By the time we arrived in Venice, we were desperately in need of food and air conditioning. We made the long, winding trek through confusing canals, bridges, and dead-end alleyways from Venice's "new" train station (established over a century ago) to our bed and breakfast near St. Mark's Square.
For lunch, we found a "street food" vendor (i.e., a tiny closet of a restaurant without seating, but with excellent WiFi) who tossed pasta dish after pasta dish into small folded takeaway boxes. Even though their pesto was listed as having pine nuts (which I'm fine with) and walnuts (which are a bit of a question mark), I was so in need of good pesto that I dove into the order without a care in the world.
Turns out walnuts are less of a question mark than we originally thought: I was four bites in before I felt the reaction starting, and to make a long story short, I was bedridden for the rest of the afternoon while Ryan explored nearby Venice on foot.
Side note about nuts that I find way too fascinating: Even though pistachios are mainstream in Italian cuisine (e.g., pistachio biscuits, gelato, and even as garnish in whipped cream and hot chocolate), not a single Italian I spoke with knew what a cashew was. Google Translate offered a feeble "anacardia?" translation for the word, a reference to the exact substance I'm allergic to--anacardiacae, or anything related to poison oak and poison ivy (mango, sumac, pink peppercorn)--but even "anacardia" drew blank stares and shrugs. During our last night in Venice, our wine tour guide asked if we had any dietary restrictions. He had absolutely no clue what a cashew/anacardia was, and when Ryan and I described its appearance, he said "Oh, yes, peanuts." Funnily enough, our final round of food pairing included crushed cashews over a bed of Gorgonzola and jam. Our tour guide said (excitedly) "I've always thought these were a type of peanut."
So interesting.
When I woke up from my three-Benadryl-induced nap, Ryan was curled up next to me with his shoes off, eyes closed, and mouth hanging open. Needless to say, it was hard to fall asleep that night after the extent of our mid-afternoon naps.
We took Rick Steves's audio tour of the Grand Canal via vaporetto, the Venetian public bus (but naturally, a large flat-bed boat that runs along scheduled routes from clearly marked stations). We started up at the train station, one of the farthest points in the city, and made our way through the twisting canal, passing under pedestrian bridges and past small black gondolas, until we got to St. Mark's (San Marco) Square. We took another audio tour of the square, which was so packed with tourists, pigeons, and trash that Ryan was prancing around on his tiptoes, equally as disgusted with the swirling tornadoes of wrappers and features as he was with his least favorite winged creatures on earth.
We saw Café Florian, the oldest café in Europe (and with prices to match; one cappuccino was more than $16); we saw vendors of every ware imaginable; we saw the first digital clock on record; and, of course, we saw St. Mark's Basilica and its leaning campanile (bell tower), as well as the Doge's palace. (The doge was Venice's democratically elected ruler, equivalent to a duke/ducale). Dinner, thank God, was a nut-free, cream-based tortellini with ham in an old Venetian pub.