We’ve lived in Europe for a little more than two years now. In that time, as regular readers have seen, we’ve taken advantage of our new environs numerous times to visit some truly wonderful places. Impromptu birthdays in Pompeii, beach trips to the south of France, we’ve been to all sorts of lovely destinations. The thing is, though… the thing is, everywhere we’ve been to have been places that were more or less comfortable, even familiar to us. Before we ever moved here we’d been to France several times; ditto Italy. Sure, we went to a few different locales, but we knew how to poke around the language, we knew what to expect from the food, we more or less knew what we were getting ourselves into. More and more we’ve been poking each other about the fact that we weren’t really putting the “adventure” into our new life of adventure. So, what the hell, we basically threw darts at a map and came up with this week: a few days in Vienna, an overnight train, and a few days in Amsterdam before heading home. Whee!

If you’re thinking “3 days isn’t really long enough to see a place” we couldn’t agree with you more! This isn’t about truly plumbing the depths of these locales, it’s about going to places we know basically nothing about, understanding even less of the language than usual, and flinging ourselves into the deep end and splashing around for awhile. And believe us, we know this is still cheating a little bit. We’re still in developed nations within the European Union – there’s plenty of places further afield than these two spots. But hey! It’s a start.

Speaking of starts (come on, admit it – you missed our segues) we began this trip a lot more reasonably than some of our other go ’rounds. This time we boarded our bus to Porto at a very reasonable 9:30 AM, and then checked in for our flight with a couple of hours to spare. A cheap deal on last-minute seat upgrades meant that we could hang out in the fancy-pants lounge before making our way to our gate. By the way – should you ever need/want to avail yourself of such a lounge in Porto, be aware that there’s one lounge supporting most (all?) of the airlines. It’s actually pretty good as these things go, but it’s definitely the white-label version of such things. (And extra FYI – if you’ve got the Priority Pass thingie that is a perk of numerous rewards programs, this lounge is on the list.) We flew via Austrian Airlines, which felt a little scruffy but in a loveable way. A couple-ish short hours later, we arrived in Vienna. The rest of our first day was basically just checking into our hotel and settling in before going off to enjoy a lovely dinner at Veranda.

Couple of things about dinner. First and least, if you click the link you can see the table we sat at; it’s the first photo in the rotation. That’s the best we can do for now, as we continue to never feel like breaking out our phones during dinner to take snippy snaps. While dinner and accommodations didn’t tempt us, the other diners damn near did. As we later pieced together, we were actually dining in the arts district of Vienna during the end of their version of Mardi Gras. Now, if you think of “festivities in Vienna” the image that probably pops up in your mind (if anything does, I get it’s not an all-time callout) is those super fancy balls that they host around New Years; men in tuxedos (black or white tie, take your pick) and ladies in full gowns. Welp, turns out that’s how they celebrate a lot of things! When we arrived, the restaurant clientele was plus-or-minus looking like us – slacks/sweater or dress & shawl, take your pick. There was even a dude in a hoodie. By the time we left, however, multiple tables sported folks that were clearly having dinner before going to the ball. The table next to us was hall-of-fame worthy for people watching. Two(?) families that largely didn’t know each other, being brought together by college student(?) friends. Eight people, tuxedos and gowns all around, happily and animatedly chatting in at least three different languages. We’d think we had sussed out the nationality of one of the people, but when their language switched they’d sound just as fluent and natural in that tongue as well. It was almost as much fun for us as it seemed to be for them.

The food was great. We were offered two kinds of bread, a sourdough and a rye, accompanied by fresh butter and a cream cheese with cumin, coriander, paprika, and curry. An amuse bouche followed soon after we ordered, local char with (tiny!) pickled cherries, and sunflower seeds. We shared our dishes. Starting with pickled beets with smoked yogurt, pickled physalis, and buckwheat that was superb. Almost as good was a ceviche of local char accompanied by a (divine) sweet potato curry cream, macadamia nuts, and pickled rowan berries. Excellent (although the rowan berries were just frippery.) Our main was beef cheeks, potato puree, carrots and lingonberries. Lisa enjoyed an Austrian red from Salzl, Illmitz Osterreich (Late Harvest Red, 2022).

Our next day (which is today, bee tee dubs) we leaned into that old stand-by: the hop on hop off bus. We’ve talked about it before, but we do love a good, tourist-trap-ified double decker bus. Corny they may be, but if you’re in a new place and want to get the lay of the land, these things take you to where you want to go. For reasons of later practicality we’re staying at a hotel near the main train station so grabbing the bus was like a 10 minute affair. From there, we took one of their two routes, saving the other one for tomorrow. We were shown where a dozen of the most attractive sites in the city are located; most helpfully, we saw these in context, so we’ve already mapped out better itineraries for our next couple of days than we’d originally drawn up. We had originally planned to use the tour as a jumping-off point for taking it at least one or two of the sites around town, but a) the weather absolutely #&(*@&# sucks today, and John is nursing an ouchy in one leg that would probably benefit from a night off. So, instead we regrouped in the room before heading out to dinner at the SKY Cafe & Restaurant. We didn’t end up thinking much of the vaunted city view (perhaps because you only sit inside this time of year) but the food was top notch. We accidentally had an all vegetarian meal and didn’t even notice until we were almost done. After this it was back to the room to recover for the next day and, of course, write all this. On top of all this adventure it’s also Super Bowl Sunday, so at least one of us is staying up for a bit. [Ed. note: John did. Lisa was a sane human and went to bed.]

Our agenda for this trip to Venice may have been light but it wasn’t actually empty. True, our plan for the day was to wander about and see the splendors of Carnivale, but we figured we might as well have directions to wander in rather than just licking our thumbs and seeing which way the wind was blowing. To that end, we had a plan for an early lunch, then the Galleria Accademia (more or less an art gallery) before bouncing towards Ground Zero, aka Piazza San Marco. (Why do some places get names in Italian, while others are translated? Chi puo ‘dirlo?) Not a heavy itinerary but in all likelihood a good one.

We can occasionally be guilty of burying the lede, so let’s start off with the biggest news: the Galleria Accademia had two, count ’em two, Judiths! It’s always exciting when… hang on… Lisa just asked me if our readers already know why we care about the story of Judith and Holofernes. “Of course they do!”, I replied, but the worm of doubt started nibbling away and I hit the search function. Sure enough, while we’ve mentioned it a couple of times, we have yet to provide any context for our Judith love. Welp, high time we fix that!

The story of Judith, in very broad strokes, describes the Jewish widow Judith, who saves Israel from invasion by ingratiating herself to the Assyrian general Holofernes. Holding some measure of trust in the Assyrian camp, she is able to gain access to his tent one night when he lay sleeping and inebriated. She decapitates him and then returns to her people, displaying his head as proof of the deed. The Assyrian army, leaderless, disperses and Israel is saved. (Don’t peer at the details to closely, that’s not the point right now.) This story has been a popular one for artists to depict for many hundreds of years. Frequently, the image presented will be of Judith in the act of sawing Holofernes’ head off, with a maid waiting with a sack to hold the royal noggin. If you’re wondering if you’ve found a Judith in the wild, the clues to look for are: woman with sword, woman probably dressed as a peasant or servant and holding a sack, a man passed out in bed, maybe a man missing a head, a woman holding a head, or a servant holding a sack with a head in it. There are many variants, and you may need to eliminate Salome with the head of John the Baptist as a source for the painting you’re looking at (in that case there will be a woman and a head, but typically the head is long-since removed from a body and the woman has nothing to do with physically removing the sainted pate, which may or may not be resting on a plate. A pate plate. heh.)

Ok, so that’s what “a Judith” is, but why do we care especially? Set the wayback machine to 2014. The place: Florence. We are still developing what our idea of a good trip is, but we know we’re enjoying art museums a whole lot and we’re trying to educate ourselves more about art in general. We participated in a Context tour of the Uffizi Galleries; this is not what you’d call the “budget option” but Context tours have in our experience been uniformly excellent so we occasionally treat ourselves. This Uffizi tour was particularly fine; the guide did an excellent job of using our time to highlight some true wonders of the art world while also “footnoting” (so to speak) other locations in the museum that we wouldn’t have get to but would be worth our exploring on our own time. It was in one of these interstitial moments, passing between treasures, that we slipped past Artemesia Gentileschi’s “Judith Slaying Holofernes” and were just gobsmacked. (Full disclosure: we are not in complete agreement as to which Judith is the first we actually saw. That’s fine, disagreement is a part of life’s rich tapestry.) There’s a whole other rabbit hole we could go down about Artemesia (a rare female artist of note from the 1600s whose name and reputation has been preserved) and the feminist underpinnings of this painting, but even keeping it at the 10,000′ view the Judith representations stand out as rare cases of a woman in control of her situation in this (or basically any? woo patriarchy) era. When you go to a lot of museums and see a lot of Jesuses and Jesus-related art, and the women are almost always either trophies to be won or temptresses to be scorned, a strong woman getting #*&@ done really stands out.

Also, there’s an old trope that gets explained in a lot of different ways, but basically – you know how you never see bears anywhere, but then somebody points out a bear in a picture or an advertisement or whatever, and suddenly all you see anywhere are bears? Judith has been like that; once we cottoned to her, she’s surprisingly popular. And so, as a little game that we play just between ourselves, finding a Judith becomes kind of like a drinking game. We don’t go looking for Judiths, but when we find them we get excited, and if we are separated we run to find the other. It’s fun, and they’re almost always really good portrayals.

Good lord, so where was I? RIGHT. We went to the Galleria Accademia in Venice, which is a lovely building, typically very old (it dates from 1756) but refurbished and added on to fairly recently. They highlight work done in Venice and have an extensive collection of Hieronymus Bosch which was, I think, our first chance to put our noses up close to his work; it’s as weird as everybody says. Then again, there was a preponderance of floating baby heads in this collection (Check the image at the top of this post; pretty sure it’s a medieval/renaissance depiction of cherubim, but still…) so Bosch felt right at home.

It was towards the end of our visit to the Galleria when we got into the new-built portion of the museum, and it seemed this is there the collection branched out from work that would have been purpose-made for religious display (e.g. in a church or cathedral) and that’s when Judith appeared. We almost passed by both of them without catching what they were. Believe it or not, the first one shown here is relatively subtle for a Judith painting, what with the head being neatly detached, the sword not being soaked in blood, and Judith herself being pretty calm about the whole thing. The second Judith, by Guilia Lama, we really didn’t catch was her until we read the card under the painting; as far as either of us can remember this is as easy as Holofernes has ever gotten off in one of these paintings; apparently she (Judith) is still checking in with the big ‘G’ to make sure that this is all copacetic.

Contented with the museum, we spent the rest of the day strolling the warrens of the city, bumping into innumerable clusters of lavishly costumed folk. Our meals this day were pleasant but unmemorable, and recalling the details doesn’t feel justified after the novel you were just presented with. Our next day was even more casual, so we’ll be sure to inundate you with costumes, shopping, and food next time.

Our visit in Rome was one of the most fluid/flexible itineraries we’ve ever traveled on but, logistically speaking, Venice made that look like the Normandy invasion. We arrived in good health and the prospects of an excellent weather forecast, and that checked off (almost) the only boxes we really had. There’s plenty to do and see in Venice, of course, but our lingering memories of our first visit always boiled down to the mood and atmosphere of just being there, and that’s what we were hoping to find again. Happily, we did! Sure, it can feel like it’s slowly devolving into a parody of the Venetian casino in Las Vegas but that day is still a long way off. Venice is tranquil and beautiful and a little bit shabby and lords do we love it.

Now, we said we had checked off “almost” all the boxes of our itinerary as soon as we arrived, but there actually was one bit of business to attend to. After our increasingly-typical late morning alarm, we snuck (sneaked? snookered? satchmo?) down for a light brekkies and then headed out into the city. Item one for the day was lunch, which is why we kept breakfast on the light side.

Lunch was just around the corner (relatively speaking, it is Venice after all) at the Ristorante Algi Alboretti (which we picked by rating and location). This is a small restaurant that does “classic” Italian dishes very well and did not cost an arm and a leg, despite it’s excellent location. Lisa had their “signature” Tagliolini scampi and zucchini, which was superb. The pasta was tender, the shrimp sweet and the zucchini was just the right balancer. John had the gnocchi with a ragu of beef and pork in a deeply flavorful tomato sauce. Our meal (along with coperto[x2], water, glass of wine, soda) came to 56eu. Although we sat inside, there is a nice patio area in front and in back, which would be perfect for hotter weather.

Lunch achieved, we moved on to the second of our two agenda items for the day. When we last visited Venice (for real, because we’re ignoring October ’22, and we’ll stop saying that now) in 2014 we bought masks. They were amazing and provided a dramatic visual for the one costume party we attended at Halloween that year. The thing is, while Lisa went for a classic “if bank robbers were also rave kids” look, John fell in love with a truly massive affair with curling horns that gave the mask a meter-wide wing span. After the big purge of all we owned in the run-up to our relocation, Lisa still had her leather half mask but John jettisoned his, wanting something smaller and less dramatic… well, smaller. What else could we do but return to the same shop? No problem to find, not that we recognized the neighborhood or anything, but we felt like we were getting a sense of the city, enough to feel oriented as we navigated.

First good thing: the shop was still there. In we walk, and a woman looks up from the piece she is working on and says, “I recognize that mask. I made it, back in . . . 2014 I think?” BAM! Let me tell you, if an artisan remembers a piece almost ten years later you know you are working with a true crafts-person. We get to talking and it turns out that she’s taken over the shop after the original owner — her father — retired. She’s still making masks, and contracts out with a small group of other artists to make different designs, and she no longer works in leather. (Our hearts fell a bit.) But! she says, “I do have a few left, maybe one of them would work for you?” And, there it was, the perfect mask for John. Mission accomplished and we highly recommend the authentically handmade work of Sofia and her artists at Alberto Sarria Masks!

With that we donned our masks and wandered the city, enjoying the costumes and window shopping.

Dinner that evening was at Trattoria Nono Risorto. This is a typical Venetian osteria — no frills, no fussy food, and the language you hear is local. We shared a meat and cheese plate, then Lisa had the grilled branzino and John a pizza. The fish was gorgeously grilled with a little olive oil and lemon, a simple preparation that allows truly fresh fish to shine. The pizza was excellent as well, although too large for one.