Monday Sept. 6: Lost in Venice…. Part 2

(Well, I have an apology to make to Blogspot.  I have discovered that--as I have experienced before--Microsoft Word is the culprit.  I compose these blog entries in Word and then copy the text to the blog.  Apparently there were some control characters in parts of my narrative that were offending Blogspot.  So as long as I cleanse my text by copying it first into Notepad and then from there to the blog, it seems to be all good.  I offer this explanation in case anyone else encounters problems copying text from Word to Blogspot.)

So, to continue...

After our nap we set out to eat lunch at the Osteria da Alberto, a restaurant Rick Steves had recommended in his guidebook.  We had Rick Steves’ hand-drawn map, which didn’t seem to be working so great for us.  We also had Tom’s GPS.  Here’s the thing about a GPS in Venice:  it could only get a satellite signal if we were standing in the middle of one of the bridges across a canal; otherwise it was as lost as we were in those narrow alleyways that ran between all those tall old buildings.  Tom was sick, his usually accurate sense of direction was faltering, and I’m always lost.  So we were lost.  And I was hungry and grumpy.

Does Karen look done in?

We finally gave up and stopped at a random eatery with outdoor tables on Campo Santa Maria Nova—somewhere around which Alberto’s was supposed to be.

After our quite satisfactory lunch (I had an octopus salad for my antipasti and it was pretty good, tentacles and all) we set out again; we turned down a side alley and there was Alberto’s!  Okay, so we’d go there for dinner.




Meanwhile, we started wandering again, trying to find the Piazza San Marco.  Daniela had told us that if we got lost, it would be easy to find the yellow signs that pointed either to San Marco or the Rialto Bridge.  Yeah right. Walk, walk, backtrack, find a bridge, check the GPS, dive back into the maze, etc.

Um... where are we?

In a residential area--you can see laundry
hanging across the canal.

Kind of a nice view.

 (During our two-night stay in Venice, the only time we ever saw these “Per S. Marco” or “Per Rialto” signs was when we weren’t lost.)

Finally we found Piazza San Marco and we wandered down to the harbor where the cruise ships were puking out hundreds of people.

For a few moments of respite, we walked through the only park in old Venice.  Real greenery.  Then it was finally back to the hotel for a late-afternoon nap.  Venice was exhausting.

Tom in front of Osteria da Alberto

In the evening we finally made it to Alberto’s.  When we got there we had to put our name on the list and come back in an hour for a table.  We were afraid we’d get lost again so we just wandered back and forth across Campo Santa Maria Nova.  The meal we finally had was worth the wait, and in my personal survey of Italian tiramisu, here is where I found the winner!

On our journey back to the hotel from Alberto's, we got really, really lost.  We were so glad to see that hotel--didn't find it until 10:30pm.

Someday I'd like to go back to Venice with a really good map, and conquer it.