Sunday, our 37th anniversary, and we had no plans for the day.  So we decided to just take a long walk.  It was the end of day light savings time here (yay! an extra hour in Venice!) so we got a nice early start.  We started going towards Rialto and walked through campo San Bartolomeo,

Window in a lace shop

onto Campo Manin where I was impressed by the lack of crowds–the cruise ship probably had not yet docked.  The canals in San Marco were a pretty light turquoise.

To Campo Santo Stefano where all the restaurant tables in the sun were filled.  Over the Accademia bridge where we stopped for a view.  Around to the right in Dorsoduro, we headed for Campo San Barnaba and the Santa Margherita where we sat and people watched for a while.  I took this cool shadow shot there.

The Panteleone church (we refer to it as the cracked church because there is a large crack in the brick facade) was one we had never been in before and it was open.  It features a huge painting on the ceiling of the saint’s story. The story is that the painter, Fiamini, died falling from the scaffolding while installing the huge canvas on the ceiling.

From there we headed to Tonolo, a bakery,but it was so packed I couldn’t even get in the door so we turned left and walked towards Piazzale Roma, checking out an apartment we had stayed in 4 years ago.  By this time I had worked up an appetite, so we stopped at Estro for a bit of lunch.  They have very interesting tramezzini (the Venetian triangle sandwiches on soft bread) which caught my eye.  We sat down and just got 3 and a glass of dry sparkling Veneto white.  The sandwiches were:  guanciale with mushrooms and spinach, porchetta with radicchio and shrimp salad. The first 2 were triangles on a brown bread and the shrimp was a small square on white. The guanciale was my favorite.

From there we took the “main drag” back towards Rialto.  Now it was really crowded!  We jockeyed for position for a nice anniversary kiss at the top and headed home. A quick stop at Santi Apostoli to try out the new gelato place, which we agreed wasn’t a good as Ca d’Oro.   As we approached Campo Gesuiti we were surprised how nice and early it was and we both said:  “What a great morning!”

After a bit of rest I started on our dinner.  Elisa dropped in with a gift of a cake for our anniversary.  What a thoughtful surprise.  We then went for one more, much shorter walk before dinner.  We ended on Strada Nova heading east and there were hordes of people walking towards the train station.  Most seemed like Italian tourists, but there were tons of them.

Dinner, wine, the yummy cake and our captivating lagoon view.  What a nice evening!

Happy Anniversary, my darling husband!