Improbability day!

Laundry day oh boy! This ended up being the most confusing of our laundry expeditions yet, because although it was a proper laundromat the bill acceptor was broken, so we had to go buy some pastries to get small change. Also the soap dispenser wasn’t working (yay for our Tide shipment from home!), there was an uneven number of washers and dryers, the dryers actually didn’t do their job very well, and the pay menu was confusing. Pah. At least we were able to walk around the immediate area while stuff was running, and that way we found a whole Mephisto store (ah fancy shoes), a very cute part of town around a park, and a modern art exhibit in an old palace. Good stuff!

We came back to the room to cool off and drop of the laundry, but ended up staying for much longer, as sleepy as we were. We also managed to book a hotel in Rome finally, so that’s at least something. The lack of productivity felt super lazy to me, but rest is important. After a few hours we felt ready for street battle again, and set out towards our favorite part of the Jewish quarter. We walked through a square that usually was pretty quiet but tonight was bustling with Jews, one (very orthodox looking) of which came up to us and asks “Are you Jewish? What are you doing later?” It was initially really suspicious so I just replied that I’d be with Peter. Then the guy clarified and said that there were Shabbat services in the piazza and then there would be free food later. Ah Jews! Luring people in with the promise of free food – that’s the way to do it. We said we’d think about it since it was so surprising and because we had a different menu in mind, although it seemed like it would end up being pretty entertaining.

More meandering took place as we watched crazy looking clouds form. When you first land in Venice you can’t imagine why anyone would try and live there amongst the glut of tourists. But in the back streets you get a better sense of how local life really is, and how beautiful and alternately run-down (like a boarded-up church) the sections rarely seen by tourists are. The lack of cars is pretty bizarre too, although I suppose if you lived here you’d just get a boat and be done with it. Even after some exploring none of the other kitchens were open yet, so we stopped in the Dodo Café for a ham&cheese toasted sandwich. It originally looked like nothing special but as we waited, we checked out all the photography he had hanging in the place, which was cool, and then noticed that they have a dedicated sandwich toasting machine that cooks it perfectly. So something fairly basic turned out surprisingly well!

For the real dinner, however, we ultimately decided to go BACK to Osteria Bea Vita again…we figured we knew it was good and authentic, and they always had seating (and people made reservations for tables!) unlike some other places we saw. Peter got beef steaks with red wine sauce and fresh (really fresh) berries, I got a monkfish in prosecco white wine sauce with artichokes, and we split more of the lovely dessert wine and an aubergine semifreddo (kind of like ice cream with strawberries and delicious). The food was definitely worth going back but what made dinner all the more improbable (moreso than hitting the same restaurant three times in three days) was the weather that resulted from the crazy clouds of earlier. For a while it looked fine and then it just began to really pour, so much so that we took our wine and dashed into the restaurant from our soaking wet umbrella outside. This was excellently timed because shortly thereafter it started to hail! In July, in Venice! Pretty incredible.

The improbable doesn’t end at dinner, though. We passed through the Jewish piazza again and talked about how I wasn’t exactly knowledgeable enough to attend the big dinner thing, but one of the very orthodox looking guys overheard us and told us that we were invited again, and led us to the table. At that point it was a bit too late to escape so we figured we’d just go with it. There was some sing-chanting and the challah and the washing of hands; in the first five minutes it felt more strictly traditional than what we do on Passover. Some of the other travelers at the table were conversing in Hebrew as well! When we got up to wash our hands I actually recognized a face in the crowd though! Brian, a cheme major the same year as me, and his friend were walking towards us – insane that they’re also taking a Europe trip and we happened to bump into each other! That made our second dinner much easier, as I could just talk to people I knew and they would tell me if I was doing anything wrong. The food wasn’t superb but it was free; I took very little because I was full but it was a nice thing for the restaurant to do. They didn’t even ask us for donations or anything, so it was purely on good faith that they were just serving fellow Jews that were walking by. Definitely interesting and hilarious, given that I’d written off recognizing another face after waving goodbye to Sue. So we ate, shared travel stories (and afterbite – yikes are the mosquitoes vicious sometimes!) and then walked around with the guys afterwards for a while just chatting. Such a great time!

So despite our initial impressions of Venice, there were definitely less touristy and more fortuitous things to be seen. I’m exhausted now but figured I had to write up all the crazy things we did before it escaped my brain. If I think of more, that’s what the rest of the blog is for! Alright, a train to Florence tomorrow and we’ll again be someplace new! I hope we are able to find the same caliber of cute streets and delicious food there too!