On the advice of my mom, we went over to Lido for a few hours.
It was a beautiful day; I started out with a sweater but after we got off the boat, I packed it up. Being there reminded me of how different Venice is from the rest of Italy. As soon as we started walking around Lido, I thought, now we are in an Italian beach town and it was quite charming. There are lots of decorative touches in the architecture–beautiful iron work and colorful trims.

After a bit of an explore, off the main street, Ken was jonesin’ for a salami sandwich. So we stopped at this little cafe.

I had two small pieces of “torta salata” think vegetable pie with a top crust–one piece was spinach and the other mixed veggie. They were delicious and a perfect lunch for me.
Then we walked down the tree lined lane to the beach:

Ken said, “Our beaches are so much more beautiful” and I have to agree. The sand is dark on Lido and there’s some trash floating around. The beach was crowded with sun worshipers but we weren’t the only ones just walking in real clothes.
One more photo from the Lido:

We decided to come back the long way on the #2 vaporetto and go to Cafe del Doge for a quick coffee. Later we went to our nearby vegetable market and I got about a kilo of tomatoes to make a little fresh sauce with pancetta, for pasta. We stopped at the bakery around our corner and they had fresh spinach ravioli in the case so I bought some of those. The combination really didn’t work–both the sauce and the ravioli were good but they didn’t compliment each other at all.
We took a short walk after dinner and went around to the back of the basilica Giovanni e Paolo:

We haven’t gone inside yet–We are saving it for when Pat and Bob come.