Our Day in Venice
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| Rialto Bridge |
We were meant to have two days exploring Venice but because it was supposed to rain our entire second day, Zaf and I decided beforehand to do all we could in one day. It just wasn't worth it to us to be in the rain when we've had a really intense month of doing touring every.single.day so we all could really use a "day off." In fact, this particular day was exactly one month for our family of being in Europe! It's been a pretty crazy month of travelling between 8 cities and 6 countries.
Back to our day in Venice. We left our hotel at 8:45am to catch the busiest public transportation we've been in since we got to Europe. The bus was PACKED! Luckily masks are still mandatory on public transportation here.
Surviving the bus ride called for fresh orange juice.
It was red and delicious! Then we walked to meet our tour guide before our tour was meant to start at 10am.
Our guide grew up in Venice and took us on a "less travelled route" to see things tourists usually miss. One of the first things he explained was why you see so many "wells" which were actually more like rain storage containers. Since Venice is surrounded by salt water, this was their system for collecting fresh water.
Cats caught rats (who brought diseases) so they even got special drinking bowls built into the wells.
Probably the most impressive place to me on the tour was this church, called San Pantalon. To look at it from the outside it doesn't look like much.
When you go inside, however, you see the largest oil canvas in the world at 25m x 50m. It was beautiful.
The kids were excited to see this Banksy painting. I had to ask them who Banksy was, which they found amusing.
I'm so glad we took a walking tour because when we were left to find things on our own, it was super confusing! The guide had explained how crazy the numbering system was, but even with google maps there are so many alley ways and corridors through the buildings that I was getting a bit dizzy.
Venice sandwiches are famous (I forgot to get a picture!) but what was really fun to see was all the Venetian tapas which are called "cicchetti." If we had more time in Venice, I definitely would have liked to try some.
There were also a ton of gelato shops. Our guide recommended this dessert (forgot the name) which was delicious, of course.
One of my favourite parts of the day was watching Cora enjoy dressing up in her new mask, which we got at a stand for 3 euros. It wasn't a traditionally made one, but she really enjoyed wearing it and seeing the other little girls she saw who were wearing masks, too.
After our tour, we went to eat lunch which was our first taste of Italian pasta in Italy. I should have probably looked up what traditional Italian dishes were called so we could decipher the menu a bit better, but we eventually found non-seafood dishes for us all to eat. Zavian believed his was undercooked until Zorion explained what "al dente" meant.
Even though we would have probably come home at this point on another day, the rainy forecast motivated us to go ahead and see some of the other sites we missed on our tour. So we went down to St Mark's Square where I was very kindly given a rose by a family who I offered to take photographs for in front of the Basilica.
Last but not least, our family photo on the Bridge of Sighs... right before we all realised how tired we were and forced ourselves to walk the 40 mins back to the bus station to get home around 5:30pm. It was a long day and I'm thankful we have a rainy day indoors to recover!
Our guide grew up in Venice and took us on a "less travelled route" to see things tourists usually miss. One of the first things he explained was why you see so many "wells" which were actually more like rain storage containers. Since Venice is surrounded by salt water, this was their system for collecting fresh water.
Cats caught rats (who brought diseases) so they even got special drinking bowls built into the wells.
Probably the most impressive place to me on the tour was this church, called San Pantalon. To look at it from the outside it doesn't look like much.
When you go inside, however, you see the largest oil canvas in the world at 25m x 50m. It was beautiful.
The kids were excited to see this Banksy painting. I had to ask them who Banksy was, which they found amusing.
I'm so glad we took a walking tour because when we were left to find things on our own, it was super confusing! The guide had explained how crazy the numbering system was, but even with google maps there are so many alley ways and corridors through the buildings that I was getting a bit dizzy.
Venice sandwiches are famous (I forgot to get a picture!) but what was really fun to see was all the Venetian tapas which are called "cicchetti." If we had more time in Venice, I definitely would have liked to try some.
There were also a ton of gelato shops. Our guide recommended this dessert (forgot the name) which was delicious, of course.
One of my favourite parts of the day was watching Cora enjoy dressing up in her new mask, which we got at a stand for 3 euros. It wasn't a traditionally made one, but she really enjoyed wearing it and seeing the other little girls she saw who were wearing masks, too.
After our tour, we went to eat lunch which was our first taste of Italian pasta in Italy. I should have probably looked up what traditional Italian dishes were called so we could decipher the menu a bit better, but we eventually found non-seafood dishes for us all to eat. Zavian believed his was undercooked until Zorion explained what "al dente" meant.
Even though we would have probably come home at this point on another day, the rainy forecast motivated us to go ahead and see some of the other sites we missed on our tour. So we went down to St Mark's Square where I was very kindly given a rose by a family who I offered to take photographs for in front of the Basilica.
Last but not least, our family photo on the Bridge of Sighs... right before we all realised how tired we were and forced ourselves to walk the 40 mins back to the bus station to get home around 5:30pm. It was a long day and I'm thankful we have a rainy day indoors to recover!
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| Photo taken outside the Doge's Palace |
Venice was very interesting and had a lot more to offer, I'm sure. I had wanted to look up the homes of Marco Polo and Vivaldi but we'll have to leave that for another time. I hope, if I ever do come back, we will get a few days without rain.
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