I was beginning to feel a little oppressed by the weather (Florida girl), but as soon as we went outside, the slight drizzle in Campo Gesuiti made me smile. This little life style we have carved out in Venice is just my thing!

First stop was Puppa Bar where Masood told us he has opened a new place called Spicy Puppa a couple of blocks away, behind the Santi Apostoli Church. We wanted to get in a quick walk before doing our shopping around here. We decided to head over the Rialto Bridge. Lots of crowds and tour groups made for a difficult crossing, but I could weave my way through pretty deftly. Foolishly, we didn’t go into the Rialto market but, headed left. Here is a new store, “Iris Gallerie” right on the Ruga. For 350 Euro, they will make this framed picture of your iris:

We walked down quite a few blocks before heading back over the bridge. I love this mannequin in a motorcycle merch shop:

Our plan was to do a shopping circle here in Cannaregio, but the stores close at 1:00ish. We got some chicken thighs at Bisiol and then went on Strada Nova to the little I&S Farm organic produce market. I really loaded up on veggies. The bag was so full we had to circle back home from there.

I titled this blog “What’s New” and truth be told, the new stuff isn’t very pretty. Here’s one of the new franchise “Coffee Joint” shops on Strada Nova:

After we put away everything we had a short rest and went back to Strada Nova for lunch. La Prosciutteria is an Italian franchise with about 10 shops in Northern Italy. The decor is cleverly comfortable and informal. They had porchetta in the window and that’s what drew us in. We each started with a Spritz (Aperol for Ken, Select for me) and Ken ordered a porchetta sandwich, and I ordered a board of meat and cheeses which looked great, but the quality of the meats just wasn’t there.

We still needed a few more things, so we walked to the big Despar (in the old theater) Supermarket.

There is a huge building restoration project going on. I thought it was cool how they protected these historic decorative parts of the original building:

After a little rest, I started making dinner. Elisa had shown me the new addition to our the kitchen, a potato ricer. The potatoes we got from the organic produce shop looked great, so here I am–proud nonna in the kitchen:

So, there’s a whole lot of new businesses. Retail food shops and hair salons seem to be everywhere, but it is still amazing Venice and I am still in love.