The Grand Canal from the Rialto Bridge
Today was a travel day. We checked out of our airbnb in Florence, walked to the train station, and grabbed our train to Venice. Our train left Florence at 11:30am and we were in Venice by 1:30pm. When you get off the train in Venice you are right at the edge of the city. There is a vaporetto (water bus) stop right outside the train station so you can easily jump on a boat to take you where you need.
view of our neighborhood
Our airbnb in Venice was in a pretty unique area. It is in a bit of a residential area in the northeast side of Venice. It is right on the water, and kinda away from the heavy tourist areas. Even better, there is a vaporetto stop only steps from the front door of the building. We met our host, dropped our bags off and then just head out for a walk.
Yvonne & Dan in Piazza San Marco
Resturants along Fondamenta della Misericordia
We had no plans for our first day in Venice since we weren't too sure how long our travels would take. We hopped over a few bridges and found a really nice strip of restaurants for us to grab a late lunch. Venice is not particularly known for its food, but we hope to find some of the best places to eat. This place was fine for lunch, nothing too special. We had some seafood pasta and salmon with toasted bread. After lunch we continued to explore the city. We walked over to the Rialto Bridge and sat along the Grand Canal for awhile, then walked over to Piazza San Marco. We figured we might as well just keep walking and see some of the main areas to get familiar with where they are and how far of a walk they are from where we are staying. While walking around we also tried a locally made chocolate shop, VizioVirtù, which was pretty awesome.
Cappellacci from Ostaria da Rioba
Eventually dinner time came along, and decided to take a recommendation from our host about a place nearby our apartment, Ostaria da Rioba. Our meal here was really incredible. We started with a shrimp appetizer, then shared some homemade cappellacci that were filled with cheese, potato, then finally shared a risotto with fish on top. All of these dishes were incredible, and made us question all the talk about food not being great in Venice. We were super full and quite tired, so thankfully our place was only a 2 minute walk away.
Gondola's outside Piazza San Marco