The round starts where the food does, at the cluster of bars around the Rialto market in San Polo. Each stop is a counter rather than a table, and the route is drawn by whichever bar comes next.
The glass is an ombra, Venetian for shade. The city's own story has the old wine sellers in Piazza San Marco moving their barrels with the shadow of the campanile to keep them cool, and the word stuck to the small glass of house wine.
It comes with cicchetti, the small plates lined along the counter. Order baccalà mantecato, whipped salt cod on a crostino; a fried meatball, the polpetta; or sarde in saor, sardines turned sweet and sour with onions, vinegar and raisins.
One rule matters above the rest: eat standing at the bar. A seat brings a cover charge onto the bill and stops the walk.
The good bars sit within a few minutes of the market. All'Arco, a slot of a place in San Polo run by a father and son, buys its fish and vegetables from the stalls a few steps away and makes some of the best cicchetti in the city. It keeps morning and lunchtime hours only and is shut by the middle of the afternoon.
Al Mercà, on the market square itself, is little more than a window with a knot of drinkers on the paving outside. It pours a glass and a small filled roll for porters and fishmongers on their break, and opens again in the early evening.
Cantina Do Mori, which by its own reckoning has been pouring since 1462, is a dark low room hung with old copper. Its sandwiches are the size of a postage stamp and its service is brisk to the edge of rude.
None of the three has anywhere to sit. The market and most of the bars around it close on Sundays, so plan the giro for a weekday or a Saturday.
To see how the whole machine works, walk through the Rialto market in the morning, while the boats are still unloading and the fishmongers lay the lagoon out on ice: sea bass, soft-shell crabs and stranger things without an English name. The fish hall trades Tuesday to Saturday, mornings only.
This is the engine room. Everything the good bars serve at noon came off these stones a few hours earlier, and the market has fed the city from this spot for close to a thousand years. Twenty minutes out of the way of the trolleys, watching it run, is the most Venetian half-hour in the city.
A few practical notes. Arrive on the water: vaporetto line 1 stops at nearly every landing on the Grand Canal and is slow enough to take in the palazzi, while line 2 covers the same water with fewer stops.
On set days the city charges an access fee to anyone entering the historic centre without a night's stay. In 2027 it applies on 72 days between Good Friday, 26 March, and 15 August, mostly Friday-to-Sunday weekends and holidays, from 8.30 to 16.30. A night in the city has exempted visitors in every year since the fee began, and it leaves the evening giro to you.
From October to January, check the tide forecast on the city's Centro Maree page before a morning at the market. The MOSE barriers at the lagoon inlets rise for the highest tides, but a lesser one can still wet the lowest paving around San Marco.
A word on the gondola. The fare is fixed by the city and rises after dark; the ride is unabashedly for visitors, and it bobs. It is worth taking anyway, though not from the rank on the Grand Canal.
Walk a few minutes to a quiet side canal and you will usually find a gondolier leaning on his oar with nothing to do. The ride then goes through the back of the city, where the water turns green and still and the only sound is the blade turning.
By late afternoon the giro has crossed half of Venice, San Polo to San Marco by way of a dozen counters, for less than one sit-down dinner near the Rialto Bridge. One last ombra at whatever counter the walk has washed up against, taken standing, and the day is properly spent.
