A Week in Venice

Our apartment in Venice did not have internet so we are updating our entire week. There were a couple of internet points that we came across, but we never really felt like ruining the quaint, charm of Venice by being online. We apologize to those who have been looking for an update…or thought we ran off.

May 25th—Today was a travel day for us. We left Rome at 9:50 and arrived in Venice at 2:15. The train ride was pretty uneventful. We sat next to an older couple that had been traveling since April. Come to find out, they took the Crown Princess ship from Fort Lauderdale to Portugal and ended in Rome. This is the ship that MeMom got on. Once we arrived in Venice, we had to get on a vaporetto (boat) to take us to our apartment. It was about a 20 minute ride to our stop, Ospedale (Hospital stop). It was here that we were greeted by Paolo, one of the apartment managers. We had to cross 3 bridges to arrive at the apartment. Thank goodness Paolo offered to help us with our luggage because by this time we were hot and tired. The apartment is very small in comparison to all the other ones we’ve stayed in. We just came from a spacious 3 bedroom apartment in Rome and our one in Venice could probably fit in the living room/kitchen area of the Rome apartment. But, the apartment sits right on the canal so many boats and gondolas go by all day long. We are on the north side of the island in the more residential area of Venice. There’s also a great gelato place right by our apartment so we pretty much immediately put our bags down and left the apartment for a much needed gelato. After eating gelato, we headed to the grocery store which is right on the water. There’s not much that’s not on the water here though. After putting our grocery’s away, we decided to just walk around and get our bearings of the area. We had no idea where we were going, but stumbled upon a restaurant that Rick Steves recommends. He describes it as the “best canal side seating” so we lucked out and they had a table available for us right on the canal. We ate an early dinner and headed back to the apartment for an early night to bed.

May 26th-- It was a little bit of a restless night because we have no air conditioner and no fan in our apartment and Italy is experiencing July/August temperatures. So, we were up early and going this morning. Probably the earliest we’ve left the apartment since starting to travel. Again, we didn’t have an agenda just were going to wander the streets today. We also decided that we were going to try and find a fan for the apartment. Within about 30 minutes of walking, we found a store comparable to a mini-Walmart. It had a section of fans. We stood there for a while and debated whether to buy it now and carry it back to the apartment or buy it on our way back to the apartment for the day. Well, when we realized that we weren’t the only sweating people in there looking at buying one; we got concerned that they would be sold out. Luckily, we decided to go ahead and buy a fan then because the one we were going to buy was already sold out so we had to pick another one out. It was the best money we’ve spent so far. I was going to dread going to sleep if we didn’t have anything to provide some air circulation. We carried the fan back to the apartment and happily put it together. After that, we went back out and decided to go to the Rialto Bridge. It was quite an impressive bridge in comparison to all the other little bridges we had crossed so far. We walked up the bridge and then started our way back down the main shopping street that leads to St. Mark’s Square. About halfway through, we all decided to go back to the apartment, eat lunch, and take a rest (and enjoy our new fan). After nap time, we enjoyed a refreshing gelato and walked to St. Mark’s Square. The square is the biggest square/plaza that we have seen so far. It is very relaxing though. After visiting the tourist information office, we decided to enjoy the atmosphere of the square and found a nice café to have a drink at. The kids enjoyed playing with the pigeons and dancing to the live music. We had found the Hard Rock Café earlier and the kids really wanted to eat there. So, after enjoying our time on St. Mark’s Square, we went to eat dinner at the Hard Rock. It’s just so different to see gondolas and boats all “parked” outside the restaurant. I’ve commented several times since arriving in Venice about how unique it is to be in a city that has boats for its mode of transportation. It’s such a different experience that is for sure. Our apartment is near the hospital and the most unique has to be the ambulance boats. We are glad that we can walk to most of the places from our apartment though. So, after dinner we walked back to our apartment and all huddled around the one fan. The fan is great to have, but it certainly did not change the temperature outside though. It was another hot day in Italy, but we enjoyed it nonetheless.

May 27th—We all slept much better with the fan. In fact, Mike commented that he woke up several times throughout the night because he got “cold”. I think he was just in shock because he wasn’t sweating nor having to not move for fear of sweating. We had originally planned to go to Lido today where there is a beach. We were going to kill two birds with one stone: escape the heat and have a fun day for the kids. But, Mother Nature had other plans for us. It was cooler this morning and a little cloudy. All our television stations are in Italian, but we can still decipher the weather and it called for thunderstorms today. So, we decided to go to Murano instead. As we were arriving at our vaporetto stop, it was very windy and we could see the dark clouds in the distance along with some lightning. We weren’t sure which direction Murano was, but we were hoping it wasn’t in the direction of the dark clouds. We almost didn’t head to Murano for that reason. We are so glad that we didn’t change our minds because the vaporetto headed the opposite direction from the clouds and it ended up being a very pleasant day for shopping. It’s amazing how hot we were yesterday and there were times today that we were a little chilly, but nobody complained. The weather definitely helped our wonderful experience in Murano. After disembarking the vaporetto, we walked the main street that is lined with glass shops. I’m pretty sure I walked into every single one of them. It gets to be a little overwhelming at times, but it’s amazing at how a lot of the shops seemed to have something unique that the others didn’t. I have to wonder how they compete with each other because a lot of the stuff is the same and pretty much the same price. For you Pandora collectors, it was fun to see a cheaper version of Murano glass beads. We were also on the hunt for a Santa. We have managed to get one in every country so far and since Venice is our last stop in Italy, this was our last chance. It’s amazing the choices we ended up having. Murano was a fun shopping trip! After arriving back in Venice, we stopped at our favorite gelateria by our apartment before dropping our bags off. We then went to get Austin’s haircut at Coiffeur Benito(thanks, Rick Steves). Then, the kids really wanted to go back to the plaza by our apartment and play. It’s amazing how kids can just run around and entertain themselves with nothing, but other kids. Since our apartment is in the more residential area, that plaza was filled with other local kids. Abby & Austin adapt so well to all the kids even without speaking the language. They didn’t want to leave even when we said that we were going to pick up pizza for dinner, but when they learned that it was movie night, that seemed to work. We all ate pizza and watched “Bolt”. It was a fun day! Mike's commentary: 3 months ago I could not have told you anything about European Football, but now I have a greater appreciation. Tonight was the Champions League final between Barcelona and Manchester United. After movie night and putting the kids to bed, I found a local pub and wandered into watch the game. I had anticipated that with so many tourists in Venice this would be filled with English ManU fans. However, it was almost completely filled with locals and all seemed to be supporting Barcelona. This was great because after our time in Barcelona and loving the city, Barcelona had become my favorite to win. I ended up meeting an American and Parisian who were on business. Stefan, the Parisian, kept me informed on some of the nuisances of the game that I still have not learned. He also provided some great political / cultural discussion at the end of the game.

May 28th-- We awoke to clear, sunny skies today. That meant one thing…beach day. We headed to Lido beach. It was about a 20 minute vaporetto ride to the stop in Lido and then about a mile down the main street to the beach. Notice I said street? Yes, Lido allows cars. Although Lido was a very pretty town, it loses the Venice charm by allowing cars. We spent the entire day at the beach. The kids enjoyed playing with other kids that spoke English. They played a long time on the paddle boats that were parked on the beach and collected seashells. Abby collected 148 seashells. I’ve never seen a beach like this that had an ample amount of seashells just sitting on the beach. She didn’t even have to go digging for them. Mike and I enjoyed just relaxing on the lounge chairs. It was after 5:00 before we decided we had enough of sand and sun. We headed back down the main street to the vaporetto and back to our apartment. We all tried to quickly take showers, but that wasn’t so easy. The hot water heater in the apartment holds enough water for one shower and it takes about 30 minutes to heat the entire tank. It’s made showering very interesting. We finally all got showered and went out for a wonderful meal near our apartment. It was a local restaurant with homemade pastas and seafood. After a big meal and a lot of sun, we all had no problems going to bed.

May 29th—We woke up this morning to cooler weather. It actually felt like spring time in Venice and the hot weather earlier in the week was becoming a distant memory. Today, MeMom arrived in Venice from her 12 day Mediterranean cruise. We met up with her and Gilda about 11:00 at their hotel. From there, we walked through St. Mark’s Square and then ate lunch on the street by their hotel. After lunch, we separated in order to go put Austin down for a nap. Austin doesn’t nap much anymore, but we were planning on a late dinner and gondola ride tonight and so thought it would be best. While Austin was napping, I went to the grocery store and then picked up our favorite gelato for the day. Once he got up from his nap, we met back up with MeMom and did a little more shopping. We went to dinner at Trattoria “da Girgio”, the canal side restaurant we had eaten at early in the week. Mike, MeMom, and I shared the wonderful seabass. It was baked in the oven and was very fresh. After dinner, we had our gondola ride. It was so peaceful and relaxation. We really enjoyed our ride and our Gondolier, Christen was very good (on the eyes!). He gave us a great tour and was very good at entertaining the kids. We even ended up riding right by our apartment so that was really neat. Since the gondola ride was so relaxing, we called it a night and all went to bed.

May 30th—Today, we had plans of doing some sightseeing, but ended up shopping instead. There were a few things we all wanted to look at around Rialto Bridge. Venice is an amazing shopping town. The Murano Glass items are absolutely beautiful. We could have spent so much more time looking at all the beautiful pieces. Mike commented that the reason Venice is so expensive is from all the money spent shopping. Anyway, after having about as much as we could take of the crowds, we headed back toward our apartment and enjoyed a gelato in the plaza while watching the kids play. After our nice snack, we went back to MeMom’s hotel in order to figure out how she was going to get all her purchases and our purchases back with her. We sent back our breakable purchases with her and are still waiting to hear if they made them back safely. By this time, it was dinnertime and the kids were hungry. We said our goodbye’s to Gilda as the rest of us went out for a sandwich and some wine. We enjoyed our couple of hours with MeMom over a few glasses of wine and finished off in St. Mark’s Square at dusk. It was a nice end to our time with her. We walked her back to her hotel and said our goodbye’s. It was hard to say goodbye.

May 31st—We had nothing on our agenda for today. We had spent enough time in Venice, but it was a very nice down week. The combination of no cars and pedestrian streets with the boats and canals make it a very relaxing city. We thought there was a boat race going on by St. Mark’s Square so we walked over there about 10:30, but no boat race. We got a lot of wind and cool weather instead. We actually had on long pants and long sleeves today…a far cry from the weather earlier in the week. So, we decided to go back to the apartment for lunch and a movie. After the movie, we went back to St. Mark’s Square to walk through St. Mark’s Basilica and rode the elevator to the top of Campanile, the bell tower. Campanile provided us a breathtaking view of the entire island of Venice. We saw Lido, Murano, etc. After coming back down the tower, we split up. Abby and I walked through a couple more stores. I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t missing anything else. Mike and Austin went to an Irish Pub to watch the Fiorentina v. Milan football match and to check e-mail in order to get the flight information for our flight tomorrow. Abby and I met back up with them at the pub. By the time we got ready to leave, it was raining. So, we ran back to the apartment and Mike went by himself to check out the vaporetto information for us to get to the airport in the morning. We then all ate pizza for dinner and enjoyed our last gelato for dessert. It was a great way to end our time in Italy!