After breakfast and checkout, we headed over to Venice one more time to enjoy the view from San Giorgio (only 3€ to go up there, not like 8€ on San Mark’s), then we checked out the Salute cathedral while service was going on.
Headed for the wooden bridge of Accademia and then stopping for some Gelato and more pigeon feeding.
Then it was time to get our car in Lido, take the big ferry to Tronchetto and hit the autostrada for the 5 h drive back. Gladly the traffic wasn’t too bad.
Overall a wonderful trip and I am very glad that it was not as crowded as I had feared. We got lucky with the weather and finding food places and I am looking forward to going back some day and spend some more time exploring.
Within walking distance of our lovely B&B is the very wonderful Venetian seafood restaurant “Andri”. According to several online reviews, it seems it is hard to get a spot there during season, but when I called just 1 hour before dinner, no problem.
Julius immediately found a 4 year old girl to play with (Rebecca) and we started having great food. I had cicale as an appetizer, I still need to find an English translation for that, in German they are called (according to the menu) ‘Heuschreckenkrebs’ .. [thanks to Franziska, I now know they are Mantis Shrimp!] they look like mini-lobsters without the scissor hands. Utako had the mixed appetizer plate while Ritsu had the sardine in saor, we kept seeing this ‘saor’ a lot on menus, but here we finally got a good explanation what that meant (basically pickled in onion / vinegar sweet & sour)
Overall food was really great, the dessert offerings seemed to have come from somewhere else.
As with our lunch place earlier today, this restaurant too was full of locals, us being the only tourists … highly recommended.
Ristorante Andri
Via Lepanto 21
LIDO DI VENEZIA
Telefono:041-5265482
Other fun things we explored on our second day:
- St. Mark’s in broad daylight, surprisingly not super crowded. And then checking out the basilica, where photography is not allowed, so I only have a few low light shots. We decided to not pay the 8€ to go up on the St. Mark’s bell tower.
- Rialto Market. This is a must see! This is where the locals and all restaurants stock up on things. For the first time ever in Italy I saw my beloved north sea shrimp being sold. But I did not have a fridge with me.
- The cheapest possible gondola ride: It seems that a gondola ride is high on tourists’ lists for things to do when in Venice. From what I overheard, it is 80€ for 35 minutes or 120€ for 1 hour … or you can just opt to cross the Canale Grande in a Traghetto, which is basically a gondala full of people standing, since there are not that many bridges, this is an inexpensive (50 cents p.p.) way of crossing the channel and it is fun.
- We found the only McDonald’s in Venice, which is very subdued in design to fit in with the rest of Venice,
-After lunch we took the water-bus to Murano, which is known for doing venetian glass stuff … Guys, going there with 2 ladies is like going shoe shopping with them while holding the purse and one hand on the kid.
I was expecting to see the actual art of glass blowing (could not find any place that was open, might be a seasonal thing) instead there are tons of shops selling all kinds of tacky crap that looks like a blast from the 80ies … made out of glass. For me the highlight of this portion was feeding the resident pigeons.
If you are planning your own trip to Venice, I can highly recommend this top 10 list of things to do, my favourite being ‘get lost in Venice’. I might not agree with all of them, but Jessica Spiegel takes really cool photos (and / or photoshops them very well) and has quite some insight and good ideas.
After having read and heard plenty of horror stories about how tourists are getting ripped off and fed awful food in Venice, I was looking around very closely Friday evening on our first walk, finding that semi-cheap sandwich is a viable survival option (better that “150€ for 3 people bad lunch”).
But following point 5 on this survival guide is actually quite a good indicator …
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and since we did Venice center in the morning, then the Rialto market and were heading towards the water-bus stop to go to Murano, we were suddenly in very non touristy territory and came across this lovely trattoria where we had each 2 courses, some wine and water .. all for 56€ …
the pasta and risotto were cooked correctly and the fried seafood was actually better than last night’s offering. |
GPS: N 45 26.550 E 12 20.293
Morning at St. Mark’s square:
And later on the close by Murano island:
To get to Venice from Lido (and to get around the lagoon in general), there is a great water-bus system in place. Only thing is that when we bought a ticket at the car ferry to get to Lido, no one told us that we could have also bought 12, 24, 36 or 48 hour tickets, which would have included our ferry trip and all our water-bus needs.
(All photos single clickable here in the gallery).
The trip on the boat was a big hit with Julius, we got out at St. Mark’s square and were pretty surprised that the actual square was fairly empty. For one, it seems to be some kind of low season (although we still saw tons of people in the more shopping-y streets) and the so called ‘day-trippers’ were already on the way to their busses back to wherever they came from. More fun for us.
Crossing all those channels on little bridges and marveling at the crazy / silly shopping opportunities was a lot of fun. We studied several menus to confirm what we had heard about tourist pricing in Venice … but either that is also a season thing … we found some actually decent options (but we had already made plans for dinner elsewhere).
The Rialto bridge is somewhat fascinating, as is the ongoing boat traffic on the Canale Grande (I did not hear anyone singing ‘O Sole Mio’, which might have confused patrons, given that the weather was rather murkey, at least it was not raining.)
Does anyone know what’s up with all those young men (and I saw one lady) in uniform with long capes and captain hats? (Top pic on the right). I googled, but did not find anything other than references to Venice’s carnival.
We are spending this weekend with Utako in Venice. After having lived 4 years in Italy we have not managed to check it out earlier.
The 5 hour car ride (continued on ferry to Lido, where our hotel is) was long, but pretty ok traffic wise. We just had a pizza / pasta lunch and now we are getting ready to hop on the water taxi to join the masses on Piazza SanMarco.
Not since my birthday have we been to this wonderful restaurant. But now, while showing Utako our favourite dining spots, we returned (a lot of ‘returning’ going on these days … )
To my surprise they remembered us and even said ‘you are at the same table as last time, or would you like to change?’
The girls both ordered the traditional menu, which is more meat based, while I ordered a la carte: my favourite dish from last time (layers of beeftongue and raw shrimp under tangerine jelly) and later had duck and (i think goose) liver.
I saved space for my beloved Gin & Tonic …
Compared to last time, we paid much less (128€ for 3 people) … and got freebies left and right. E.g. this time we declined having a pre-dinner cocktail, so we received a little half glass of bubbly with vermouth anyways. The pre-appetizer was some tuna on an onion flan. The bread selection was as usual hillarious. I got an extra pre appetizer, some poultry wrapped around cabbage with castelmagno cheese sauce. There was a pre-dessert … and the killer tray of little pastries …
Recently Julius has taken his arts&crafts a step further … instead of just glueing stuff on top of each other, he is now focusing on more intricate 3D models …
Oven roasted pork belly:
Flame grilled duck breasts:
More pics, details and if there was a winner: later NOW:
We had invited ourselves this Sunday again to Malcolm & Patrizia’s (that happened a long time before they had invited us for last weekend) and we started discussing what to cook and it turned out that Malcolm and I had a similar idea, but then again very different … he had finally found a butcher who can get him a pork belly with the skin on, while I always had wanted to abuse his grill to bbq some duck breasts which I had marinated for 48 hours in oranges, spices and other flavours.
While Malcolm followed a pretty precise recipe and has one of those fancy thermometers that he poked the pork with from time to time, I was relying on an outdoor grill at 7C temperature, probably wet charcoal … but I am very happy to report that the duck came out pretty perfectly (not black on the outside and still slightly pink inside) ..
| There were several winners today … first of all: all our waists gained some centimeters! Thanks to some nice extras like a mash of jericho artichokes or the mashed potatoes mixed with the root bulb of celery.
Then there was this evil cake we had bought this morning at an overcrowded pastry shop in Canale. |
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But according to judge Julius’ big kiss … I guess the cook-off winner was:
Malcolm’s pork belly!
First a little bit of background info on white truffle pricing which I have learned more about this season:
I was surprised to learn that small truffles are cheaper than big truffles (duh!) , I mean their price per gram. E.g. at Eataly this season, you get get a small truffle for 2.70€ p/g, while the bigger ones went up to 4.20€ p/g. I was under the (wrong) impression that the bigger they are, one would get like a bulk price advantage, but not at all.
It appears that bigger truffles are more desirable, they look nicer when presented at restaurants or given as gifts and their big slivers look more opulent. But flavor wise, same deal.
It also seems that this season the truffle prices are lower. Last year, for our first truffle (a tiny one) we paid 3.20€ p/g. Earlier this season we were probably ripped off a bit at 3.50€ p/g (also a small one, but it was also the beginning of the season, prices fluctuate). Then, when we went to the Alba truffle fair, we got a very small one at 2.50€ p/g.
Overall, we heard that small ones can be had for as low as 1.50€ p/g and the bigger ones around 3.50€ p/g.
Now, we had decided long time ago to return to Il Trifulau, this time with our friend Utako, who is visiting from Japan, plus Malcom and Patrizia.
We marveled at the truffle offering and where told 1.50€ p/g for the tiny ones and 2.50€ p/g for the bigger ones … we looked around, weight a couple of them, then found a peculiar looking one. Big-ish, a bit crumpled (was locked under a root during development) and not that much of a presentation piece … so the master of the house offered us this one for an incredible 2€ p/g.
Foodwise, we had pretty much exactly the same menu as last year, but there was an added option to have eggs instead of pasta (eggs are great with truffles). With that we had a wonderful organic Barberra wine, which was ridiculously cheap at 7€ per bottle (we later found out we can buy it at 2€ a liter directly from the master of the house in ‘bag in box‘)
Last weekend I taught Julius to correctly put rings around planets, as he recently has become fascinated with planets and astronauts and rocket ships.
He then turned on creativity hyper drive and created things like the superman-planet (not Krypton), a music instrument planet, an octopus planet, flower planet, volcano planet, pizza planet, egg planet, x-mas planet, ghost planet, grape planet …
Can you guess some more?
We had a fun sunday lunch outing with our friends Malcolm and Patrizia. Me and Malcolm love to cook and we dance around the kitchen as gracefully as gazelles … (well, kinda)
He had prepared everything for a mean truffle risotto … and for that he had bought fresh truffles (white AND black) the day before and stored it with the rice (and some eggs) to share the flavour. Then we had to decide if we go with milk or with white wine (guess which) .. and I learnt that it is much better to ladle in the broth bit by bit rather than pouring it all at once.
Besides that we enjoyed 3 different cold cuts with breads for starters and also a dip made of yoghurt, tomatoes and tuna, then the killer risotto … and then there were 2 main courses: a fantastic pork loin wrapped in bacon and rabbit stew, after a french recipe with cream and mustard.
All again very nice, great atmosphere,, fantastic company and Julius having a blast with 4 clowns around.
Oh, and then there was dessert. Some heavenly sweet something that I have NO idea what it was called.
We also had the chance to see our cats’ mother, brother and sister … but they are still very wild, so no chance to get close to them.
This place is more and more becoming our other, other second home.
It is just very nice to drive out there (45 minutes after a saturday afternoon of hell @ IKEA) and then just get ready for dinner. Enjoy that dinner (very similar to 2 weeks ago, changes included a spinach flan with fonduta cheese sauce and the main this time was roasted rabbit) and then just go to bed.
Julius again very much enjoyed the many friendly cats and go check out the animals (well, this time it was really too muddy to go all the way)
This time of the year this area is just so beautiful, even if the sun cannot get through … look at how the leaves are changing …
My current Macbook Pro is not even 2 years old, but recently it decided to add the sound of attacking helicopters to one of the 2 fans that are inside that machine …
There is no easy way to get to those … and bringing it to the shop here seems like a semi warranty to a) wait at least 3 days without computer and b) get your hard drive back clean.
Since those where not the options I was looking for, I did some research about doing that surgery myself. Not easy to find an online dealer here with all the parts in a convenient 1 stop shop solution, so I ordered from the US … 64$ for parts, 38$ for shipping and a whooping 27€ for customs and ‘supplement’ … rip off again from the Italian customs … sigh.
Anyways … luckily there are quite a number of online guides to fix pretty much any problem with your mac. There is this instructional video, clearly saying ‘don’t try this at home’.
I followed this one. As detailed as it is … it says towards the end ‘and to put it back together, just reverse the process’ … it is not THAT simple .. the laptop closure is a bit tricky to put back … like closing a pizza box …
The best part was when I found out what might have caused the ruckus: a fairly big insect managed to squeeze through the keyboard (really? how?) and dried up there and made the fan sound like a hummer …
One can hardly imagine the relief I felt when I had finished putting the computer back together and upon switch on .. it worked well and very very silent.
We always wanted to come back to try the ‘surprise menu’ at this wonderful restaurant, but somehow it took us nearly a year.
This time we opted for lunch, so we would not need an overnight stay.
Service was again very cortious, but again a bit slow (in the beginning), but they had a full house, 2 birthday parties, tons of kids and again, very very good food:
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- a pre-appetizer platter with Russian salad, focaccia, parmesan puff balls, fried potato balls and some fried bread thingies (a big hit with Julius). I really don’t get this region’s fascination with Russian salad …. but it was very nice - a perfectly round piece of beef roast simmered in Barolo wine (in case you don’t know, you can get a very decent bottle of red wine here for 5€ … but Barolo starts at 15€) on top of a very nice fonduta (cheese sauce) with a single potato chip. I am still wondering how they cut it out so round .. and this was just the pre-appetizer for everyone. Amazing job and very flavourful! - a platter of different breads with butter (serving butter with bread is quite rare here). - a very fancy presentation of carne cruda (raw minced beef), accompanied by (from left to right): some mini ratalluile, cheese egg frittata, then the meat with some salt and parmesan, porcini mushroom and a poached quail egg. This is the closest competitor to my favourite raw meat offering at ‘La Pace‘ yet … - a pairing of a stack of beef tongue with ‘salsa verde’ (a sauce of green herbs, oil, spices, whatever is tasty and around … ) and this time a fried quail egg and mini sandwiches with duck prosciutto on some potato mash. Oh my. Those duck slices were yummy (a bit salty) … and the tongue! … - risotto with fois gras (goose liver paté) and slivers of fried artichoke. Now, here is a new idea .. putting fois gras in risotto … I was very pleasantly surprised .. and I usually do not finish my risotto … By that time we were really full … - last but not least: pork knuckle, or what they scraped off it. After a long time in the oven, taken off the bone, then shaped, again in a perfect circle, wrapped in bacon and caramelized in pineapple syrup, served with a slice of apple fritter and some more pineapple pieces. Incredibly yummy … albeit by this time I was very full .. and I was happy the portion was rather small … but the flavour was fantastic … - while everything above was selected by the chef, we could select our desserts: Ritsu had a mini crepe filled with peach and yoghurt ice cream - while I had something like tiramisu, swimming in a zabaglione sauce, topped with amaretto ice cream. - though we did not order any coffee or grappa, we still got this crazy assortment of sweets … as if we had not have enough yet. - Our wine was a Roero Arneis from a small producer Marco Porello. |
Overall .. again a fantastic experience .. and this time no trouble with getting out of the snowy parking lot ( when saying goodbye to the chef, he remembered us, once I told the story) and while it was a very different atmosphere, compared to dinner … the food was just outstanding ..
I am looking forward to trying the the spring / summer food … and sit on the balcony … we still were not too happy with the bright light atmosphere .. and since this time we were seated in the ‘big room’ we noticed that the sound was .. well .. just all over .. it sounded very loud very quickly .. and there was no background music .. which I think could help a bit …
Io E Luna
Frazione Montebello 1
12050 Guarene, Italy
telephone: (0039) 017 361 1724
GPS N 44 44.717 E 8 0.856
One of these rare moments the kittens feel unobserved, are playful and don’t hear me turn the camera on:
and half hour later they are peacefully enjoying the sun …
Last night Ritsu and I went out to enjoy Ryuichi Sakamoto in concert.
It was a pretty nice experience. He started out with some weird experimental stuff (i.e. instead of using the keys of the piano, strumming the strings, set to some water gurgling sound …) and no one applauded for the first 5 ‘songs’ … thing #6 was some especially weird piece, but was obviously the one thing that woke the audience up:
From then on the audience was on board and he played some of his more famous tunes, i.e. the theme from “The Last Emperor“, ()for which he received an oscar, or the theme from “Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence” (in which he also acted)
This video seems to come from a very recent TV appearance on Italian TV.
Some more links to the concert as it was shown on Japanese TV:
Thousand Knives
Enegery Flow (first ever instrumental track to be #1 in the Japanese Oricon and Dempa Shimbun charts! (source)
Happy End
Aqua
Tibetan Dance (compare, if you will, with 1987 whaa whaa guitar version)
Perspective
Hibari (which I found, while beautiful, very repetitive, but it shows how Sakamoto was playing ‘with himself’, there were 2 grand pianos … and it took me a while until I realized that the second piano was driven by a computer (most likely Sakamoto pre-recorded his own playing and then for the live performance he is doing a duet with himself)
Bibo no aozora (probably one of my favourite tunes)
I was very happy that towards the end he even threw in a YMO song I know and like a lot: Behind the mask (this seems to be a bootleg video). Though I still prefer FPM‘s Sweet Soul Bossa remix of the same song
The abstract visuals projected on the rear screen were nice, but nothing really to write home about.
One thing I found interesting: Mr. Sakamoto (from wikipedia: “[...] is also known as a critic of copyright law, arguing that it is antiquated in the information age.” [though there is no source cited]). In fact, that first video up there where he actually says some stuff in Japanese, he encourages people to use their digital devices to record this performance!
Well, in our concert, he did not say a thing, but we got a big disclaimer on screen that ANY kind of recording or picture taking is absolutely prohibited!
He first tried to leave the stage after 90 minutes, but was asked to come back out 3 – 4 times and he gladly obliged, playing another 30 minutes. So, 2 hours of live Sakamoto for 20€ a pop, in the very nice Turin opera house with a pretty much behaving audience (some people just have to keep checking for text messages it seems, but I did not hear a single ringtone!) … great deal and a fun experience …
Seems we have graduated in truffeling ..
When we went to Alba on Sunday, we bought our first ‘bring back home’ truffle at 5gr / 12.50€ .. and a truffle slicer … a nice thing to have and tell a story about a region as our cannibal fork from Fiji ..
While I really think that egg (uova in cocotte) is the perfect thing to go with white truffle (still need to graduate in that) I made some very basic pasta with butter … and Julius was happy to just have cheese on it .. he does not care for those weird slices that mom and dad go all oooh and aaaaah about.
One thing I learnt about truffles and found quite interesting (and maybe someone has a really good explanation for that) … they get more expensive in price per weight, the bigger they are … e.g. you get small truffles at 2.50€ a gr, but the bigger ones go towards 4€ a gr … whatever happened to discount when buy in bulk?
One theory I have is that people like the bigger ones, not only for the flavor, but for the presentation. Large slices of truffle …
If you check out the embiggend version of the pic below, you might get a feeling how much fun it is to select ‘your truffle’
Yesterday, when we were leaving Alba, we came across this fun advertising thing on our way back to the big parking lot:
Now we can add hot air balloon to Julius’ (and ours) modes of transportation ..
BUT .. it was only a very short, free, promotional thing. Hopping into a tethered balloon, going up maybe 50 meters, maybe even just 20, who knows, and then down again.
It was a fun experience and I noticed that I am too tall, my head is way too close to the burner. And that thing is loud!
I learnt from the ballon driver that a flight over the Langhe region would cost 195€ p.p. .. oops … i could imagine doing that for a very special occasion … but it is very very weather dependent. I was once, many years ago, scheduled for a flight .. and balloon flights start early .. so, getting a 5 AM call that the flight is cancelled, not that much fun. So this experience today was great (and now, honestly, I am not sure I want to spend several hours in this basket…)
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