Italy Trip - Days 13- 15 - Venice- Part 1

We passed the two-week mark of the trip in Venice.

Buds and I were here on our first visit nearly 15 years ago, and I didn’t remember it that fondly.

Being here with the children changed everything.

Monkey, especially, seemed to absorb the magic of the place the minute we stepped off the vaporetto.

But, I’m getting ahead of myself.

First things first.

Buds and I had vivid memories of being transfixed as our train crossed over the long, long bridge connecting Venice to the mainland. It almost felt like we were hovering above the water. Driving across the bridge in a car was also mesmerizing. I could feel my excitement building.

Buds created a time lapse of the drive to Venice, and you’ll be able to see our drive across the water at the end.

We only had two nights here. Venice is expensive, very crowded with tourists, and I’d had a tough time even finding us somewhere to stay, and since we weren’t sure we were even going to make it happen, we hadn’t set aside much space for it on the calendar.

We could have stayed here longer, but two nights was enough to keep it pleasurable and exciting.

For those who haven’t been to Venice, the Grand Canal (Canal Grande on the map.) is the main “highway” that people use to connect the various islands of Venice. The vaporettos are the water taxis that are the subway cars of Venice.

Vaporettos run 24/7. They can be crowded, no announcement is made about what stop is coming up, and the maps of the route are on the outside of the boat, to be seen when you get on, but aren’t inside the boat. In addition, the stops listed didn’t always have the names we had read about or expected.

Buds put together an awesome time lapse of traffic on the Grand Canal to give a feel for the busyness of it:

Helpfully, the vaporetto folks are so used to tourists they can almost read your mind. They are very willing to answer questions about where the vaporetto is headed, and if you are going the right direction.

Guilia, who was meeting us at our apartment to check us in had told us to take vaporetto 5.1 to get to San Zaccaria, our stop for home while we were here. (The .1 on the end indicates the direction the vaporetto is going. Getting on when it is going the wrong direction can mean a very long ride home.)

The ride to San Zaccaria took about 45 minutes, but most of us had seats, and we were all excited so it seemed to go quickly.

Our location in Venice was ideal. We were very close to Piazza San Marco, which is the most famous spot in Venice.

One of the reasons we all liked Venice was knowing you can’t get lost. Well, you can actually get very lost, as Buds and I were to learn, but you can’t really get lost. You’ll always eventually come to water, and there are signs pointing to San Marco, or people will always know the way to San Marco, and since all of us knew how to get home from San Marco it was comforting. The children weren’t interested in going out on their own, but this is one of the places where I would have felt comfortable having them do so.

We met Guilia outside the door to our apartment, which was tucked away on a side street, and she said, “Do you know about the stairs?”

In Italy, and much of Europe, the ground floor is “0.” Then, what we in the U.S. would call the second floor is the first floor. Confusing until you know the secret code. We were on the 6th floor in Italy-speak, 7th floor in U.S. speak. In any culture, we had 81 steps to climb to reach our door. The steps really were endless, but another great memory.

(George and Kathy, remember how we complained about the stairs to our Florence apartment on the trip 14 years ago? We shouldn’t have complained.)

Here’s where we stayed in Venice: Venice Home.

I made a video tour of this apartment, which I’ll upload after we return home.

This apartment was our first “typical Italy” apartment. The main door opened onto the street, we were right in the midst of action. We were housed in an old building with plaster walls, floors that tilted slightly, windows with the old wooden shutters to close at night.

It was well-furnished and quiet, and totally lovely.

Buds settled in to work since the wifi seemed strong, and the crew and I headed out on an adventure to find the grocery store.

We found the grocery store and it was a madhouse. We broke into teams to try to find what we needed and still get out alive. We only needed food for two days, so it was a small trip.

That evening after Buds knocked off work, we headed out to explore all together.

Despite me saying my memories of Venice weren’t that fond, we have several iconic pictures from our last visit that were very vivid for both of us. We asked the children to help us recreate some of them.

We have one especially beloved one that shows Buds and me kneeling in front of the gondola parking lot.

I can’t find our historical version, but I’ll insert it after we return home.

Edit: Found it!

Here are the children helping us recreate it:

And our updated version:

The feeding of pigeons is now prohibited in Piazza San Marco, so we didn’t get to take pictures of the children covered in birds, but you can still sit on the lions.

Feeding the pigeons used to be legal:

Lion sitting now:

By the end of our wandering, and after our grocery store excursion, we were all ready for some food. The restaurant Buds had picked out for us was closed, or we couldn’t find it, so we picked a random spot and headed in. (It wasn’t actually random. We were looking at the menu, and one of the employees came out to stand by us until we largely had no choice but to go in. Introverts unite.)

It turned out to be an excellent meal. The food was delicious, we had the place to ourselves for awhile, then it filled up, and everyone was in superb spirits.

Buds captured some of the feel of the meal:

Then a walk home in the dark, possibly gelato, then settling in for our first sleep in our Venice home.