Live Pronto!: Last Night In Venice, Nov. '17

Here's the thing.

Life has been throwing us some major curveballs since we returned from Italy at the end of November. I have been struggling to find time to blog, and have a bit of a break right now, so here we with a much belated post.

We were so fortunate to have gone back and forth to Umbria four times in 2017, the last time in November. We were able to spend a fantastic week in Venice, too, enjoying the beauty of the city as well as daily jaunts to various Biennale venues to see the best in contemporary art. We love Venice!

I was blogging while there, and you can find those posts here, as well as posts from previous visits to Venice for the Biennale.

On our last night in Venice, we enjoyed a lovely dinner at a place we had found back in 2015. It was a good hike from the apartment we stayed in, but so worth the effort.

Paradiso Perduto is located in the Cannaregio quartiere of Venice. It faces a nice canal, with outdoor seating as well as a very lively indoor dining room. They are known for their seafood and live music. It's a wild scene...just the way we like it.

We had been there before at aperitivo time, to enjoy some cicchetti (small bites) and wine. We sort of stumbled upon it in 2015, and just went back a couple of times in the late afternoon. We had not tried it for a sit down dinner, so we were pretty excited, and up for the forty minute walk to and from the apartment.

We made a (much needed) reservation a few days in advance, and headed out early so we could stop at a few of our favorite watering holes along the way. Hey, we we walking...why not? Bonus points for the evening being rain free!

We love these neighborhood places where
people are spilling out into the streets...

There mayhem the better!

With our reservation nailed down, we were taken directly to our table...maybe there was a little gentle pushing and shoving, but everyone understood.

Our table was right back there.....

This is a spot that is well discovered, filled with both locals and not. It's noisy and chaotic. You won't want to come here for a quiet, romantic evening. This being said, it was just what we wanted.

We settled in to our menus, ordered a liter of the house white and sat back to soak in the scene.

Johnny knew going in that he just wanted a plate of mixed vegetarian things from the cicchetti bar, but I wanted to try some pasta. I ordered the porcini lasagna.

MMMmmmmmmMMMM.

I adore this type of lasagna, with lots of thin layers of silky pasta. The porcini were in season, and very flavor forward. Not too creamy, but still rich and succulent.

Right now, at this moment in time....I really want this.
I'm hungry.

Johnny had his dream meal...lots of really tasty veggies, with a side of the best polenta we've ever tasted. This is the region where polenta rules, so it was amazing.

A little bit of this, a little bit of that...

Artichoke hearts, carrots, potatoes, etc....
I love the three 'decorative' peas on the side of the plate!

Polenta the way Mom made it when we were growing up.
Soft.

It tasted like roasted corn. It had nothing added.
It was perfection.

I hope this video, below plays ok. It captures the moment so well...They had Chet Baker playing most of the time we were there, which was magical. His music is so special to us, and it was such a treat to have this as our soundtrack for the evening.

Because the place is known for it's seafood, I wanted to include this picture I took of the table next to us...This is what most folks stop in here for.