Europe 2025 | Venice, Italy

Following our flying visit to Milan, we continued onto Venizia for another short-stay in our continued enjoyment of Italy.  We arrived by train in the early afternoon, and were welcomed by another day of beautiful blue skies - and suprisingly, very few tourists!

We quickly found our hotel (well not so quickly through the maze of streets and bridges that make up Venice, but when we did we found a nice apartment overlooking the canal, with (much to the joy of the kids) - a door between the parents and the kids - so that they don't have to suffer through dad's snoring for at least 2 nights!

We then explored the town, and were pleasant suprised that both the weather, and the level of tourism remained great.  Having seen the instagram posts recently, we were expecting 1000's of people, but many times through the afternoon and evening we found ourselves alone in the streets!  One downside though was that many of the restaurants and bars that had been suggested to us were closed (but not that they publish that...so it meant lots and lots of walking!)

We found this bit of graffitismo on one of the streets, and when I suggested this to the girls, Keira's instant response of we're shorter so we get to be negative was too good to not capture this!

We watched the sunset and kept on exploring.

We accidentally stumbled on the Library Acqua Alta and browsed a little, Keira got her postcard (to add to the collection from each city).

Next morning, we went out again, first visiting St Mark's, and then headed to Fondaco dei Tedeschi to enjoy the views from the terrace.  Again, we were surpised by the lack of crowds at key sites - including the Rialto bridge (both evening and morning!)

We made the trek to Tonolo to try their cream puffs, and Galani (not crostolli as dad called it and got told off by the shop-lady) and espresso.

We then had a great lunch at Osteria alla Frasca... best meal to date in Italy.

And then headed on the vaporetto to Murano to check out the famed glass factories.

The girsl were keen to see how the glass was made, so dad did a little searching and we headed to a factory which (according to one website) offered free demonstrations.

Little did we know, but we just wondered into a private, invite only session in what turned out to be a rather famous factory (based on the instagram posts, recent visits included Katy Perry, Rhianna and a shopping list of other celebritites).  Goes without saying it was a bit awkward for a while, but we did see some amazing workmanship, and artworks (with huge prices to boot).

After leaving the very cool place, we watched one of the more accessible masters make some animals.

After trying to find some late afternoon snacks (and failing based on closed restaurants and bars three times in a row), we retired to the hotel to let the girls have some time away from us, and to prepare for our next part of the trip tomorrow... a short two-day road trip.