"Il Dolce Far Niente" The Sweetness of Doing Nothing

Because D constantly has away games every other week or so, I'm always stuck with plenty of alone time. A lot of wives hate this aspect of being married to an athlete but I've grown to love this time to myself. Usually I spend it indoors, working on my business, reading books and doing things that I can't always get around to with D here. I promised myself that I'd take advantage of this time this season to push myself to go explore Venice by myself and last weekend I did just that.

They say the best way to discover Venice is by getting lost so that's just what I intended to do. On my walk around the city, I found some amazing hidden gems (including the most beautiful bookstore in the world- see below). As Venice is nearly impossible to navigate by map or GPS, you really just wing it when walking around. Your only hope at not getting completely lost are the small signs instructing you on where to walk for some of the city's biggest tourist attractions. Unfortunately, these signs tend to be quite ambiguous (my personal favorite are the ones that show arrows pointing you to go multiple directions).  I've kind of learned my way around, but luckily for me my husband is the world's best navigator (cough, cough, isn't every man?). Anyways, the absolute beauty in Venice lies in "Il Dolce Far Niente", the sweetness of doing nothing. Grabbing cicchetti (Venetian tapas) and a glass of prossecco, and sitting by the canals people watching. Life is good.

Truly the most beautiful bookstore in the world.

"Acqua Alta", meaning high tide

They keep all the books in bath tubs/gondolas to protect them from high tide

Seriously felt like I was in Hogwarts for a minute

Some other awesome/hilarious things that have happened lately...

• I found an amazing gym close to my house. It's owned by the Virgin Records/Airline company and is probably the nicest gym I've ever seen. Not to mention they sell glasses of Prosecco for 2 euro (seriously prosecco is cheaper than water in this city) just in case you feel like getting hammered after  a nice leg workout. Unfortunately, like in a lot of European countries, they look at women weird when they are in the weight room and not spending their entire workout on a treadmill or cardio machine. A man even had the balls to tell me to lift less weight (epic).
• D won his first home game 74-57 !! He played an amazing game, scoring 14 pts and kicking ass on defense. Anyone who has sat next to me during any sporting event (especially when D is playing) knows I get temporary Tourette Syndrome and yell the most profane comments.  Like I honestly don't even know where I come up with this shit. Luckily, I have picked up some Russian cuss words and now use those as my go-tos in hopes that those around me don't understand.  After the game, we went to eat with a few of D's Italian teammates who described the restaurant saying "we will eat chicken and a lot of beer on table. Perfect.)
  
• They are absolutely obsessed with dogs here. There is literally no rules on where you can bring your dogs and you constantly see them all over the grocery stores/ in shopping malls. I bring Tucker to the cafe around the corner and he's become quite the celebrity (his confidence is through the roof). 
• Finally had Neapolitan style Pizza and it rocked my world. Struggling to find that balance between wanting to eat everything in site and fitting into the amazing Italian clothes I'm seeing. 

  

  Cicchetti. You are so good, dammit. 

So far loving every second of living here and can't wait to see more .

XOXO