Today was our day to explore the Rialto markets. Tim, Donna and myself head out after breakfast. We all loved wondering around the markets and found some cantaloupe, tomatoes and fresh basil for our wine tasting later on tonight. The markets were wonderful and we easily found the reportedly “best deli” in Venice: Casa Del Parmigiano where we purchased some prosciutto to wrap the melon with, buffalo mozzarella to go with the tomatoes and basil drizzled with olive oil, and an assortment of cheeses. On the way back to the apartment we stopped by the Marchini pastry shop (also reportedly the best in Venice by trip advisor people) and purchased an assortment of pastries for tonight. The all looked wonderful and we had a hard time deciding which ones to choose!
When we returned to the apartment I baked a chocolate cake which I had brought most of the ingredients with me except for the powdered sugar for the icing. It was an adventure finding the powdered sugar in the Billa supermarket because we were looking for a box and it came in a small muffin type package. When we were at the grocery store a few days earlier we did not find but one other shopper who spoke English, but we still asked several people for help and we were able to communicate enough with hand signals and pointing at pictures to find what we needed. Everyone we asked tried to help us and was very friendly. While I was working on the cake, Bill and Donna fixed some pasta we had picked up a few days earlier. It was pumpkin and cheese filled which the man who spoke a little English told us was good and to eat it with a butter and nutmeg sauce with parmesan cheese on top. What a nice surprise it turned out to be.
Months ago Charlene and I had came up with the idea of having a wine tasting party at our apartment the night before boarding the ship. After our cruisecritic roll call grew to over 200 people we decided we could not invite the whole “Ruby Stars” (the nickname of our message board group) to the apartment. We counted available seating in the apartment and came up with a number of people to invite and chose mostly the ones we have booked private tours with during the cruise. We meet our guest in St Marks square at 5:45 and walked them though the alleyways of Venice to our apartment. Our apartment agent in Venice has been wonderful with anything we have asked. She helped us order appetizers from her favorite cicchetti bar to deliver to our apartment. They were wonderful and I could have never done it without her! We had asked all of our guest to bring a locally produced Veneto wine and we had a very lovely evening getting to know some new people we will be sailing with tomorrow.
NOTE TO GLADYS: Your ears should have been burning for quite some time. We talked about you and want you to know you were missed. You will be glad to know we had a Jewish couple here who said you would be proud of my ordering abilities!!! The lessons are paying off.
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I had to call the fire department for the fire in my ears. Now they're just full of water thanks to the hoses. I read all the postings and saw the pictures but would've loved to know who I was looking at. I didn't see any pictures of me that you could've put out so I would've been there too.
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