Venice 2018

My good­ness, what a roller-coast­er it has been here in Lon­don — and abroad! — since our hot Amer­i­can sum­mer.  We hit the ground run­ning with a Sep­tem­ber of Sourdough…

…twin vis­i­tors in the shape of Fred­die and Angus, to the beloved swings of Tate Modern…

… after­noons work­ing in the new­ly-dis­cov­ered gar­dens of NEO Bankside…

… din­ner vis­its from beloved friends, Daniel, Lind­say and Wyeth…

… a read­ing and sign­ing of his new book with the divine Ottolenghi (who gave me per­mis­sion to repro­duce his fab­u­lous egg­plant recipe, say­ing, “Nick away!”)…

…adven­tures with Andrew’s divine tulip­wood instal­la­tion at the V&A…

… irre­sistible roast­ed chick­en skin, eat­en right from the roast­ing dish…

… Avery’s re-entry into the world of food pho­tog­ra­phy, for Vol­ume Two of the cookbook…

But Sep­tem­ber, as busy as it was, gave way last week to our sec­ond hon­ey­moon, of sorts, in Venice, of all places.  Real­ly pos­si­bly my favourite place on earth.  Three per­fect days!

It is one of the mir­a­cles of liv­ing in Lon­don that one can, in a flight of an hour and 40 min­utes, be in Venice!  A peace­ful walk to Black­fri­ars, a train ride to Gatwick, an easy flight, and then from the new­ly refur­bished Venice air­port, a salty Adri­at­ic-spray boat ride to that fab­u­lous city.

We arrived hap­pi­ly and walked the half hour or so to meet our Airbnb hosts, Donatel­lo and Gui­do, who passed over the keys, laugh­ing kind­ly at my attempts to retrieve my 1986 Ital­ian!  We ven­tured out to the food shops and found, to my delight, that we appeared to be in the Neigh­bour­hood of Venet­ian Cats!  They were every­where!  On pavements…

In bas­kets…

In win­dowsills…

What delights.  I could feel Ital­ian ladies inside these hous­es watch­ing me appeal to their cats, prob­a­bly shak­ing their heads at my enthu­si­asm for their moggies.

The next morn­ing found us saun­ter­ing hap­pi­ly under a per­fect­ly blue sky, past local butch­ers, a ceram­ic shop con­tain­ing a col­lec­tion of hand­made espres­so cups that I would spend the fol­low­ing three days wish­ing incon­clu­sive­ly to buy, green­gro­cers shout­ing the mer­its of their wares.  They were not mistaken.

How hap­py I was to be stay­ing in a home where I could cook!

We encoun­tered the best kit­ty of all, undoubt­ed­ly a new moth­er with lit­tle blue stitch­es in her tum­my, just a teenag­er her­self.  She was so keen to be petted.

And even held!

But the goal of the morn­ing was not to bond with a dar­ling, soft Venet­ian kit­ty.  The goal was an ill-advised, but high­ly amus­ing adven­ture — Row Venice!

This was our intre­pid teacher, Nan, who rep­re­sent­ed the mild­ly Quixot­ic group of almost exclu­sive­ly female row­ers and teach­ers whose goal it is to main­tain, and even increase, world sup­port of the art of build­ing and row­ing these beau­ti­ful boats.  I was, with­out a doubt, her worst stu­dent ever.

“I realise every­thing I’m telling you is counter-intu­itive!” Nan laughed.  “Walk the boat, use your core and your legs, relax your arms!”  I sim­ply could­n’t.  “Are you this tense in oth­er areas of your life?”  Nan asked in amaze­ment.  “You need­ed a drink before you arrived!”

It was won­der­ful to be over.  (John, of course, was very good at it.)

It was so won­der­ful not to be row­ing!  What a relief.  Row­ing was like ring­ing, only you could also fall off a boat.  It was of no relief what­so­ev­er when Nan stuck her oar in the waters of the lagu­na and showed that they were only waist-high.  I can swim, after all!  But I did­n’t want to fall off.  We all three agreed that as won­der­ful as Nan was as a teacher, row­ing in Venice is not a skill I want to pursue!

How glo­ri­ous to find our reward: our first cichet­ti!  After a cir­cuitous search, we found this par­tic­u­lar bac­aro, fea­tured in Rick Stein’s Venice trav­el and food show.

I real­ly don’t under­stand why I have vis­it­ed Venice so many times and nev­er before sam­pled this authen­tic way to eat?  It’s quite my absolute favourite way to eat — lots of lit­tle dif­fer­ent things, piled on toast, with two of each so you can enjoy them twice!

These two were lar­do — lard, yes, lard! — topped with some­thing between a mar­i­nat­ed and a sun-dried toma­to, and my new “inter­mit­tent fever­ish com­pul­sion,” bac­cala mon­te­ca­to, a mousse of salt­ed cod, gar­lic and cream.  Since com­ing home I’ve tried to make it, but it was not a not­ed suc­cess.  More on this anon, because I’m not giv­ing up.

More choic­es… the most heav­en­ly smoked salmon, and a crunchy, light­ly fried “fish from here.”

With our cichet­ti, which means “small quan­ti­ty,” we sipped a gen­tly fizzing Pros­ec­co, watched the world go by, and felt incred­i­bly lucky to be in such a sur­pass­ing­ly beau­ti­ful and frag­ile place.

Some­how, John and I nev­er run out of things to say, but then, with adven­tures like cichet­ti, there is always some­thing new in the hop­per.  Oh, the flavours!  The per­fect­ly blue sky, the wel­come the pro­pri­etress gave me to speak my halt­ing Ital­ian.  I went back for sec­onds and when I could­n’t decide, I just ges­tured to her and she chose more for us!  Perfection.

Around every cor­ner is anoth­er delight for the sens­es.  Could any­one be unhap­py, liv­ing in this mag­i­cal place?

Here’s a Venice inno­va­tion, one that’s made its way to Lon­don in some places: pub­lic foun­tains!  Why not top up your water bot­tle from this gargoyle?

After anoth­er long, long walk home, encoun­ter­ing this time two kit­ties who did not want to be pet­ted, or even photographed…

Nope, me either!

… it was din­ner time for us in our lit­tle house: the most flavour­some lit­tle mar­ket toma­toes, a per­fect­ly ordi­nary but extra­or­di­nary moz­zarel­la di bufala, and prop­er, Ital­ian ruco­la, a spicy big sis­ter to its lit­tle Eng­lish sib­ling rock­et, not to be men­tioned in the same breath as the taste­less Amer­i­can ver­sion, arugula.

Wednes­day morn­ing saw us on a mis­sion — to go back to the lit­tle pol­le­ria (yes, you got it, Chick­en Shop!) we’d seen after row­ing the pre­vi­ous day and get us a fan­cy butch­er chicken.

Along the way we encoun­tered this mys­te­ri­ous bridge (and sign) and yes, there was a hos­pi­tal there for incur­able dis­eases, in 1522.  Tell it like is.

Our chick­en acquired (more on that lat­er) we went on anoth­er cichet­ti odyssey, this time guid­ed by Martha’s Venet­ian expe­ri­ence and the absolute­ly fab­u­lous “Venice: Recipes Lost and Found,” by Katie and Gian­car­lo Calde­si, and found it at long last.

More famous than the bar of the day before, and there­fore much busier, the spot nonethe­less lost a few points by the own­er’s reluc­tance to let me speak my (admit­ted­ly not per­fect) Ital­ian.  (It kind of spoils the fun to have him inter­rupt and speak in even worse Eng­lish, but there you go — he had busi­ness to con­duct).  But the cichet­ti?  Sim­ply awe-inspiring.

These flavours were so cre­ative that I imme­di­ate­ly want­ed to go home and make them myself.  Puree of pro­sciut­to and cream!  Puree of arti­choke and olives!  More bac­cala, of course, but my favourite, I think, was a mys­te­ri­ous blend of tuna in olive oil (real­ly like a pâté) topped with gen­er­ous shav­ings of horse­rad­ish, and a tiny driz­zle of bal­sam­ic glaze.  I real­ly would like to recre­ate these gor­geous tid­bits at home.  I will keep you posted.

Even laun­dry in Venice is beau­ti­ful.  It was such fun to see ladies lean out and expert­ly draw in their lines and pluck the bright­ly coloured items off.

Home to deal with my chick­en.  Before…

… and after.  Like a chick­en with its… well, you get it.

Except that my keen-eyed food writer friends point­ed out that he was a guinea hen, not a chick­en.  She, that is.  What­ev­er.  Sim­ply roast­ed on a bed of gar­lic cloves and tiny mush­rooms, with a bit of white wine and plen­ty of salt and pep­per.  Yes, please.

After din­ner we decid­ed to see what a night­time Venice vaporet­to ride had to offer.  Oh, so much.  Not very won­der­ful pho­tographs, but so worth it to catch a glimpse into real Venet­ian lives, in the palazzi.  The Rial­to Bridge, so much more stun­ning at night than filled with shop­ping tourists in the day.

And the view of the Accad­e­mia Bridge…

We deter­mined that as much as we love get­ting 13,000+ steps in a day, the next Venice trip needs to include more time get­ting from place to place by boat.  Just so magical.

Next day the guinea hen/chicken made a glo­ri­ous pic­nic sand­wich, with more moz­zarel­la, Par­ma ham and rocket.

This lunch was intend­ed to gird our loins for our adven­tures at the Bien­nale d’Artchitet­tura, our osten­si­ble rea­son for the trip to Venice in the first place!

Now, the Bien­nale itself stretch­es all over the city of Venice, with lit­tle pop-ups here and there, but the main event is divid­ed between the Arse­nale, the won­der­ful erst­while aban­doned ship-build­ing ware­hous­es, and the Gia­r­di­ni Pub­lic­ci, which house Pavil­ions by country.

The Arse­nale this year felt a bit over­whelm­ing, not the least of which is the space itself.

As with any of these enor­mous shows, there can be moments of sheer over­load.  Too much text!

But there were charm­ing, inspir­ing instal­la­tions, as was this con­tri­bu­tion, ref­er­enc­ing ice fjords, by Greenland:

And this inno­v­a­tive wall made of sliced tree stumps, by Chica­go archi­tect Jeanne Gang.

But for us, the great­est joy at the Arse­nale was this stun­ning instal­la­tion called “Cloud Per­go­la,” con­tributed by Croa­t­ia.

Made of intri­cate­ly inter­wo­ven small plas­tic shapes attached by fish­ing wire, the over­whelm­ing impres­sion is one of light­ness and almost acci­dent.  Just beau­ti­ful.  And I’m in touch with one of the artists who cre­at­ed on Face­book now!  Some­day, that Show In My Head will hap­pen.  Over to the Gia­r­di­ni with us…

On to what John and I instant­ly felt was the stun­ner of the whole, giant exhi­bi­tion.  The cura­tors, two Irish female archi­tects, had asked 16 Irish archi­tec­ture firms to react to icon­ic, his­toric build­ings by cre­at­ing a mod­el that some­how pays trib­ute to it.  At the back of the room were pho­tographs of these icon­ic, inspir­ing build­ings, with a descrip­tion of the mod­ern archi­tects’ response. You’ll have to zoom in, to read the cura­tors’ rea­son­ing (in Ital­ian, why not?).

Trust me when I say that small mod­els real­ly DID echo their inspi­ra­tions!  Here are some exam­ples of the mod­els, our favourites.

(John was so hap­py, in his element.)

And my per­son­al favourite:

Unbe­liev­ably, it was time to go home.  With our heads filled with archi­tec­ture, the glo­ri­ous life of tourists with our heads held at that unmis­tak­able angle, our stom­achs filled with salt­ed cod and a chick­en with its head still on, we board­ed the boat to the air­port.  Good­bye, Venice.  Until next time.

After a sin­ful­ly pain­less trip home, it was love­ly to be reunit­ed with Avery and Martha, to dis­pense the giant Parme­san we had brought them, to set­tle into our Lon­don lives.  What a trip.