1 Day in Venice, Italy: Sightseeing + Food | Italy Day 3

Good morning from Venice! Yay! So last night we drove from the Dolomites to the Venice airport, dropped off our rental car, and then took an Ali Laguna, which is a boat from the airport to Venice. It wasn't the quickest of rides, but it was pretty easy. It was 15 euros a person and we got to see some pretty cool views along the way. And now we're here! We're only here for one day, so we're gonna try to fit in as much food, see all the major sights, and have a good time. Just do it all! I am especially excited to eat gelato today, so today's gonna be a really good day. We haven't had gelato yet. I'm so excited! It gets crazy busy and is a madhouse. They have a bunch of cruise ships that will like dock here for the day, so that brings in tons of people. So we were very adamant about getting up early this morning and getting out to try to enjoy some of the sights without all the people, and it's paying off so far. Yeah, we got up and we booked it over here. We are in St. Mark's Square checking out the cathedral. There's the Campanelli. There's the Doge's Palace. Super cool to see. The sun just popped up behind it all. It's so magical. It's really cool. There's people taking like wedding photos here, and there's not many people around. There's more birds. There are more birds right now than there are people. Yeah, that's true. And we will come back in a little bit and see if that changes. So we've been walking around for about an hour now. It's just so beautiful. Such a beautiful morning. Not that many people out, and we're just kind of hitting up all the main sights right now without people so we can get good photos, but then we're going to come back to a lot of them later to actually explore them further. It's a really cool city so far. We are in the middle of the night. We are in the middle of the night, and we are on our way to go get some coffee and breakfast. We are getting pretty hungry, but I keep getting us lost because it's just really confusing to get around here because there's so many alleyways, and there's all the canals, and using Google Maps, but I keep missing turns. Yeah, even though there's 400 bridges, there's not always one where you need one. And we don't really feel like swimming today. Nah. All right, we made it to Torre Pasione Cana Regio. That's a mouthful. But walking up to this area, it's so cool. It seems like more local and the inside is just beautiful. But what we got here, of course, two macchiatos, and we got an eclair, pistachio, and then a beautiful looking croissant. Oh man, looks so good and tasty. Round two. The food was so delicious and so was the coffee, so we had to get more. This pistachio eclair has this pistachio cream filling, and I wasn't expecting that, and it is absolutely incredible. And then Adam was eyeing this guy earlier, so we wanted to try this one as well. It's like a twisted croissant with chocolate. And then, of course, we got more macchiatos because we're used to some larger size coffees in the U.S., so we tend to be getting two of them whenever we go places just to make sure we have enough energy to take on the town. There are definitely more people than birds now. We just finished our self-guided tour of the Doge's Palace. Another way to say Doge is the Duke or the head leader of Venice. So disclaimer, I'm not really a museum kind of girl. Adam does love history, but when I'm in a museum, I like to look at the stuff, but like I kind of don't really like to read all the stuff. It sounds really bad, but I do like to look at it. And the inside of this place was really, really beautiful and really cool. Unfortunately, we could not take any videos, but I did get some cool photos. Some of my favorite things on the inside was definitely the prison. The prison was so cool. The ceilings were so low, like Adam couldn't walk through some of them. You had to see like the cells and everything. It was just really neat. I also loved seeing all the swords. They had a room just full of swords and they were massive and I can't even imagine people like carrying those and like stabbing people with them. I also loved the ceilings. The ceilings were beautiful and gold and yeah, they were just extremely ornate and absolutely stunning. Yeah, you took my favorite was the armory with all the swords and the arrows and the crossbows. It was cool to see all that. I wasn't expecting to see that. And then also the grand like chamber where all the leaders would meet is like 53 meters long and 20 something high and it was just, it was the largest room in Europe at one point and still is one of the largest rooms. Yeah, it's a big, big, big room which is good because it was not super packed in there, but there's definitely a good amount of people, so it gave us some space to spread out. And now we're gonna go up this bad boy. The San Marco is 99 meters tall, but don't worry, you can use a lift to get up to the top. Besides the view, another cool thing about it is that Galileo used it as an observatory for his telescopes. Super cool. The view is incredible up there. We bought the skip the line tickets, so that way we didn't have to wait in the line as the name implies. And the line was like a good length. It wasn't like the longest line I've ever seen, but we were able to get up there really, really quick and it's pretty quick once you're up there too. You just walk around, see all of these and then leave. We paid 13 euros a ticket for skip the line and I just checked and it's eight euros for a normal ticket, but to us the five extra euros a person. Worth it to me. Totally worth it. It was really nice to just kind of get up there and get down. We were gonna go check out St. Mark's Basilica, but it's unfortunately really long line to get in there. So basically you can go in for free or you can pay to see other things in there. So if you go for free, you only have access to one area. We were hoping to go to the free portion, but the line's not worth it. It's not worth it to me even though it's free. And it's out in the sun and yeah it's pretty crazy long. It's like wrapped all the way over here. Yeah, I think we're gonna skip it unfortunately. It looks beautiful from the outside though. I'm sure it's gorgeous on the inside, but I think we're now on the hunt to find some lunch. Pasta! We went to a place called Dal Moros for lunch and it's this really quick, you order at the counter, you grab it, they don't even have seats, you just take it to go which is our kind of place. We've been missing those kind of quick places while we've been in Italy and it's fresh handmade pasta as well as homemade sauces. I got their pesto with chicken and it looks so good. Smells so good. So update, the gluten thing's going pretty well. So I've had a lot of gluten since we've been here. I've been taking a pill every day. Not sure if that matters or not, but I haven't really felt sick minus the fact that I'm eating way differently than I normally do which is like a lot more carbs than normal. I feel pretty good. So I think, I think it's the rumors are true. I'm gonna enjoy this pasta. Cheap, quick, delicious, love it. Okay, I got the bolognese. So it's a meat sauce and tomato sauce and then I added some parmesan. I think this is ground beef. I'm excited. Yeah, you said it's like al dente noodles with the mozzarella on there. We're officially in Italy now. Yeah, we made it. We got gelato and it's melting so fast. All over our hands. That was a stressful gelato experience. That was chaos. It was just melting everywhere. It was not. All down my arm. All on my hands. It was not the picture-perfect gelato moment we hoped to share but that's okay. It's delicious. Just pretty warm out. The sun was beating on it. Super good though. So we got the gelato at Suso and I got like a peanut chocolate flavor and then also a caramel toffee flavor. I got the peanut chocolate one also and a flavor called opera which is coffee and chocolate. I think it's like a Nutella. I think it's hazelnut and chocolate. Hazelnut and chocolate. Yeah. They're both delicious. Yeah, man. Comes with a little cookie on top too which the cookie makes for a nice little scooper of all the dripping ice cream. Just pro tip. Wow, things have definitely changed a bit since we were in this spot last time. A lot more people. A lot warmer. So we're gonna go try to find somewhere inside with maybe some AC. Just sit down for a bit. Yeah. Pretty hot. We wore like a ton of clothes today because we thought we were going in the basilica. We didn't want. You have to cover up your shoulders and your knees and everything but then we didn't go in so we're just sweating now for no reason. All right. We found a nice quiet shady spot to take a break. Take a little sit. We got our espresso and some nice cold water. We're at Cafe del Doge. If you want to find this place it's in this little alley here. Perfect spot to just take a little breather. We're awake. We're ready. Yeah. Just had a bit of a scare. Went on a wild goose chase looking for some cash. So that coffee shop we were just at, they didn't take credit card for whatever reason. Which is actually more common than we thought. So that's something that we've been wanting to address but we just haven't yet. We weren't as surprised from the Dolomites that they didn't take credit card. You know, smaller town. You're kind of in the mountains with these huts. But we are surprised that places in Venice haven't taken our credit card. I think this might have been the first one but it's definitely something that we need to be aware of as we keep traveling through Italy. So we got out like 200 euros before we came at our bank back in Seattle and we already blew through that. So we already know we need more cash to pay our tour guide in a couple days and then, you know, just for coffee and little odds and ends. So yeah. Adam went on a little adventure by himself to go find some. Yeah. So the standalone ATMs, just so you know, they charge a hefty fee. So a 12% fee of the total of what you're trying to get out on top of another $3.95. It might be different when you get here. That's what it was for me. So if you can, find a bank. It was called Unibank and they had a couple ATMs there and it was only a 3% fee and no other extra fee on top of that. So if you need to get cash here that's the way to go. Yeah. So from our googling we learned the standalone ATMs are bad. Go find an actual bank and use their ATM. You're obviously still going to pay a fee. I think our bank actually covers like part of the fee. So we should maybe not have to pay as much. But yeah, for 200 euros we were going to pay like an extra 50 euros or something like that with all the fees. So yeah. Keep that in mind so you don't have to panic like we were. Yeah. Best case scenario though is try to think about and plan out where all your stops are and maybe get a little bit more before you come over here. Yeah. We could have done a better job like keeping track of what places were cash and only what weren't. We've been a little spontaneous and just grabbed coffee at random places but that's okay. It worked out. Keep that in mind though, that spontaneity. Yeah. It worked out and hopefully we'll be good at least for a while because I don't think it's gonna last the rest of our trip. One of our favorite things to do when we visit a new city is find a really cool local bookstore and we're at one called Libraria Aqua Alta. I could get lost in bookstores all day long. We've heard this one's pretty cool and apparently it's the most beautiful bookstore in all the world. So I thought that was a pretty cool bookstore. They had a ton of like really cool displays with the books. They had the books in bathtubs. They had the book in a gondola. They had like steps that you can climb up made of books and walls made of books. So it was really cool to just check out for a few minutes or so. Yeah. So it's a small space so it gets a little crowded but definitely worth a look if you're in in the area. Yeah. It's fun to snap some pictures and they have some interesting books in there. You'll know what I mean if you go. As you're walking around Venice you're likely going to get hungry. We've walked probably like nine something miles today. We've just been going all around and in circles and down alleys and getting really lost. We don't always want to just like sit down at a restaurant. We like to get quick things that are cheap and kind of grab and go. So there's this thing in Venice called cicchetti which is basically like small snacks. So this can be like bread with stuff on top of it or actually I don't even really know what all the options are. So what we're going to do now is go on a little cicchetti tour and show you some of the places around town. We're going to kind of hop all around Venice, go to different areas, try a bunch of different things, and feel our berries. First stop on our cicchetti tour we are at Osteria Dei Zemei and so here we've got the beautiful cicchetti crostinis. This one here is a salami with some spicy peppers on top. This is the coppa e formaggio and so here's the meat here and then the cheese is under there. This is feta cheese with an onion jam. And then here's my wild side. This is the anchovy with like a radicchio slaw on there. First time trying anchovy. Should I go head first or tail first? Head. That's really good. It's really salty and creamy and bread is soft. That's so good. I'm too scared to try the anchovy. I need to work up to that first but this coppa e formaggio is so good. The cheese is so creamy. The meat's delicious and the bread is super soft but also crispy on the outside. So all throughout town you can find these little water fountains that are just constantly spouting water. So to be economically friendly, not spend as much money buying a water bottle everywhere and environmentally friendly, you can just duck your water bottle under there, fill it up and get refreshed all day. So we saw these in the Dolomites as well and I hear there's a lot more in Rome. So we had four items here. We had it on here. We're going to take a photo of it. And we weren't paying attention and a seagull I guess came and had a nice little snack for him. So you're welcome seagull. So the treats that we have left after we fed our friends is a fritti. So there's beef inside of this. It's fried. It's fried. Looks like it's breaded and fried maybe. This is a beef on top of the crostini with some cheese there and then we got a panini with some kind of meat there and sprocket probably. I'm gonna give this guy a little try. I have no idea what to expect from this. It's really just like a patty that's breaded or fried. It's really good. It's really really juicy on the inside. So despite the tragic event that happened, I went in to pay paid for the four that I got and as I was leaving I just mentioned that a bird came and snatched it. She was very nice and she offered to give me another one so we could try it. So I'm guarding this one with my life. Let's see what the bird took from us. That's really good. What is that? I don't know. Ricotta? It's just very fluffy. It's a very fluffy cheese and it doesn't have like an overpowering taste. It's just really like it's like whipped cream cheese. I'm gonna taste that walnut. I hope the bird wasn't lactose intolerant. Not this time bird. We're gonna take a quick break from Cicchetti and get more gelato and hopefully not get it all over ourselves this time. Our second gelato stop of the day is Gelateria Il Doge. It's in this cool little area right on the water but not super busy at all. I got the gnocchiola which is hazelnut as well as the pistachio. Both of these I believe are pretty like traditional gelato flavors in Italy and I haven't had them yet so I'm excited to try it. It's starting to melt but it's not as bad as earlier. It's really good. It has a really nice nutty flavor. I got the stracciatella on the bottom and the gnocchiola on top. So there are a few things to look out for when you get gelato in Italy to make sure you're not at a tourist trap and you're at like a really authentic good place. And one of them is you don't want the colors to like not match what the thing actually is. So for example pistachio should not be like bright neon green. It should be like the color of the place we just went to where it's kind of more of a muted green. It matches like the color of pistachio. Another thing I've heard is you want to get gelato in a metal tin not in like a plastic container. There's a bunch of other ones too that I can't remember right now but there are secrets to make sure you get a good gelato experience. Don't get tripped. Yeah that place was delicious. It's really hard to pick a favorite of the day for me because our first experience was so stressful because I had ice cream. I had gelato on my feet like on my toes. It was just all over so I felt like we were rushing eating it but I also think that I liked those flavors the best. That's what I was gonna say. Yeah because they had like chunks of stuff in there like crunchy stuff and I love like chunks in my ice cream and granted we could have probably picked different flavors here but I wanted like the authentic flavors. It was delicious here too but I liked the gelato like the suso flavors that I got just because they're like caramel and peanut buttery and delicious. I'd say that was my favorite too even though it was a rush and it was stressful. I think they had like I gave them the edge on the better flavors but this place was solid too. This place is cool because it's kind of tucked away. It's just in this like hidden little corner and it's not super busy and it's just really cool and I also think that the flavors were amazing here as well so you really can't go wrong. My advice, our advice, I think Adam would agree is to just do gelato bang bangs. Just do both. Just go to a bunch and just see for yourself which one you like the best. I think almost every day of our trip we're going to at least two. It's gonna be the best. Light change of plans. We were gonna go to one more cicchetti place but Adam also really wants pizza and we thought about all the amount of food we've eaten today and we're like oh. I mean we have walked like 11 miles to be fair but we were like we shouldn't spend the money on both. We shouldn't eat both so we decided to get pizza instead. I've walked by this pizza place 100 times today. No joke like at least 10. Yeah it's called my name every time it's been whispering at me. He keeps going oh it looks so good. Oh that looks so good. So we're gonna get some pizza. We're just gonna share a piece. Even though you can get pizza anywhere in Italy and cicchetti is more of a Venice thing we still feel like we got to try a good sampling of what like a cicchetti place is like. You know between the paninis and the crostinis and just like the fried meat things. Really really good. I think both places were awesome. There were certain things I liked more at one than the other and vice versa. Yeah it was something new. We hadn't tried that before. It was fun to go off the beaten path a little bit and find the last place where the seagulls stole our food. Yeah it's another fun thing to like hunt them down. We kind of walked a good bit around and it's all part of the fun. There's tons around town and it's a really good place to go for like an appetizer before you go get like a real dinner because they're very small and they're relatively cheap. They're more kind of like an appetizer and then you can go eat a big meal or just go eat a bunch of cicchettis and that's your dinner. Look at this. Oh damn. That is a good pizza. That's good sauce. Went back to our Airbnb and changed because we could not handle those clothes any longer. We were so sweaty. Adam took a little five-minute nap sitting up in a chair. He was like I'm gonna take a nap. I was like I'm gonna take a nap. And we headed outside to go catch the sunset but when we did it was raining so I don't know. It stopped raining. We're gonna just see what happens but we're not feeling too confident anything magical will be happening in the sky tonight besides some thunder and lightning. Yeah we'll see. We'll give it a go. Yeah who knows. Looks like there will be no magic happening in the sky tonight. It's getting kind of dark and we can hear some thunder and like we said before we don't want to get trapped walking like 30 minutes possibly in a storm so we're turning back unfortunately. One thing that we really wanted to do tonight and it's something Adam actually found out about is an orchestra right? Yeah there's orchestras that like set up at the cafes in the Piazza San Marco and they kind of like battle each other across the piazza. That sounds super fun. So we were hoping that we would have a chance to go see that but it's just not looking likely but if you come to town definitely check that out because it sounds really fun and I hear like the whole city at night is really cool. At least it seemed cool when we got here last night we were walking around trying to find our Airbnb. With that said that is a wrap on our time in Venice. We were only here for one day but I feel like we were able to squeeze in a lot especially eat a lot of food. Yeah for sure. I was really excited to come here to check out all the old architecture. It's all kind of crumbly looking in some parts and it's just really cool to see and all the waterways and bridges. There's a lot of things to explore. We got lost a lot but it was like a fun kind of loss because like we just found like really cool alleyways and just really cool old buildings and just a lot of history here. It's a really really cool city although a little bit busy which I will say annoyed us a little bit more towards the end of the day but I think we were just so hot and sweaty that we were kind of just annoyed in general. The only other thing that we'd have to say like negative is that there's like nowhere to sit anywhere like we just wanted to like go to a park bench or like sit out sit on the street like sit in a plaza and just rest but like the only places to sit were like where people were dining and we don't want to keep spending money dining so that's the only negative thing. Yeah you can't just there's nowhere to just really like just take a breather. But I will say I feel like one day was a good amount of time here. I feel like we were able to see everything we wanted to see. If we had more time though we would have loved to go to one of the islands. There's how many of them? There's 117 of them so. 117 islands. We probably saw a lot of them today but uh there's some other cool ones that you can check out too. Yeah like Murano and Burano specifically. If you are here for more than one day I've heard that that is a great way to spend a day is to go to one of those. Real quick before we cut the vlog favorite thing we did today? My favorite thing was the Campanelli di San Marco because I thought it was cool that when you're up there you're walking around in the same footsteps as Galileo. That was unreal. That was probably my favorite thing as well. I will also say getting up really early and starting to like walk around and see the sites you really want to see early is key because as the day went on everything got busier and busier and it was awesome to like go see the main like square and see the bridges that we wanted to see without people. So that was awesome. That's key. Favorite food? Favorite food is a tough one between that pasta. Both of those pastas were delightful and then the pizza was out of this world so I can't pick one of those two. Yeah I agree I know that's not helpful at all. We count food as like the non-sweet thing so um both of those were incredible. Everything else we ate was really good too it's just those two were like hot and warm and just stood out. Perfect. They hit the spot each time. I think we both agreed Suso was our favorite gelato. Yeah. But they were both really good too. You can't go wrong so everything we ate today was really good. Just be careful of seagulls stealing your food. So thank you Venice for a fun day. We have a really long travel day tomorrow. We are headed down to Matera so we're gonna go get some sleep and we'll see you there. All right we made it to... I don't know how to say this. All right we made it to Torre Pasione. Come on dog. The back of your head is ridiculous. I almost just knocked it over. Gelato!