The Adventures of Eloise and Abbey: Venice

Venice or Venezia really is an amazing city and we were lucky to have 5 days here to explore all the narrow laneways and the various quarters on the main island. We stayed in an area call Campo San Polo which was about a 7 minute walk to the Rialto Bridge which you have to cross to get anywhere in Venice.

The apartment we had was fantastic with very high ceilings and was beautifully decorated. It was a fair hike though from the train station and we hired a porter who took all our bags and the 30 Euros was well spent as there were about 7 bridges with no ramps to cross to get to Campo San Polo.

Our Venetian apartment

Breakfast of yoghurt and fruits in the apartment

View down to the girls bedroom from the top bedroom

Looking out our apartment window

We joined a free Venice walking tour on our first full day and were shown some the off the beaten paths of Venice. We also learnt lots of interesting things about Venice like the fact that Marco Polo came from Venice and that he brought back to Venice a Chinese wife who was not liked by the locals, what all the different Venetian masks symbolises, how they filtered out the salt for drinking water, the fact that Venice was built on stilts, the origins of Titian's red and how the aristocratic ladies used wee (yuk!) to dye their hair red in the old days.

Simona, our walking tour guide

One of the places Simona took us to was a very crowded bookstore with lots of cats and bathtubs filled with books so that when it flooded the books were protected in bathtubs. At the back of the store there was also a staircase made of books and you climb up to it and got a nice view of a canal.

Staircase of knowledge at a quirky bookstore in Venice that has lots of cats

There was off course St Marks square and basilica to visit which we did over two days as we got there late in the afternoon on the first occasion and there were too many people around!

Bronzed horses taken from Turkey

On top of St Marks Basilica

Eloise was very interested to hear about all the stolen treasures inside St Marks basilica but Abbey seemed to be more interested in chasing the pigeons in the square !

Eloise has her hands on one of the treasures from Egypt that is 2000 BC.

Chasing pigeons in St Marks square

We walked around the major attractions and saw the Rialto Bridge from a far with all the people on it and saw the famous sites such as the Bridge of Sighs and the Grand Canal

Gondolier on the Grand Canal in front of the Rialto Bridge

But we found that the best way to see Venice is wandering its narrow lanes and discovering a new campo (square) or new ponte (bridge). Getting lost in Venice's narrow lanes was certainly not hard to do .... in fact I think you are expected to get lost or there is something very wrong with you !