Venice and the Lido

To save tons of money, and to experience a different side of Venice, we had booked a hotel on the Lido - the long sand bar that forms the beach resort part of the Venice lagoon. When I say "resort", think Long Beach, Washington. It's actually a lot like Ostia, the blue collar beach resort place we stayed for our first night.

Here are a few photos from the Lido:

This next one is to add to my Escher collection. It's from inside the stairwell leading up to the crow's nest seen in the previous picture.

And it has some pretty villas.

Our hotel does not look like that. :-)

And there are some lovely views back toward the main islands of Venice proper. This is actually a lightning storm well to the north. We watched it from the banks of the Lido.

We went into Venice to wander around the Dorsoduro district and had a great lunch at a hole-in-the-wall off Campo Santa Margherita, bypassing all those waiters standing in front of their restaurants trying to get people to come in. One thing we've learned is that if the food is good, they don't have to do that.

The next day I went wandering around looking at some of the minor churches by myself. I'm including this picture because the sky was so pretty in it.

I ended up in the beautiful Cannaregio district where I found another great hole-in-the-wall place for lunch. I was the only non-native Italian speaker there, as the locals kept streaming in. It's called Paradiso Perduto (Paradise Lost). Here's my plate of grilled shrimp, onion, zucchini and fried zucchini flowers when I started.

As I was halfway through, one of the staff came by with a plate of fresh sardines that had just been battered and fried. I had one. Then two. Absolutely delicious. The whole lunch (including a full liter bottle of water) came to 6.30 Euro. That was about half what I would have paid at one of the tourist restaurants. (The bartender keeps track in his head of what you've eaten, then tells you how much you owe once you're done.)

Here's what the restaurant looked like:

The sign means "No docking",

And now for Mimi and Mungo's entertainment: Back on the Lido, there was one cat that I kept trying to get a picture of. She would pose for me, but she was so friendly that whenever I squatted down to take her picture she came running up to see what was going on, hence the blurry photo.

Finally some smell caught her attention, so I was able to snap this. Not very dignified, but what are you gonna do?

Dinner tonight at the same good restaurant we ate at two nights ago and then we're off to Paris tomorrow for a 22 hour layover and a whirlwind Rick Steves Historic Paris walk. Then it's home to Seattle.