While our latest trip was certainly an itinerary I’d been interested in for a long time, I’m not sure if we’d have taken this cruise so soon if it weren’t for a rock. Last year when we were in Galapagos on the Celebrity Flora Steve ordered lentil soup for an appetizer and promptly chomped down on a rock. Having worked in the food business for many years I am no stranger to odd things ending up in the supply chain. Bush Brothers has a process for removing small stones from dried beans before processing. Does it get them all? Sadly, no. Even a grasshopper can end up in a can of greens; if you truly understand where our food comes from you know these things are inevitable. So, while we made the kitchen aware of the mishap the management team offered us significant money off a future cruise. Our pick was Venice (Ravenna) to Rome on the Celebrity Centennial. Oh, and by the way, Steve’s tooth was fine. 

Our water taxi took us directly to Palazzo Abadessa, our favorite hotel in Venice, right on a small canal. So lovely. We arrived Venice a few days early to forgo any issues with potentially lost luggage and catch up on sleep, but mostly to visit the cicchetti bars. All’ Arco makes the best baccala on the planet, and I wanted to have some again. I knew I could find the place; just get to the markets (oh! the mushrooms!) and squirrel around the back. Sure enough, it was there. As was the oldest cicchetti bar in Venice, Cantinado Moro (circa 1492) for more cicchetti and Prosecco.

We took a vaporetto from the Rialto Bridge to San Marco. It’s always great seeing Venice from the water. And Venice would not be complete without a stop at Harry’s Bar, where we had Christmas dinner back in 2017. Prosecco for Steve and a Negroni Sbagliato for me. It’s basically a drink borne of a mistake; prosecco was added to a Negroni instead of gin, and I like it oh, so much better.

Our last night before heading to Ravenna to board the ship was dinner at Serafina restaurant. A beautiful place with great food, but the service was a bit sketchy. I know a lot of people are not liver fans, but I am, and my dish was one of the best I’ve ever had. It was served with polenta, and we had a gorgeous salami and prosciutto appetizer, so I was pretty deficient on vegetables that day, unless you count the corn in the polenta. Ten days on a cruise was certainly not going to improve my diet…

Deborah