I slept poorly, bothered by the sound of thunder and the flashes of lightning, though when I got up to check, there was no rain on the streets. I fell asleep quite late and was awakened by my alarm at seven; I had set it so as to take an earlier trip to the Rialto market. I almost ignored it, but dragged myself out of bed and headed down.
To my surprise, it was too early. Not too early for the seafood: I picked up a pound of schie, the tiny gray shrimp that were hopping about in the tray, six canocchie (mantis shrimp) that cost me L13000, and a kilo and a half of caparozzoli. But most of the fruit and vegetable vendors were still setting up. I managed to get a few of what I thought were yellow peaches (but turned out to be nectarines - since I'm allergic to both, I rarely select them), some figs, and a hundred grams each of baby arugula and baby radicchio leaves. On the way back, I stopped for a mediocre cappuccino at the Pasticceria Rosa Selva on the Campo San Zanipolo.
Arju was waiting quietly for me and came to hug me as I put away the groceries. N got up and Z shortly afterwards. We all got dressed and headed out the door. We had planned to see two churches in Dorsoduro, to the southwest. But during the night, I had formed the plan of getting day passes on the vaporetto and visiting Giudecca beforehand, not to mention taking advantage of the flexibility to get from place to place. There was a trattoria I was hoping to eat at in the remote southwest corner of the city, but after the number of closures we had encountered I had no hope of anything actually being open down there.
So we got the tickets at the Fondamenta Nuove and got on the 52 barrato going through the Arsenale, to San Zaccaria, and down to the Giudeccca. A and Z charmed an older woman waiting for the same boat who gave them each a sugar-coated almond she must have carried for just this purpose. We got off at the first stop, Zittere, and walked down the fondamenta, which was in shade. Even here there were backpackers, for the youth hostel is located on this stretch, with a fine view of the Palazzo Ducale and the back of Santa Maria della Salute.
I was also scouting for restaurants, and the first one, Altanella, turned out to be on its last day of vacation. The next, Do Mori, was closed a bit longer. But before that, we came across Il Redentore, and took a look inside. Z had taken a picture of a canal cutting across Giudecca, using her little disposable camera, and A was agitating to take her own picture, so she took one from the steps of the church. I looked through the viewfinder afterwards and saw a thin strip of land with a lot of sea below and a lot of sky above.
We walked past our vaporetto stop and to a bakery recommended by Faith Heller Willinger, the author of "Eating in Italy", with whom I had corresponded by e-mail regarding Venice. At the bakery, we bought a large bag of handmade grissini (excellent), a loaf of bread for dinner (better than anything else we'd found, but nothing special apart from actually having an interior), and a couple of buccellai (ring-shaped cookies, not ethereal, but also not as dry as most Venetian cookies tend to be).
Then back to the vaporetto stop and across to Dorsoduro and the Zattere. We noted that the price of a gianduiotto (the artery-clogging chocolate-hazelnut ice cream with whipped cream in a cup to go) at Gelateria Nico had risen from L3500 to L4000. But at ten-thirty in the morning, we were not about to indulge.
We walked along a very nice and quite deserted stretch of canal parallel to the Zattere, and to the church of San Sebastiano. It had been closed when we got this far in 96, and I had hoisted the kids up to the large barred window for a tantalizing look. Now we could go inside for L2000, since many churches in Venice had extended hours as part of the Jubilee 2000 celebrations.
The interior was mostly decorated with Veronese canvases, with the occasional Titian or Palma Il Giovane thrown in. Z spotted an Annunciation sculpture with the angel and Mary on opposite sides of the nave. The kids liked the trompe d'oeil in the nave, and the decorated organ cover.
We continued to the west, through the rundown Campo Angelo Raffaele with its derelict church, and to my amazement the Trattoria Anzolo Raffael (mentioned in Fred Plotkin's "Italy for the Gourmet Traveller") seemed to be open for business. But it was only eleven-twenty, so we continued on to the little church of San Nicolo di Mendicanti, about as far west as you can go without getting into newer buildings and the industrial zone on more recently reclaimed land. The church only took a few minutes to view, being of interest chiefly for its carved wood interior, and so we let the kids run around in the empty campo for a few minutes. They finally settled down to reading with us on a bench (A a chapter book, Z the Eyewitness Guide, from which she correctly identified a mosaic of Noah's Ark from inside the Basilica).
At five to twelve we headed back and to the still-deserted trattoria. We sat outside under an awning; a woman served us, and a man (presumably her husband) did the cooking, and sat smoking and reading a newspaper inside when not at the stove. There was no written menu; we were offered a choice of spaghetti alle vongole veraci, al seppie nere, or bigoli in salsa (with a sauce of oil, sardines, and onions). N and I chose the latter and A voted for the seppie nere, thereby impressing the woman, who had offered us simple tomato sauce for the kids.
We don't usually order secondi at lunch, but the primi were excellent, so we asked, and were given the choice of sfoglioli, branzino, orate, or coda di raspo. I translated these for N (sole, sea bass, "daurade" or gilt bream, and monkfish), and she deferred to me; I chose branzino and coda di raspo, both grilled.
They were both excellent (the sea bass uncleaned, which fact N noted with rue, since she had made me clean the sole, and the monkfish tender instead of its usual chewy texture). The woman came out and chatted with us in Italian, exclaiming over the kids, and we answered as best we could. With wine, water, and a final coffee for me, the bill came to L89000, a major bargain, especially considering all the collateral pleasures of the meal. This was probably our most untouristy experience of the trip.
Quite sated, we meandered up to the northeast, heading for the Frari. We had promised the kids gelato at Paolin if they were good, but I think it was not so much this as the high quality of the Frari that kept them entranced. They recognized the Titian paintings, and the slaves holding up the large Pesaro tomb, and while I looked up the small stories of the Titian Madonna with Saints, they went off and returned excited about the tombs of Titian and Canova. Finally, we all went and spent some time with the Giovanni Bellini altarpiece in the sacristy, taking turns examining it closely through binoculars.
A walk to the vaporetto and a quick ride across the Canal Grande, though not a pleasant one, as the boat was jam-packed with midday sightseers and we had to push our way across the boat to exit on the opposite side. Then a short walk to Campo San Stefano and Paolin, where the gelato was excellent as always, and for once it all got finished before melting all over someone.
It was two-thirty and Z was overdue for her nap. How to get home? We chose to walk over the Accademia bridge and down to the Zattere to catch the 52 home. But while I was restowing guidebooks, N suddenly said, "Is that our boat?" We ran for it, but when it left with us aboard, I realized it was going in the wrong direction. No matter, I thought; we go through the Arsenale again instead of around to the west. Wrong: we go towards the Lido. "Let's turn around," I suggested, and we got off at the next stop. But this was the Giardini Pubblici, far to the east of the main part of the city, and I knew there was a playground inside, only one of two I knew of in Venice (the other being a minimal one in the Giardini Papadopoli near Piazzale Roma).
So the kids had a much-needed climbing and swinging break, aided by an American-sounding family whose two daughters (ages 11 and 8) were entranced by ours. Their older one ended up pushing Z for some time on a swing, while Z chattered away in her inimitable style. N and I sat and relaxed, and I walked out to the waterfront and watched cloud stretch over the sun, colouring the stunning view of the city, and lightning flash over the Campanile.
The rain was slight, and in any event it did not deter the kids: when we resumed walking, A kept trying to find places where she could get wet. We went down the straight and wide Via Garibaldi, towards the Tana stop near the Arsenale. But the kids spotted the huge sculpture of a hand just to the west, and ran to climb on it. We missed a boat in this way, and had a fifteen-minute wait. Finally we got on the vaporetto, back through the Arsenale, to Fondamenta Nuove, and a quick walk home to our apartment.
Z was still awake, and wasn't going to nap that late in the afternoon. The kids requested a treat at the nearby panificio (which had a minimal selection of pastries) and N bought them some apple tart rectangles.
I started in on dinner. First the schie, which I had no idea how to cook. I took the chance of showing them to the kids live and hopping about, then plunged them into boiling water for thirty seconds (too long, I should have used fifteen, or rinsed them in cold water right after) and dumped them into a bowl. They tasted better with a drop of extra-virgin olive oil; Z thought them quite nice, but A didn't like the crunch of the tiny shells or the barely-discernable heads, and demurred. A pound was far too much for all of us.
Second course: cannochie. Following Jeffrey Steingarten, I snipped off all extraneous parts with kitchen shears, cut open the back of the shell, and steamed them covered with a wet kitchen towel for "a brief time". How brief? I tried seventy-five seconds. Too brief; the meat was still squishy. Another forty-five seconds, and it had firmed up. It still took some work getting them out, but the kids liked it; the meat was sweet without being as rubbery or as rich as lobster. Even though they weren't as good as the ones we had at Corte Sconta in 96 (those having been cooked by an expert), they were polished off in short order.
We were close to full (with more than half the schie uneaten), but I had promised the kids fish (as opposed to shellfish), and so we did a third course: sardines about ten cm long, hand-butterflied without a knife (Steingarten described the method, which involves scraping the intestines out with one's thumb, but I cheated and bought already-prepared ones at the Rialto for a premium). I heated a quarter-inch of olive oil in a small skillet, floured the sardines and dropped in four at a time. I am not used to frying in anything but the barest amount of oil in a nonstick skillet, but this worked out okay. I did twelve, about half the pound I had bought, before deciding that the oil was too flour-saturated and the rest were unlikely to be eaten. Besides the seafood, we had the Giudecca bread, mixed salad, cherry tomatoes, and the last of the vini sfusi Cabernet Franc.
I managed to entice the kids out for a short walk in the early evening, through Campi San Zanipolo and Campo S. Maria Formosa. Then it was back for a bath, some apple tart, and to bed. We threw the circuit-breakers once more attempting to do laundry, and I was amazed that the added burden of the charger for the Newton computer on which I took these notes did not do the same.