The morning started with a text from Martin saying that he and Bill were going to the Frari. Since it’s so close to us, we met them for a quick coffee there before they went into one of our favorite churches. (Ken is determined not to visit any more churches and is perfectly happy that I lost “his” chorus pass. The big joke between us is that he complains that all the churches have a “common theme”. And he was so taken with the splendor of the Gesuiti church he feels like he should end on a high note.) Anyway it was great to see our friends and we went on our way.
Next project was to find the apartment Mindy will be renting in the fall. I had checked google maps and it was not where the map said. So, I checked on mappy.com. We went to that street and although the address numbers were close, none were the exactly right one. Just as we were coming out of that wrong street I saw Davide from Aliani. I asked him if he knew where 1259 would be and he walked us right to it all the while explaining that the numbers really make no sense. So we found it and took pictures of the little street. We walked around a bit more just taking in the whole San Polo vibe:

We saw this “costume” hanging in a window across the canal from Sottoportego Tomassi:

We made a quick stop at the small Coop but they were out of our favorite cereal.
Came home for a bit and met Nan for lunch at a brand new place. Estro, at this point a wine bar with an extended menu, has opened this week and they are friends of Nan’s from La Staffa (which has closed). If you know where Tonolo is, just go one more block and it’s on the corner on the right. They don’t have a sign yet, and said it may be months because the city has to approve everything they do, but it’s obvious from the street that it’s a wine bar. First we tasted 2 different proseccos and decided what to eat. Wanting to taste a lot of stuff, we way over ordered. We all shared everything but each had a pick or two. I chose a fish platter. It had some cured salmon, over arugula, a really interesting octopus salad, with a realish of celery, cantaloupe and cucumber, “latte di seppia” (squid roe??) a very mild flavor with some fennel fronds, and the typical Venetian bacala mantecato. Each bite was a delicate flavor explosion. I really loved it, especially in combination with the wine–something Nan knew about which is near Soave but not.
We also had an amazing orange colored gazpacho, which we really couldn’t figure out the ingredients; we had a focaccia with lardo and red onions which reminded me of pizza bianca. The chef told us it was a Sicilian version of focaccia and it was amazing. Ken had a sandwich with pecorino, crispy pancetta and some kind of, almost pickled, greens–amazing! The only dish we didn’t love was the eggplant parmigiano. It wasn’t bad at all, it just didn’t go with all the other light flavors we had on the table. Nan seems great and it was nice spend a little time with her. Here she is:

So full from lunch, which didn’t get done til about 4:00, we came home to rest. I have a little muscle-pull and I really wanted to take it easy the rest of the day. We went out later for a short walk and a sit in the campo.