This morning, I debarked on a mission to see some new things in Venice, hit a natural foods store I found in a guidebook, and of course, eat some good food. First stop was walking to Piazza San Marco to see the other three museums there that were included in the Piazzo Ducale pass from last week – Museo Correr and the museums of Archeology and Library that are all located in the buildings that surround three sides of the Piazza. They were all once state buildings of various sorts and now house the museums, which is really nice. I started with Museo Correr, home to mostly art and cultural exhibits from the era of the Republic of Venice (roughly until the 18th century). They were mostly pretty small in comparison to what I had seen the week prior, but still very interesting. Most eye-catching were the descriptions of daily life in Venice, the cartography of the region, and a room on the ships of the Venetian army. The Museum of Archeology was also fairly small, but contained incredible pieces of sculpture that have been excavated from various ancient sites. Most came from the era of Roman rule and depicted Gods/Goddesses and leaders from the time. The best part was that they were just out in the open and although it was a bad tourist of me to do so, I couldn’t help but run my fingers along the smooth stone surface of an ancient figure. It was eerie and astounding at the same time. The Library section of the museums was simply a room with the oldest book collection in Venice, which was cool to see, but really only took about a minute.
After the museums, I meandered over to the Rialto district for some souvenir shopping and that’s all I’ll say about that!
From the Rialto, I headed towards Mea Libre, the natural foods store that was listed as a great place to go in this free pocket guide to Venice I picked up a few weeks ago. I’ve been on the search for soy-meat for 6 weeks now and have found NONE. I’m sure there’s places to get it, just not in the specific areas we dock. I guess they’re more of the bread-and-cheese type of vegetarian (a la Alexandria Martin… ha!) as opposed to the protein-supplementing, veggie-loaded diet I’m used to. As good as the food is here on the ship and in the ports, it’s not exactly what I would choose from my local Trader Joe’s to eat on a daily basis. Anyway, I arrived at this teeny tiny store back on a side street off Strada Nuova- the main drag in the northern district of Venice. They were actually supposed to be closed for siesta, but thankfully, the shopkeep was still there, surely waiting just for my visit. She spoke excellent English and basically gave me a guided tour of the entire shop! I almost laughed out loud several times while I was there because it was just like the other Italian grocery stores I’d been to – at least 75% snacks! I thought American markets were pretty bad with that, but it’s like aisles and aisles of cookies, crackers, chocolates….every concoction of sugar and flour and egg that you could imagine. So these snacks were all various kinds of healthy-ish: sugar-free, gluten-free, diary-free… I was like, ok, but where is the real food, lol. I did find rice milk, which was really exciting! The shopkeep showed me these gluten free cookies that the local monks make in Venice, so I had to try those, along with some other of her favorites that she pointed out. No tofu/fake meat was to be found, though.
I walked back to the Piazza Roma, which is right before the bridge to get to the cruise ship port. There were some gardens on the map I had that I wanted to check out and they were nice, but not too big. Once on the other side of them, I found a restaurant along a canal to sit and have a pizza and prosecco. Mmm…
Back on the ship, I had a full basket of show laundry to do for tonight’s Welcome Aboard Shows, so it was straight back to work. Tonight, we went to two shows at 8 and 9:30 for Welcome Aboard, which made it feel just like another show night. After a long day walking the streets of Venice and two shows, I wasn’t up for going to see Shadow Dancing in Bliss this week.
OH! I can’t believe I haven’t blogged about this yet… one of the daily joys I have here on the ship – Deluxe Music! Channel 55 on the crew T.V. is Deluxe Music, a german music video channel. They play THE MOST obscure, random videos from before there were even videos through the early nineties. I haven’t ever seen a video beyond a 1995 Ricky Martin b-side. They’re videos from around the world, but mostly American pop. You could watch for twenty minutes and see Wham’s “Club Tropicana”, a German rock singer, a French girl group, and a Dave Clark Five video from a television special. It’s pretty amazing. Then they have a late night lounge music program called “Earth” and play chill music to travel/nature videos. That’s been my favorite thing ever! So…. Big shout out to Deluxe Music for making my cabin time always an adventure in world music! :)
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