LOT for a bottle of wine in the first place- at a fine winery.  


We split the bottle that night in the back garden of Casa Rezzonico after begging the guy on duty to let us stay out late...I felt like a teenager begging my parents to extend my curfew.  There is someone on duty there all night to unlock the door for guests, but as we accidentally discovered, they sleep on a roll-out cot in the back breakfast room.  On one hand, we felt bad for the guys.  On the other hand, it was somewhat frustrating that we couldn't really go out and enjoy the garden at night without feeling guilty or awkward.  Needless to say, the guy on duty that night let us go out there for about 20 minutes (reluctantly), but then we found out he was waiting up for us so he could go to bed.  After we split our absolutely HORRIBLE worse-than-Boone's wine, we headed up to room and let the poor guy sleep. We stayed awake until about 2 am, obviously still a bit off from the time change. 


Tune in tomorrow for more Italian adventures...