Venice and Torcello

 We had a travel day yesterday, and successfully arrived in Venice. It was, of course, a harried, hurried entrance into a city that is absolutely packed on weekends. Now it is Sunday evening and things have calmed down.

To avoid the Sunday crowds, our friends Susan and Larry suggested lunch on Torcello. They brought a charming friend Jane, and we chartered a taxi to take us there. Here are some pictures of the trip out.





Our first visit was to the Torcello Cathedral, which has exquisite Byzantine mosaics. You were not allowed to take pictures, even though that rule is new as I have taken pictures there before. So, I stole some pictures from the web to show you. Here's the lamb of God, which is on the underside of an arch on the right-hand apse. And the one below shows sinners being tossed to hell.



We then had lunch at Locanda Cipriani, outside on a lovely day. There were large tables of Italian families celebrating a baptism and birthday respectively. There was also a small table of friendly and good-looking Austrians, who gave Larry an after-lunch cigar when he admired the smell.

The food was so delicious. I started with a creamy risotto with locally sourced vegetables. It was amazingly good. Then I had a fritto misto of fish, which included my favorite, monkfish. All of it was sumptuous. Susan, as is mere routine, chose a lovely white wine to go with the food.

Here is a picture of the adjacent garden, which was a smidge unclipped at this time of year, but lovely. Jane particularly loved the pomegranates, and why not?


After three hours of great food and even better conversation, we headed home under lovely darkening skies. We ended up seeing the sunset on the vaporetto trip to our hotel.






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