Manolo - not Blahnik, but tastier

I decided I simply could not deal with a third consecutive day of the Biennale whores - whoops, I mean hordes! - so Marcia and I set out this morning for parts unknown - aka shopping and eating. As many of you know, one of the great joys of visiting Venice is wandering, "getting lost," arriving at dead ends - watery and otherwise. It is the way one often makes one's best discoveries. It happened to us more than once today. After more than one, two, three attempts to find the Palazzo Fortuny where a non-Biennale art exhibit opened today - more hordes! - we found ourselves peering into a tiny wine/ciccheti bar with no sign, just a chalkboard that read Ombre & Ciccheti Venxiana. (Ombra/ombre, by the way, means "shadow" in Italian and in this context it means a small glass of wine.) Everything looked delicious. Although we'd had a big breakfast only a few short hours earlier, it's never too early in Venice for a glass of wine and a "snack." We chose a few dishes - a small, round zucchini hollowed out and stuffed with a mixture of seafood and tomato cream sauce, a skewer of three little meatballs, a Japanese (???) soup spoon of baccala (creamy salt cod), a wedge of frittata, and then I ordered a spritz and found myself with my food wedged decidedly in my big mouth! "I have the oldest wine bar in Venice," said Manolo, "with more than TWELVE HUNDRED wines - no spritz." How many times do you think I said,"mi dispiace,"? I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry...ad infinitum, believe me. I'm still feeling like I need to bring him a present or do a sketch for him or something. We asked him to choose a wine for each of us - white for me, red for Marcia - and the guy definitely knows his wines. It is a glorious little place - Enoteca al Volto - and our intention is to return for dinner, letting Manolo serve whatever he feels like serving. One of those places...