day 026

// before leaving sarmeola, we browsed through in.gredienti, the food shop of the alajmo empire



// back in venice ... making japanese tourists feel right at home



// we found more cicchetti and more baby squid

day 025

// cicchetti at our favorite bar in venice before heading to sarmeola



// after a train and bus ride, hanging out at the pasticceria of calandrino



// lamp shades made out of fish skins?



// looking through the wine list at le calandre ... that table of middle-aged guys in the back. they were taking iphone pictures of their meal all night long. cute!

eataly ... the real thing

so, from sf, we went to new york, to taipei, to sapporo, to osaka, to frankfurt ... and then to milan and venice and a day trip to sarmeola.

we decided to include venice because aj hadn't been there since high school and it's a generally romantic city. we included milan because i wanted to go shopping in the motherland of fashion.

well, venice turned out to be only ok. our first hotel was sub-par. if you're going to stay in venice, i would highly recommend staying in a hotel out in venice mestre (first city on the mainland, not on the island). a 1EUR train ticket will get you to venice in only 10 minutes and the hotels seem much nicer (refer to my previous post for a visual comparison of the rooms).

i thought we might check out some murano glass or burano lace while we were out there, but i knew i wasn't going to buy any of it, so we skipped that part. our hunt for good snacks ended up being the highlight of venice.





milan actually ended up being more fun than venice. our hotel was awesome. gelato was excellent. super tasty breakfast self-catered from local delis. and the window-shopping could not be beat. i would have come out with so many new pairs of shoes, if only they had my size! perhaps next time we go, it will have to be before the stores get raided by models and editors in town for milan fashion week.







our side trip to sarmeola (small village in Padova/Padua) was planned entirely around the first "destination meal" of our trip. by "destination meal," i mean i wore a dress, aj wore his sport coat, and we used a credit card. it's the kind of meal reserved typically for celebrations like birthdays or anniversaries. but in our case, it's career research. and this research session left me overstuffed. i'll let aj do the recap, since that's his thing, but i will tell you, my dessert was accompanied by a small video projector.