Is laughter simply a response to humor, or can it be something else? That is the question we found ourselves exploring when we joined 30 others in a Laughter work/play-shop led by new age artist Laraaji at Venice’s 2026 Biennale Musica. If you’ve never heard of Laraaji, join us. He found fame when ambient music artist, Brian Eno, discovered him playing his electric zither in New York’s Washington Square Park in 1974. If you’ve never heard of Brian Eno, then you’ve never done a NYT crossword puzzle. ENO is the 3-letter answer to all music-related clues. Don’t ask us to name any of his songs because we can’t.
Back in old town Venice with hard-to-get tickets to Laraaji’s Laughter Playshop, we queued at Arsenale, where a week before we’d been laughing at our utter ignorance in interpreting contemporary art. This time we were challenged to become “A Child Of Sound,” to tune into an unjaded state of curiosity and play. We were mostly curious to see if we could walk the 2 miles from the train station rather than jumping on the vaporetta in order to save the 20 bucks worth of shoving and replace it with 10k worth of steps.
In a cavernous space in one of the brick shipyard buildings, Laraaji welcomed us to lose our shoes and grab a seated yoga pose on the oriental carpet. Born Edward Larry Gordon, Laraaji has been making music since he grew up on the mean streets of Philadelphia in the 50’s. A master of the zither, electric harp, and Chinese gong, there was a new age ambience to our laugher-sizing workout. At 83, Laraaji has figured out that if you are still breathing you should be wearing orange and laughing.
Except for some uncomfortable minutes when we had to stare into a stranger’s eyes and thank them for their smile, it was a darn good yoga/meditation class. There is nothing better than some closed-eye Shavasana with Laraaji playing the melodic gong after shoving 10,000 steps and 40 bridges through the crowds. A lot of the group was into it. Some migrated towards the exit during the hand-holding and eye-staring portions. We found it helped with the laughter.
Laraaji asserts that 15 minutes of laughing has the same exercise benefit as an hour on the rowing machine. We’re not sure he has ever been on a rowing machine. Honestly, we were not looking for a Planet Fitness workout anyway. The breathing and chanting exercises in the form of laughter accompanied by L’ji on the hammered electric dulcimer were perfectly absurd and a good fit for the theatrics of the Venice Biennale. We are sure to have ourselves a good laugh every time ENO comes up as a crossword answer.
With a core workout in the bank, it was time to put fuel back in the tank. It is impossible to choose an eatery in Venice based on visuals because they are all crowded. 45 million people visit a year. Every establishment has a spritz special plus some version of pizza, pasta, or panini shoved under an umbrella on a crowded sidewalk. So we combed the internet ahead of time for “delicious, non tourist, budget friendly” options, and found Puppa Bar in the Cannaregio, north of the train station in a more residential district. Apparently so did everyone else who were trying to shove their way into the small eatery. Without a backup plan we wandered the alleyways and happened upon a large party wrapping up outside a sandwich shop, along with a table of Brits having a lively exchange on Anthony Scaramucci’s latest podcast over a few pints. When you know you know.
Ready to trade the bustling canals of the east for the quiet hills of the north, Bassano del Grappa is about an hour north of home base; a city with a 500 year old Palladian timber bridge and 1000 year old Ezzilini medieval castle. In other words, your average Italian small town. We went to discover the Grappa, wine’s answer to whiskey, where grape pulp, seeds and skins are distilled to a high alcohol sipper or sauce. It’s so specialized, European law says it can only be produced in Italy. Of course, it is made elsewhere, such as in New York’s finger lake region. They just call it brandy.
There are a dozen or so distillers in the area, but the Poli family has a museum with subtitled video and unlimited tasting of the strong stuff. It took us a bunch of tastings to get through all of the different varieties Poli has to offer. We learned from Laraaji that laughter is the best medicine. Six tastings in, we learned that grappa is a close second.
After a grappa tasting in the hills of Vicenza, it’s fitting to finish with a Michelin rated lunch in Marostica, the city of chess. Diehard fans of cooking competition shows, Netflix’s Chasing Michelin put Bib Gourmand on our radar and we look for restaurants with the designation everywhere we travel. The Bib is awarded to kitchens with budget friendly prices and an authentic cuisine experience. Osteria Madonetta is the only Bib in Vicenza so there we must go. Authentic in this case meant rustic. A meatball with sauce. Creamy cod on polenta. Slices of beef with mashed potato. A simple carafe of house rose. We were living an Anthony Bourdain episode of No Reservations. You don’t know what you don’t know.
