venice in feb?

thanks jen!

I messed this up, Bacareto da Lele, the food doesn’t look interesting, Bar Rialto da Lollo looks good!

anyone been to genoa? looks a little off the beaten path…

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wonderful city! highly recommend - it was very great - and Venice’s main competitor - back in the 11th Century or thereabouts. Totally different regional cuisine in Liguria fro venice, tho still sea based. Not a rich people or rich sea, so their fish/seafood isnt fancy. Specialty pastas, soups and pesto of course and wonderful stuff like focaccias and especially farinata
I just pulled up this article so you can see what it is https://www.tasteatlas.com/farinata/wheretoeat
ideally cooked quickly on a wood fire, cut up into pieces and eaten quickly

The old town is a spiderweb of lanes running down to the harbor from an upper level (the town is very hilly, we stayed up on a height that was accessible by a funicular, the middle level is where the main business district hotels and the huge mansions of the rich , markets and museums are. We loved walking around, but this was the first place we have visited in italy where there were street prostitutes, mostly african girls . It is an historic seaport after all and with a polyglot history.

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Il Genovese near the Eastern Market (Mercato Orientale, a great place in the fall when we were there, quite a while ago, pre- pandemic) a a good white table cloth traditional restaurant. There are/were other small old restos in the harbor area - I do not know how much change there has been in intervening years.

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Love Genoa also! I loved a restaurant there called antica trattoria vico palla. I went twice (got chatty with the owner), once for lunch. I got a table at lunch and then booked in for dinner. I also was determined to try the local cheesy foccacia, so I took the train to Focacceria Manuelino in Recco. I was hungry when I got there, and I was just so tickled to have been able to find the place. I think I would probably take a cab if I was going today. Not fancy, but clearly an institution in that town.

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did you like the cheese they use for that focacccia? I think I had it up in the hill neighborhood we were staying in and was not that fond of it - one of those fresh, a bit sour tasting white cheeses? Or maybe I dont remember well - the place in Recco is so famous! Id still take the train if I was going now :wink:

It was not sour in my memory, but I felt like quite the glutton, eating the whole pie (or almost anyway) all by myself! In memory, it was duhlicious!

my better half has come to recognize that the swiss alps will lose a lot of time to travel, we were able to straighten out our last supper plans to avoid another trip to Milan after venice so now we’re thinking about venice->ravenna to see the mosaics, something a little different after all the pre-renaissance and renaissance paintings in Milan and venice.

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switzerland is wonderful in lat June early July, meadows full of flowers, hotels fairly empty. So cool riding all the lifts trains and funiculars to get around.

your new idea sounds good, there are some interesting mosaics in Milan too. I like this image of St. Ambrose. Who ever thought that he looked like this (obviously he did), in a chapel in San Ambrogio:

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