There are lots of odds and ends about Venice that didn’t fit in with the broader travelogue narrative I’ve created.
Like, how on earth do I fit in a mention of the ‘Most Beautiful Bookstore in the World”? Especially because . . . well, it isn’t. It’s certainly the most touristy bookstore I’ve ever been to.
They only sold used moldy Italian-language books, but the shelves were almost all constructed out of old boats and gondolas.
And in the back was a stairway back up to the street made of stacks of encyclopedias. FOLLOW THE BOOK STEPS CLIMB!
And . . . I’m not even sure what a person would do with a basked of plaster mini-masks. They aren’t even concave, so you can’t use them to do a Finger Puppet Phantom of the Opera.
I also couldn’t think of a seamless way to bring up this:
This is a bowl of pasta with a sauce made from squid ink. It turned Brian’s teeth black.
It was one of our favorite meals from the trip, eaten outdoors on a plaza. Lots of seafood, nummm.
This is the plaza. There were lots of people selling roses on the plaza that day because it was St. Mark’s Day, which is a special thing in Venice since he is the patron saint of the city.
It is customary to buy your sweetheart a rose on St. Mark’s Day. Apparently another custom of St. Mark’s Day is getting drunk and wearing a giant Venetian flag as a superhero cape, which I personally observed a number of times.
Also, we went on long walks through the city and kept wondering if they had water-ambulances for the canals. Turn a corner, and behold!
There’s more . . . like the restaurant proudly declaring itself as the place to buy “Pizza Hot Dog Toast” (I assume they meant toasted sandwiches, like panini) or how we discovered a toy store with a whole slew of minifigs from the LEGO Movie and we snapped them up as presents for the boys. (They are hard to find in the U.S.A.)
Altogether a delightful if exhausting beginning to our trip. Little did we know that the next destination would be even more fun . . . onwards to Florence!
Casa Camisas 