Day 3: Bassona del Grappo and Venice (aka the Search for Chioco Coco) (September 11)

We didn’t have much of a plan for this day; we only knew that we had to Rachel back to Venice by 10 pm to take the overnight bus back to Budapest. We spent the morning walking through Bassano del Grappo and recreating the photo shoot we had done 10 years prior on the bridge in town. My memory of the bridge (which might be true because it was likely a weekday) was that we were the only people on the bridge, but this time--on a Sunday in September--it was packed! I still managed to take pictures that make it look like we were alone.

Rachel really wanted to get some good pasta before heading back to Budapest and we were looking to take a nice walk, so we decided to stop for lunch at a nice-looking restaurant right along the path by the river. The setting was perfect, but, the food was absolutely terrible, which was sad and surprising. And, I think Julia felt a little responsible for choosing the restaurant, which of course she had no reason to.

In planning this trip, I had thought we’d skip Venice altogether but in thinking it through I decided that might be a mistake. The girls were young the last time we were in Venice so their memories might not be as strong, and really who knows how much longer people will be able to visit Venice given the rising waters. So, Rachel moved her bus ticket to leave directly from the island rather than the mainland (which bought her an extra half hour) and we set out to get there.

The girls were really focused on helping me find the ciocco coco flavor gelato I so loved, and we had figured out at some point the name of the store that used to have it: Venchi. We also knew from the blog that the first place I had it was in Vicenza, which was (only sort of) on our way. We parked the car on the other side of the Giardini Salvi and raced across it remembering the dance troupe rehearsal we'd stumbled upon when we had been there before. We knew exactly where we’d find Venchi, but they didn’t have my flavor. We didn't let that stop us from each getting a cone before racing back to our car (through a flea market) to continue onto Venice.

Rachel realized in the car that she didn’t have a phone charger and I didn’t want her on an overnight bus without one — so we put Julia in charge of finding us a place to get yummy pasta and a phone charger in Venice. (I’m going to skip the part about how searching for those things in a moving car put her in a little bit of a snit — but she shook it off by the time we were crossing into Venice itself.). We parked the car near where Rachel would catch the bus and told the guy at the ticket window that we had under two hours to spend in Venice total. He did not think it was enough time to do anything but we got on the people mover to the train station, found a USB cord for Rachel and hightailed it through the winding narrow streets of Venice until we got to a takeaway pasta place.

It was really nondescript and we had to eat standing in the window of the shop (eating on the streets in Venice is illegal) but it was delicious and left just enough time for us to race back through the streets, stopping first at another Venchi to see if maybe they’d have ciocco coco and getting three more cones anyway when they didn’t. We were three gals in Italy for two days and we had 12 cones between us!

As we were moving quickly through the streets, Julia turned to me and said “You were right” meaning that we were in fact able to fit in a fun little jaunt through Venice to which a shopkeeper standing outside quipped, “Finally, she admits it” … so I didn’t have to. :-)

When we got to the boat ferry next to the Rialto Bridge, I thought it would be quickest and most Venice-like to take the water shuttle back to the car park. So, I bought tickets, but when we went to board we were told that we couldn’t board without masks. I had SO many masks with me because I was still masking much of the time, but I left them in the car because very few people masked anywhere in Italy and I didn’t think it was important to have them with me in Venice because we'd be entirely outdoors. The boatman initially told me he didn’t have any masks so Rachel searched through her bag and found one KN95 which she gave to Julia and one EYE mask from her international flight to Budapest, which she put on over her mouth. The guy gave me a little look of pity and said that he in fact did have some masks and led me over to another spot and handed me a pack of masks, and I very respectfully just took the one we needed for me. We spent the next 45 minutes on the boat with Rachel incredulous that I hadn’t just taken two masks so she didn’t need to wear the eye mask the whole way! It was very funny! It hadn’t even occurred to me to take two, and it made it so much funnier (for me and Julia) that I hadn’t.

We got back to the car in time to leave Rachel at the bus — too short but so happy to have made this adventure happen! Julia and I still had 1.5 hours to drive back to Bassano del Grappo for the night, but it was a great day!