I woke up all excited about going to Pilates class in Italian. We walked together, stopping for coffee at Rizzardini and going over the Rialto bridge:


It was, as my teacher Sue Carpenter would say, challenging. There were 4 women in the class. Of course, I was the oldest and from the little bit I watched the others, I was probably the most experienced in Pilates. The room was small–just enough space for the 6 reformers with maybe 12 inches in between. The teacher was very sweet but her English was about as bad as my Italian. We agreed that I would tell her when I couldn’t understand. I liked the word for flex the feet–flettere i piede and for pelvis she always used the English. Mostly I could feel my brain working hard to concentrate on Pilates and the language at the same time. I would love to go back again–veddiamo (we’ll see).
I walked home fast because it was starting to drizzle but it never really rained. Ken and I had a lunch reservation at Il Ridotto, reputed to be one of the best fine dining, restaurants in town. Because of the drizzle we decided to take the vaporetto, going to San Zaccharia stop. It took forever! We were worried about missing our reso and when we finally got there, we were the only ones in the place. The lunch: Beuatiful plating, fabulous quality ingredients, very nice service, beautiful china and fine Murano glasses BUT way too much salt! I like salt but the over kill really ruined the meal for us.
I had 2 appetizers–first langoustines with cauliflower puree and almonds:

This was really nice, langoustines cooked perfectly but the puree had very little flavor; more prominent was the olive oil, not complaining but…
Ken had the calamari fritti:

What a great presentation! The little sprigs of fresh oregano were perfect with the briefly cooked tomatoes and olives underneath.
Ken followed with orrechietti with asparagus and vongole veraci. The little pasta “ears” were home made with perfect texture, the asparagus was in shaved discs and the clams were fresh with ocean flavors but just a little too much salt.
Then the really bad dish: Scallops with carrots. Wish I had a photo. It was picture perfect on the plate. About 7 scallops with their roe, caramelized to a lovely light brown, the carrots were quartered lengthwise and laid on the plate with their tops. There was a slight hint of ginger on the sauce but each scallop was overwhelmingly salty. Boo! I tasted salt all day. Ken had a wonderful tiramisu and we both had coffee. We had 3 glasses of wine–one Prosecco, one delicious Franciacorta and one “Orto Venezia” malvasia. The bill came to 128 euros. Too much! That’s definitely the end of our fine dining choices.
We walked home getting a few snap shots on the way and took a good nap.
Back side of the Bridge of Sighs:

and this clever graffiti:

In the late afternoon a painter appeared on the bridge below our windows. Watching him was great entertainment. Here’s him and then a photo our of my window towards his view:


Later, we went down stairs to say hello:

and we took a walk into Santa Croce:


And stopped on the way home to join the crowd at Le Le(as seen from our window) for a spritz and a red wine: