Day 6 (Venice)

We started our day in Venice at our amazing apartment.  Our host Lola had gone out to the store to get some Croissants for our breakfast. She really went out of her way to make sure that we had an awesome experience.

 

Did I mention that the place that we stayed in was amazing?  I had such a hard time imagining that such places existed in the middle of Venice.   It made us want to look at what other people's apartments looked like.  Here is Steph and Henry on the cool spiral staircase.

 

The first thing we did in the morning was head out to see the Rialto Bridge and market.   Even though strollers can be kind of a nightmare in Venice -- you constantly have to take them up and down the many bridges that are around town -- we decided that it would be the method that would keep Henry the happiest for the longest.  Here he is, still happy:

This is the Rialto Bridge.  Needless to say, the whole thing was steps, so I had to carry the stroller up the whole way.  We quickly learned that the Rialto bridge is one of the main marketplaces/tourist traps in town.  While the Rialto Market did have some nice fruit and vegetable stands, the rest of the shops were pretty trashy.  The view from the bridge however, is pretty amazing.

Later in the day, Henry decided to take a walk on the bridge:

  

After our morning in Rialto, Henry decided to take a nap in the Ergo.  He stayed asleep for about 1.5 hours, but unfortunately missed some major sights around town.  Steph on the other hand felt like she was pregnant again -- This time with a 20 lb baby.

 

This was our first attempts to go to St. Mark's square.  The square was super busy and there were huge lines of people waiting to get into the Basilica and Doge's Palace.  Instead of trying to do anything, we decided to try and come back early the next morning.

 

We found in Venice that we could only go so long before Henry would get restless.  Right around lunchtime, we searched for some sandwiches and annice little bridge that Henry could crawl around on.  Luckily, we found a perfect shaded one.

One of the things that Lindsay told me about Venice was the homemade licorice that could be found around the city.  I got some and it measured a meter long!  It was a little bit saltier than we are used to in the states but it was pretty good.  If I had a couple more Euros to throw around, I would have tried every kind.

 

After lunch we headed back to the apartment because Lola said that her godson Lorenzo was going to be staying with her.  He was super cute and Henry was quite taken with him.  Lorenzo kept talking to us in Italian and we just kept nodding and saying "Yeah".

After Henry took a nap, we went out to do a little bit more exploring.  One thing about Venice is that there are only 2 bridges over the Grand Canal.  This can make it a little bit tough to get to some areas of town.  One workaround however is to take something called a Traghetto, which is a gondola that goes across the Grand Canal. We had heard that an actual gondola ride costs around 100 dollars, but a Traghetto ride only costs 50 cents per person.  The ride only takes 2 minutes, so I tried to make it extra romantic for Stephanie.

 

Nutella Gelato?  Yes, please.

We spent the rest of the evening enjoying our favorite activity in Venice:  walking around and getting lost in the quiet streets.  It is views like this that we will miss the most.