We took our time to get up and went downstairs to enjoy breakfast in the hotel garden. It’s one of the things I really like about Venice – the idea of the secret garden. There are no public parks in Venice. The community comes together in the squares that open out from cramped alleyways in the middle of nowhere to provide generous spaces between the buildings. But the squares are all paved and generally there’s not even a potted tree in sight. Yet the palaces and private residences of the rich and famous often have lush garden behind locked gates. You get a glimpse of them as you pass by on the canals but they rarely face out onto squares or streets. So I was enchanted by the idea of a Venetian hotel with a garden. The breakfast was the same kind of restaurant breakfast fare we had become used to with a couple of differences – The bacon was really finely sliced and the fat was see through when cooked and the scrambled eggs tasted like they were made with cream, There were stacks of cherry tomatoes. And there were pastries – chocolate, jam and cream filled croissants. Disappointingly, my cappuccino (there are no flat whites here) tasted like it came from a Nespresso machine. The other strange thing about cappuccinos here is that they don’t come with a chocolate dusting.

After breakfast it was time to start exploring. Given we had already been to Rialto, it was going to be 36 degrees and Dan was still feeling sick, I decided it would be good to catch the ferry from just outside our hotel to San Marco. I had expected the ferry would go up our canal and then turn left into the Grand Canal to San Marco, which sits on the edge of the main cluster of islands that face out into the lagoon. It turned right instead and went around the outside of the island cluster to San Marco, virtually avoiding the Grand Canal altogether. What we did get to see were the airport, the parking station and the industrial area. Dan got to see a tank parked on the side of the canal and the replacement barges for the ferry stations. One thing that seems to happen quite quickly in Venice is that barnacles and algae grow on anything that doesn’t move. You see them on the ferry stations, on the stairs to people’s houses and on boats moored along the lagoon. (Feel the Pain – Dinosaur Jr – Dinosaur Jr are a band of the 90s that you often forget about but when you really pay them some attention the brilliance of J. Mascis becomes obvious. I have seen these guys a few times in the past 20 years and every show always turns out to be a reunion of sorts with many of the old crew in attendance.)

San Marco Square was so full of people, it was hard to move. There were quite a few standing in queues for various sights including Doge’s Palace but plenty more just milling around. Curiously there were very few people sitting down in the square’s cafes. Perhaps the warning that you will have to mortgage your house to sit and drink a coffee in the square has finally tipped the balance to the point where the cafes just aren’t getting any business at all. The square is a must see in Venice of course but it has lost its gravitas with the trappings of tourism – touts, tacky souvenirs, oversized queues and the throng of humanity, cameras at the ready. Where you see the real Venice, and the lives of its citizens is exploring the back alleyways and getting lost.

No time for that now though – It was back along the well-trodden path Per Rialto – and between Rialto and San Marco, where every visitor to Venice walks, you’ll find the incredibly high end stores such as Gucci and Versace nestled amongst the endless supply of tourist tatt. Needless to say I didn’t venture in here. From Rialto we wound our way back to the hotel and chilled out for a while in the hotel. Dan’s cold had gotten the better of him and he stayed in the hotel to snooze while I went out to explore.

First stop was the shoe shop – the Clarks store up near Rialto – Dan hates show shopping so this was a good opportunity – and I found the patent T-bar flats I had coveted in Dubai in my size – in wide fit. It was meant to be. One of the great things about shoe shopping in Italy, Germany and Scandinavia is that many of the shoes are designed for wide feet. At a wide size 41 I can never buy pretty shoes in Asia.

Shoe purchase made, it was time to explore some of the back streets and small canals of Carneggio between Rialto and our hotel near The Ghetto. The tight lane ways totally in darkness weaved their way through the tightly packed building opening out suddenly onto a sunlit square where washing was hanging from the windows or abruptly ending at a cabal where there were two choices – over the bridge or a sharp right turn down into another alleyway squirreling off into the distance. For much of this journey I didn’t see a soul. This was suburban Venice – quiet and sleepy with nary a gondolier in sight. It was in one of these streets – quite close to our hotel that I found Venice’s Michelin-starred restaurant – Osteria Anice Stellato. I got incredibly excited about this discovery until I realised it was closed on Mondays. I kept wandering the back streets but it was starting to heat up and all the pathways along the bigger waterways seemed to be on the sunny side. I headed back into the more convoluted path of the smaller passageways using my map as some kind of guidance. GPS is often slow to work here because the laneways are so small it is impossible for satellites to get a fix. Eventually I navigated my way through, emerging onto our canal through a non-descript archway, I had passed many times before. (Witchita Lineman – The Clouds – this is a fab version of the country classic with much more bass).

Originally we had planned to head to the beach in Lido but it is quite a journey and to make it worthwhile we really needed to spend the whole afternoon. By this stage it was already 3pm so I suggested to Dan that getting out of the room would do him some good. The ferry right outside our front door went to Lido so we caught it to get a view of the lagoon, and to catch some of the sea breeze by standing on the stairs to the cabin. Lido was practically a ghost town on my last visit but in the sweltering heat it seemed where most Venetians had escaped. We hopped off the ferry and found a gelato store where we could chill for a while before heading back. I also took the opportunity to try a spritz – as per the recommendation of a couple of friends who had left Venice a day before our arrival. I understand there are a couple of different versions – I am pretty sure from the orange hue that this particular specimen was the Campari based one. From the taste I am pretty sure the spritz is a traditional wine spritzer (white wine and mineral water) with the addition of Campari. Now I have to confess that Campari is not one of my fave liqueurs and this just tasted bitter to me – not the way you’d expect something bright orange with a slight fizz to taste. The gelato wasn’t much good either. On the plus side, I was drinking my spritz sitting in a swing so that did add to the 1950s holiday feel of the whole thing – I just needed to procure one of the big sunhats I had seen on sale everywhere. (Bullying the Jukebox – Bouncing Souls – I bet a jukebox under the control of Bouncing Souls would be really cool. Back in the day I had an old Bouncing Souls work shirt – back in the day when it was cool to wear such things. Can’t give up the skate shoes (or Doc Martens) I wore with it though.)

By the time we got back on the ferry it was around 7pm so we went up to change and ventured out to dinner. Dan had promised me a nice dinner out in Venice and despite the Michelin starred restaurant being closed, I had found two other suitable alternatives both within a few hundred metres of each other. The trick was to find them as they were buried in the centre of Carneggio, one in a square and one near a small canal. We navigated our way successfully to the first -Ostaria Boccadoro – a traditional Osteria long praised in Venice and then found the second – a more edgy establishment noted as an up and comer. It was a hot night and the up and comer, as you might expect was a fairly small place and quite crowded. While it was close to a canal, all the seating was inside. We thought it might be a bit close and less enjoyable on this incredibly warm evening so we headed back to the square. Sitting outside in what was obviously a residential square felt like you were experiencing the real romance of Venice. This was the only restaurant on the square and the other diners were your only company.

Lagoon seafood is the staple item on Venetian menus and this was no different. The special appetizer they were offering was a selection of raw lagoon seafood with various pickles and things. While I was keen to sample the local seafood I had been in a boat on the lagoon and wasn’t trusting eating it raw. I chose the steamed clams and mussels which came steamed in butter- some of the clams weren’t much bigger than pipis but they were sweet, juicy and delicious. My recent fancy dinners with Dan seem to end up being in seafood focussed restaurants (Rockpool) where there are few options for those who prefer their dinner to have come from the land. Here Dan chose a mixed platter of cheeses. At the recommendation of our waiter, we chose a bottle of local white from the menu and it was a pretty decent drop. (Whip it – Devo – one of the greatest tracks of the early 80s- save for all the punk and ska I discovered later – Devo were a Countdown band in 1992 but they deserve far more kudos than that label implies.)

Dan and I have long mused about serving bread in a restaurant – it is a fairly cheap item and ensures those with huge appetites leave the restaurant feeling satisfied. On the other hand, when the bread is really good, you risk the temptation of filling up on it. And I love bread, which makes Germany a treat as they have some of the best bread (sourdough, rye, wholegrain) in the world. One thing we have noticed in our culinary escapades is that you can tell a top restaurant by the quality of the bread and the fact they continue to serve it throughout the meal. Here there was a mixed selection of ciabatta, wholegrain and rye breads and they kept coming. The second course of an Italian meal is pasta – Dan played it safe and chose the veal strips and tomato spaghetti. I was a bit more adventurous and went for the black ink spaghetti with clams and artichokes, which was thoroughly delicious. It’s not often that you find a menu peppered with fresh ingredients such as artichokes so that was particularly enjoyable. We probably didn’t need a third course but we had it anyway – I continued with my seafood theme and enjoyed John Dory (which I assume probably wasn’t lagoon caught) on potato with artichokes and salad. – Dan chose the slow cooked veal cheeks with herbs, which he said didn’t really taste like herbs – just like a really good beef roast – of course our beef roasts are usually marinated with garlic and rosemary. It was a thoroughly enjoyable evening. The air was warm and fairly still save for a small breeze through the alleyways every now and then but it was enough to make for a pleasurable dining experience and sitting in the square as it darkened overhead and you looked up to the night sky made you appreciate the romance of Venice. (Minstrel Boy – Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros – The outfit Joe spent most time with before his untimely death over a decade ago is not what you’d expect from the punk troubadour but this tune in particular does have the hallmarks of him having spent too much time with the Irish – a cross between a Pogues song and Enya in a good way, with jazz drumming this evokes the feel of the seafarers of all and seems somewhat appropriate.)

After dinner, we headed for the Grand Canal to find a gondola. Sure gondolas are an expensive way to get about – 80 euros during the day and 100 at night for about half an hour. And yes, there is an element of kitsch to the gondola (not least of all because you can actually buy a gondola that has a snow globe of a gondolier sitting in it) but there is still something romantic about cruising Venice’s canals with a whistling gondolier. It is also an awesome way to get a very different perspective on the city. Travelling up the main canals on a ferry doesn’t give you the ground level look at the buildings a gondola does – the appreciation of how the lagoon is enveloping the city. It is clear from this angle that if the water rises a centimetre, the streets are flooded in some areas. The gondolier took us along the main canal and then into the back waterways, pointing out various landmarks on the way such as the place where Marco Polo lived in Venice. Dan had pointed out earlier in the day that Venice, a city of waterways and seafarers, holds Marco Polo in quite high regard but Marco Polo walked to China. After a while the gondolier got the message that we weren’t really interested in the history lesson so he did this strange combination of singing, whistling and humming. On our journey through the dark canals, I thought we were going to total a number of boats along the way but the gondolier skilfully moved the gondola centimetres to avoid them ducking as he went under the low canal bridges. At one point we passed a gondola full of young Americans and the other gondolier asked ours what English swear words he knew. In the dead calm of the Venice night he said only one word – Fuck. And then the silence was filled with laughter from both boats. From the back canals, the gondolier rounded the turn back into the light of the Grand Canal and there resplendent in front of us was the Rialto Bridge lit up like a Christmas Tree. Our ride ended on the other side and we made our way across the bridge and back towards our hotel. Last time I was in Venice I was alone and while I had a nice dinner on the canal and met a really interesting Mexican woman, I hadn’t enjoyed a high end romantic dinner or a gondola ride because I thought they would be best enjoyed with someone else one day when I returned. And they were. The only downside was that the hole in the wall Gelato place was closed on our walk home. (Down to Sea – Doves – Many of their tracks evoke dreamy summer evenings and this one in particular reminds me of summery winter nights in Byron Bay at Splendour in the Grass.)