Hey, gals!
Better late than never right?! I’m FINALLY getting around to sharing our Venice excursion from last September and though it was short, it was a great pit stop on our way to France! The city itself was absolutely fascinating as there are no roads, only canals to commute around the city. You can walk the entire city within two days and that’s all we needed to see the most important sights!
DAY 8
We left our Florence Airbnb early in the morning and we took the train to Venice! Rookie advice: check your dates on your tickets before you purchase them online. We booked our tickets for the wrong date and we were fined 100 euro per person! Ouch! We arrived in Venice a little after lunch time and we had a service carry our bags to our hotel. The stairs are treacherous so we were very grateful for that. We stayed at the Grand Hotel Dei Dogi which is so beautiful. They had our villa ready for us with a private garden. Once we got settled in we went to the spa, got ready for dinner, had a glass of wine overlooking the canal, and then went to dinner. We went to Bistrot De Venise – least favorite and most expensive! It was still a nice dinner but after getting the bill for over 250 euros we realized it wasn’t quite worth it!
DAY 9
We woke up early and had a lovely breakfast at the hotel. Our first stop of the day was Murano, a small island across the canal from Venice where they are famous for beautiful blown glass. We took a water taxi from Murano to Venice and we hit the ground running as we only had the day to see the city. The lines were insanely long to get into the palace so we went up to the top of the clocktower for spectacular views of the city.
We’ve been asked multiple times what’s the best way to see Venice and the answer is easy: walk around and explore! That’s exactly what we did. We didn’t really have a plan and we had the best day. We walked around for a bit while we waited for friends to get in to town and during that time we grabbed two slices of pizza and lemon sodas for 5 euro and it was our very favorite meal in Venice. We perched up on one of the bridges and watched the gondolas pass by. Once we met up with our friends, we went to Hotel Danieli, a famous hotel where Casino Royale was filmed (we’re big James Bond fans) and enjoyed dirty martinis in the lobby.
If you’re contemplating about taking a gondola ride, it’s a must in our book. You can’t go to Venice and not take a gondola ride. We bought an 8 euro bottle of wine and drank it from plastic cups on our cruise. So fun! After our ride we perched up at cafe in the piazza for a bit of people watching, live music, and dessert at Florian – they have beautiful sundaes and coffees! We topped the night off with McDonald’s for dinner and went to bed early! We had a plane to catch for France!
Thank you for being patient with me as I’ve completely lacked on blog posts lately. Life is moving fast and time isn’t on my side these days! I’m hoping to get back on a schedule with our blog posts! Next and final stop on our European adventure: Normandy and Paris!
