Wireless at the hotel is up and running again. We are staying in the annex of the hotel, which is a separate building with more of an apartment feel. We have our own front door key to the building, and after walking up one flight of stairs is our large quad room with very high ceilings. Grandma and Papa are right down the hall. Paul and I stayed at this same hotel when we first visited Venice seven years ago.

We spent July 16th just wandering the streets and “getting lost,” as Paul likes to say. Although we are never really lost with Paul’s amazing sense of direction. We went to Giacomo Rizzo to marvel at the multicolored pastas, and popped into a few beautiful churches, finally making our way to St. Mark’s square so D could chase the pigeons.

D loves looking at all the boats, and every bridge we walk over he wants to stop and watch the gondolas go under the bridge and come out the other side. Miss M is tallying up the number of bridges we walk over, and the number of boats we see, in her “Kids Discover Italy Journal” that we got for her prior to the trip.

Dinner was in a piazza SS. Giovani and Paolo, looking at the church and the beautiful facade of the hospital next to it. Grandma and Miss M went inside the hospital and they described it as “freaky” and “empty” with no one in huge open hall. There were guards standing outside and a sign for visiting hours ending at 8pm. And at exactly 9pm, as we were finishing dinner, we saw 20-30 people leaving the hospital. Perhaps a shift had ended, but we didn’t see anyone in any type of attire that would connote a medical professional.

It was a long day of just walking at a leisurely pace, but a nice way to ease into the final days of our trip.

Food report:
Lunch at Osteria el Sbarlefo, a wine bar, for some cichetti which are little tapas style plates of food. We had meat balls, little deep fried spinach and cheese balls, a fried mozzerella, goat cheese, polenta, and we ordered a fried baccala (salt cod) for Grandma. The moment the plate was set in front of Grandma, D grabbed it and started chowing down on it. He then shared it with Miss M, and we ended up ordering four more! From the kids perspective, it was a fish stick and the first non-pizza or pasta item they’ve had in more than two weeks. But Grandma was pleased to see them enjoying fried baccala and is going to add it to the Christmas Eve menu (currently there’s a baccala salad as part of the night’s feast.)

Snack: the kids were happy to find the long string licorice and both bought a piece in watermelon flavor. We also stopped at a gelato stand in the mid-afternoon.

Dinner at Al Cavallo where the kids had pasta with butter, again. I had tomato and mozzerella salad, Grandma had a salad with tuna and hard boiled egg, Papa had pasta with arrabiata sauce. The only noteworthy dish was Paul’s “spaghetti alla Venezia” which was pasta with squid and squid ink….so the dish was black.

Gelato for the kids on the walk back to the hotel: lamponi (raspberry), fragola (strawberry,) amarena (black cherry,) and chocolate.