About Venice we have already told you about our stay a few years ago with Arturo (https://www.cittameridiane.it/en/a-walk-around-venice/). Well we went back with Otto for an experience that turned out to be beautiful but when we told someone before leaving someone has taken us literally for crazy!
In Venice with three children and a dog
It was a single day but, as already underlined in the title, particular. For various reasons.
The first: we decided to go to Venice to celebrate Michele’s birthday on May 1st.
And we have done so for days on every news and on the network bounced news from real psychological terrorism on the influx of the city, which would be keeped down and even subjected to revenue through the turnstiles as in the stadiums in the most crucial points.
Well, we are witnesses of the fact that such alarmism has worked so well that in Venice it circulated very well between calli, campi and canals: probably a lot of people have renounced to reach the lagoon because they are frightened by these proclamations.
The second “peculiarity” is due to the team with whom we have reached the city of the Doges. We with our Otto plus the family of my brother with three children and stroller: do you imagine the picture?
Then, it was a special visit because it is as if we were back in time looking at the wonders of Venice, palaces, monuments and gondolas with the ecstatic eyes of the children that the city liked a lot: they lived this day as if they had fallen into a fairy tale.
And their questions were many and of all kinds: from the shapes of the fireplaces (of which we have already spoken in the post https://www.cittameridiane.it/en/a-walk-around-venice-2/) to the briccole, the wooden poles fixed in the muddy ground of the lagoon, one of the symbols of the city of Venice that indicate navigable canals and landings.
Again, to reach and circulate in Venice we have taken five vehicles: it is already this, with three children and a dog, we would enroll right in an album of heroes!
In fact we left early from Scorzè, where we stayed overnight, with the car to the station of Mogliano Veneto. Here we took the train to Venice and immediately the first wonder, the lagoon with its liquid colors between green and blue, quiet and flat in the mists of the morning.
Got off the train and left behind Santa Lucia station we immediately noticed that the rows at the ticket offices for the much feared steamboats … were not there! So with our Venezia Unica ticket in your pocket, which you can also buy online at www.veneziaunica.it and that allows you to travel around the city and the islands on board all the means along the waterways, we climbed on vaporetto that crosses it sailing on the Grand Canal, directed to Piazza San Marco.
With us also Otto, of course, but remember that all dogs must be brought on a leash and with a muzzle if they exceed 60 centimeters in height at the withers.
The Grand Canal remains the most beautiful road in the world and has the same fascination on young and old: three kilometers and eight hundred meters crossed by only 4 impressive bridges, that of the Scalzi, that of Accademia, that of Rialto and the last designed by Calatrava.
On the main canal of the city there are marvelous buildings and 45 smaller canals come together from which the long and black prows of the gondolas emerge, which have aroused great curiosity in the children.
So much so that we had to promise to get them on one of these strange boats. We kept the promise without drying up the wallet thanks to the gondola ferries that lead from one side to the other of the “Canalazzo” as the Venetians call it. The crossing is short, and the children have complained about it, but it is the cheapest way to experience the gondola that has also enjoyed our Otto.
Returning to the beginning of our adventure, it began as soon as we got off the train at Venice Santa Lucia station, admiring the green dome of the church of San Simeone Piccolo on the other side of the canal.
It’s then continued through the Grand Canal passing under the Rialto Bridge to San Marco, where we went down and, passing through the Royal Gardens, we found ourselves facing the large square with the Basilica and the Palazzo Ducale on the right, the Clock Tower in front and the Bell Tower on the left. To welcome us the two tall columns of San Marco and San Teodoro.
Then, after having dutifully purchased the straw hat from gondolier and after the ritual photos in front of the Basilica, a masterpiece of architecture unique in the world, the stop at Caffè Floriàn, which since the twentieth century offers excellent and pleasant music of the genre “Caffè concerto “.
Inside you can feel yourself projected into the voluptuous atmosphere of 18th century Venice, with mirrors, gilded frames, mahogany furniture, velvets and oriental-style panels.
So we headed to the Ponte della Paglia from which, crowd permitting, you can make the best shots of the Ponte dei Sospiri, which connects the Palazzo Ducale with the new prisons and that takes its name from the complaints of the defendants directed to the Inquisitors State.
(End of the first part)
