Henry's Amazing European Adventure // Part 4: Switzerland, Again

The exciting conclusion to our epic European adventure!!!

Henry's Amazing European Adventure // Part 3: Venice

Henry's Amazing European Adventure // Part 2: Milan

Here's part 2 of our adventures in Europe.  As mentioned in our post, we were a little unprepared for Milan.  It's definitely a big city, and other than finding some Pizza to eat, we really didn't know what to do there.  However, in the end we had some good times and captured some of them in this video.

Enjoy!

Henry's Amazing European Adventure // Part 1

Yes, I realize that we haven't finished blogging about our trip -- but let's just forget about that.  While we were on our trip, I shot a lot of video (about 40GB worth).  I've since distilled most of this down to a 4 part video series.  This first part covers our arrival in Switzerland and goes up to the part of our trip where we separated from Monica and Jachen in Varenna, Italy.

If you want to read our account of this part of the trip, be sure to check out the previous posts.

Enjoy!

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.

Day 5 (Milan and Venice)

On Tuesday, we had a few hours in Milan before we needed to catch our train to Venice.  Honestly, we didn't really know what to do in Milan, so we decided to head downtown to see the Duomo.  I always love going to a city that has a good metro system and Milan's was great.  It only took us a few minutes to ride the train with the rest of the commuters downtown.

 

The Duomo was Gothic and beautiful.  The square in front of it is one of the biggest tourist places in the city and Stephanie quickly found herself prey to one of the African men who hang out in the square looking for unsuspecting tourists.  He placed a bracelet on her arm while saying "Africa".  He then proceeded to ask her for money.  Throughout the day we saw this same pattern repeated for other tourists -- Oftentimes offering seed to feed the pigeons with.

 

 

At the Duomo, you can pay 7 Euros to climb to the roof.  It's quite a few steps, but the view from the top is pretty incredible.

 

Flying buttresses galore!

When we got to the top of the roof, we decided to let Henry climb around a little bit.  Don't worry, the roof wasn't that steep.

 

The roof, however, was quite dirty.  Good thing the dirt is historic.

Across from the Duomo is a semi-outdoor mall the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II.  The place was a little high class for my taste -- I kept looking for the food court.

 

One cool thing about Milan is that they have the public fountains everywhere.  They also serve many uses including a dog's drinking bowl.

After visiting the Duomo, we headed to the train station to catch our train to Venice.  The train was great.  It wasn't very crowded so we basically got 8 seats for the 3 of us.  Plenty of place to stretch out.  Honestly, I can't remember why Henry has his shirt off.

 

Once we arrived in Venice, it was pretty unreal.  The place was mobbed with tourists, and we were 3 of them.  We found a place to stay through airbnb.  We were staying with a woman named Lola who lived just a few minutes from St. Marks Square in Venice.  Once we arrived in Venice, we took a Vaporetto, which is a water bus to Accademia Bridge.  Our apartment was just a few minutes walk away from the bridge.

Here is the entrance to our apartment.

 After meeting our host and getting settled in, we gave Henry some time to take a nap.

After Henry woke up we decided to explore the city a little bit.  First stop: Gelato.

Our first night was one of our favorite in Venice.  We just tried to get lost exploring a less trafficked part of the city.

We also gave Henry some time to crawl and explore a church.

Day 4 (Como and Milan)

On Monday, Jachen took the day off work and we decided to start our grand adventure of going to Italy for a few days.  The plan was to go to Lake Como with Monica and Jachen, at which point we would depart from them to stay in Milan for a night, then two nights in Venice, then back to Milan for a night and end back up in Switzerland on Friday.

Here's our plan for the first day:

To get to Como, we had to drive directly south from Switzerland and go through the Alps.  Here we are in some alpine town taking a potty and rock throwing break.

The town that we stopped in was rather picturesque, so we of course decided to take a family picture.  Hey Henry, how about you smile for once?

We left at about 9:30am, and we arrived in Menaggio, Italy at around 1pm.  After easily finding a place to park we went about exploring the town:

 

The five of us had a nice little picnic along the banks of Lake Como.

 

Our plan for Como was to take a ferry from Menaggio to Varenna.  From Varenna, we would leave Jachen and Monica and travel by train to Milan.

  On the ferry, Henry was intrigued by the place where the captain went.

 Our first views of Varenna:

 Is this real life?

We hoping to find some lockers in Varenna to ditch our bags, but the train station was literally a hole in the wall.  So instead we ending up hauling our stuff all over the town.  The town was quite beautiful and sleepy.  You may remember parts of Como from the time that Anakin Skywalker tried to make out with Natalie Portman in that really bad movie.

I forgot to mention that it was really hot in Varenna (and Italy in general).  Due to the fact that we were carrying all of our belongings with us, I wouldn't say that our time in Varenna was very relaxing.  We walked around what streets we could -- most of Varenna was a series of steps that we couldn't get up due to Henry in a stroller.  We ate some gelato and then we were pretty much ready to leave.

Through a miracle we caught a train that wasn't supposed to be coming.  All of the schedules said that there wouldn't be another train for 2 hours, however, we took our chance and walked the 10 minutes up to the train station just to check.  We ended up getting there 2 minutes before an unscheduled train showed up.  We were so grateful because we were pretty hot and tired and ready to get to Milan.

Steph says this is a picture of Henry and I making the same expression.

This is what we do when we are really tired.  Let Yo Gabba Gabba do its magic.

We arrived in Milan, and checked in our Hotel and immediately went in search of some food.  Mostly I wanted to come to Italy to eat a lot of thin crust pizza.  Round One:

After dinner, we cruised around Milan.  We saw a lot of scooters in Milan. Here is what I saw stopped at one intersection.

Chillin at the Public Garden.

 

Ready for Venice yet?  Let's go tomorrow!