Unknown Venice

Most people don't like to go to the same city more then once. Me neither but in some cases i do, like going to Venice. It was my 3rd time in Venice and what i liked best about it, is that you can go looking for the unknown spots of the city. And that's exactly what we did in Venice. We arrived in the early Sunday morning. Normally i would consider that as 'not done' but for Venice we made an exception. We left our luggage in the hotel and started our tour to the Dorsoduro part of Venice. Most people go here to visit the Galleria dell'Academia but we passed this museum and walked to the Campo Santa Margherita. This is one of the most authentic squares of Venice and you'll find a lot of locals here. Older people who read a newspaper in the shadow of a tree and children playing. It's a real beautiful area and the best thing about it is that there aren't a lot of tourists at all. Actually, when you walk here, you can't imagine it is so crowded in Venice. We had a nice lunch here of fresh shrimps and a nice bottle of wine and we enjoyed the view and the silence. With our stumachs filled, we were ready to move on to the Santa Croce part of the city. This part isn't very touristy either. Some people park their car at the Piazzale Roma and immediately leave this area by boat. But this part of Venice is actually really beautiful with narrow streets and nice little squares. The area doesn't really have a hotspot but that's also the charm of it. It's still authentic. We crossed the Canal Grande and left Santa Croce to enter Cannaregio. The first thing you see there is the very crowded and touristy Lista di Spagna. We walked this street for a while but didn't like it much so we turned left to the Ghetto of Venice. Although the name would suggest different, the Ghetto Nuovo is the oldest ghetto of Europe. If you look closely you'll still find some Hebrew texts on houses and of course you'll find kosjer restaurants. The area is very quiet and you won't find a lot of tourists. The more north you go, the less tourists you'll see here. At some point you won't find any actually. Some locals are actually surprised to see tourists here. After enjoying the peace here we walked south again and it became more crowded. Especially the San Marco area is full of tourists. We had an aperitivo in a little square close to our hotel and then went to our room to clean up ourselves. We changed because that night we would go to the casino of Venice. I can write a lot about it but i won't. The only thing i want to tell you about it is DON'T go there. The place isn't as fancy as it pretends to be. There aren't a lot people and you don't feel like you should when you're out in a casino. I think we were in the building for only 15 minutes when we left again. We were hungry so we went to the Piazza S. Stefano and found a restaurant where we had dinner. It was nice but not that great. Especially when we got the check i was a little shocked. We had to pay 130 euro for 2 main corses, 1 desert, a bottle of wine and water. For lunch we also had to main corses, a bottle of wine and water and there we had to pay only 40 euro. So after this, we even appreciated the unknown Venice better.