Risotto Pilgrimage in Venice

Here’s what I thought Venice was going to be like:

Here’s what it was actually like:

Turns out riding one of those gondolas costs an arm and a leg (who’da thought?). And, besides, look at these things! Everyone sold out and pimped out their gondolas…and here I wanted a rickety old wooden gondola. So this is me being angry about it…and boycotting the whole gondola ride altogether.

Also turns out it’s impossible not to get lost in Venice (well, that’s what the guidebook says). Venice is hard to explain unless you’ve been there—there are literally millions of little bridges over little canals (ok, fine, the guidebook says 400, but still), and thousands of tiny alleyways and streets—most of which seem to lead to dead ends, and about a quarter of which are even on the map. We probably spent about 95% of our time in Venice lost. (Good news is there could be worse places in the world to get lost.)

So come to find out Justin only wanted to go to Venice because he was on a pilgrimage to eat this risotto (whatever that is…ok, well fine, I know now) that was at this restaurant “Da Romanos” that was on some episode of Anthony Bourdain. And I said, “Well, what better place to go on a wild goose chase for some obscure restaurant that has some weird seafood dish than in a place where it’s impossible not to get lost?”

So we spent the better part of two days searching for this seafood risotto restaurant…that was actually not even on this island of Venice, but on this smaller, lesser-known island of Burano off the beaten track. Literally, we spent all of Saturday night when we arrived looking for it, and then cut our losses and got pizza…and then looked for it when we woke up the next morning until like 3 in the afternoon, when we finally found it and ate lunch. Justin says the risotto was, and I quote, “awesome.” I guess it was decent (the picture of it looks gross though, doesn’t it?)…I wasn’t even going to order it after all that but I had to because the smallest plate of it you could order was for two people. (Side note…I guess risotto is rice that is cooked in some boiling water of mini fish…)

The good news is we got to take the water bus to this little place…not quite the same as a gondola, but I decided it would have to do. The other good news is that Burano turned out to be a hidden gem…not to mention photo opp central. All of the houses are connected and painted in these really bright colors, and it’s a tiny island no one really knows about. 

The bad news is a storm started brewing after we had lunch, and I was beginning to get worried we’d be stuck on this mini island all night…but then it let up and we got back to Venice (when the risotto started having a negative effect). Ok, not really, but that would’ve been funny.

Then yesterday was a full day of travel to Switzerland, where we arrived in Interlaken last night. To end our tour of Italy (we had to stop for a “layover” in Milan), we decided to have one last taste of the delicious cuisine for which Italy is renowned around the world…big Macs at Mickey D’s. Yep, we sold out.