Europe Trip 2012 Day 9 (June 30, 2012): Everywhere but Anywhere
It's so great to be back in Italy. Yesterday was our first full day in Venice and it was a great start to our time here. Today was the first day of the trip where Jenn and I actually slept in until 9:30AM, which felt great and made us even more prepared for the day.
We headed into Venice at noon and took our hotels boat transportation to take us across the canal to the mainland of Venice. We really didn't have any major plans for the day so we decided to look for the cruise port to see where we would be starting our cruise on Monday. Visually it seems pretty easy to find things in Venice but once you start going through various alleyways and and bridges it's almost impossible not to get lost. Needless to say we got lost and it took at least an hour to find the port and when we did we were exhausted.
Today was far warmer then yesterday and so both Jenn and I were drenched from the humidity and heat. Once we found the port the next task was to find somewhere to eat for lunch. The port in Venice is more of a residential area so we weaved in and out of streets to try and get back to more of the central points in Venice. We finally stopped for lunch at 2PM at a really nice cafe. Jenn had pasta with marinara sauce and I had a pizza with ham. It wasn't our best meal in Venice but given all of the walking it hit the spot.
We walked around a little bit more and then had some amazing gelato before heading back to our hotel for a break. We booked transport to the cruise for Monday and went back to our room to rest and recover from the heat. Jenn read a book while I watched more of Wimbledon. These afternoon breaks have been amazing and today was no different.
We headed back out to Venice at around 6:30PM to find a place for dinner. We got dropped off at the San Marco stop and explored the surrounding area for dinner. We landed on Leon Bianco Osteria which has a really nice back patio with around five tables for dinner. We started with a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon and split a Spaghetti Pomodoro to start. Jenn had a grilled steak for her main course and I had a lamb chops. The dinner and setting was perfect and was yet another amazing Italian meal.
We left dinner and decided that it would be great to walk around Venice since it was such a beautiful evening. We walked around, got some more gelato, and took a ton of pictures. We met a couple who had just come to Venice to get married and found out they were from Huntington Beach. It's always incredible to meet people half way across the world that live a few miles away from you.
We left to go back to the hotel at 10:30PM and called it a day. Even though we spent more time today lost in Venice, you couldn't have asked for a better day.
