Venice. A watery, sunny, lovely, sleepy, windy, yummy city, crammed with festivals, little cobbled alleyways and tiny glass shops fulled to the brim with treasures and gems. The aqua streets are filled with boats and gondolas.

Our Apartment

Let’s just say that no one really had any expectations at all for Venice. We looked at it as a resting place after a busy week of skiing. So that meant no pointless wandering, no churches or big old buildings. It meant fun!

On our first night we walked to the Piazza San Marco and had some fun at the little fair type thing that was near the park.

The next day, we (again) walked down to San Marco to draw! We had loads of fun sketching all the beautiful things but not so much fun trying to avoid the thousands of pigeons that were there. (I am not exaggerating.) We had a nice coffee and some biscuits that were way too overpriced-10 euros for a cappuccino! Dad managed to take loads of photos of everyone taking selfies-he even got 3 in one photo!!!

Sketching and the world’s most expensive cappuccino!

Artist at work!

My sketch

The subject

Selfie

Selfie

Selfie

And a bonus point for a triple hit!

After, we walked to the Peggy Guggenheim museum. A great collection of art is stored in Peggy’s house. We played a fun game where you had to choose your best work of art, your worst and the one you would rename and what you would name it. My favourite was “Pharmacy” which was a collection of little jars with trinkets in them, my worst was “Bird in Space” which was a giant copper stick, and the one that I would rename was a wooden statue called “Seated Male Figure Holding In His Hands a Musical Instrument”. Which was exactly what the name suggested. I renamed it Tiki Tiki Voodoo Spirit guy.

We also caught a Vaporetto to Giardini (the park) and had a play there.

Day 2 – Posting seemed like it was the only thing on the agenda today as we spent 3 hours ( and a million bucks ) trying to use the Italian post system effectively. We nearly spent as much as the coffee in San Marco !!!  On the way home, we passed one of the regular gondoliers advertising rides in his gondola.

“Do you want a ride?”

“No thank you.”

“I have 3 children, so I give you a discount?”

“No thank you”, said Dad again……..”Wait ,what?!, okay we’ll take it!”

So we hopped in the Gondola and swept off. We rode past Marco Polo’s birth place, underneath the Rialto bridge and through many of the salty blue streets for only 3 euros more than the coffee AND the postage!!!

It was amazing!!!

On our last day we played Flip-a-Coin to get lost in Venice. A game where heads is right and tails is left and you go wherever the coin tells you to go.  We discovered many new places as well as a very old bookshop which was absolutely jam packed with books. Books in Bathtubs, old gondolas, on the counter and not a shelf to be seen. Mainly because the only one in the store was covered in …… I don’t know, maybe…hmmm…Books?!

An old and amazing bookshelf we stumbled upon.

At lunch, we started filling out a questionnaire about our trip. We thought and talked about all the great things that we had done and seen on our trip. For our last dinner on our trip, we went to a very cute, touristy place just next to one of the many bridges in Venice. It was very nice and they made the most AMAZING profiteroles!

We had loads of fun in Venice ( Thanks Mum and Dad ) and enjoyed it so much.