Skip to main content

The meandering canals of Venice.. a 3 day itinerary of Venice, Italy

Venice.. the city of canals and indeed it had to be one of our first stops on our Italian adventure.
Planning a trip across Italy can be quite a task since the country has so much to offer! We finally settled on covering the top ones - Venice, Florence, Rome, Cinque Terre in 14 days. (Refer my blog Italia 2019: The Planning)

We landed in Rome and immediately took a train to the one of the most romantic cities in the world - Venice. Venice is a city with no cars/vehicles and runs on an intricate network of water taxis (vaporette) and gondolas on their canals. Being one of the most touristy spots you will be greeted my crowds of tourists walking across the small lanes, enjoying gondola rides and many standing in queue to visit the sights! We planned about 2.5 days in this beautiful city and we couldn’t get enough of it. Venice is best experienced by walking aimlessly, sometimes getting lost, in their tiny but cute streets and that's exactly what we did. We picked the top highlights to see - San Marco Basilica & Campanile, Doge’s palace on the first day. Tip - book your entry time to the Basilica online and simply turn up and walk in. The queues to the Basilica are really long. We did the same for the Campanile and booked the ticket & entry time online. I do agree it is a pain to schedule everything on your itinerary, but when we saw the queues we were glad we booked it! It was a breeze to enter and go immediately up to the highest viewpoint of the city. The Doge’s palace however still has a queue even though the tickets were booked online; albeit not too long. We spent the rest of the day aimlessly roaming the streets, eating a lot of gelato and enjoying the pizza ending our day 1 with a calming ride on the gondola across all the canals. Gondola are the long boats that you would see everyone taking a lazy ride on. A ride for about 30-40mins costs around 80 Euros.. yes it's expensive.. but you do have to bargain with your Gondolier. It's a great way to see the city through its in-numerous canals. beautiful and quite serene.. 

San Marco Basilica
View from the Campanile
Bridge of Sighs.. On our Gondola ride
Glass Maestro @ Murano

Our second day in Venice started with a visit to 2 churches - Santa Maria Miracoli & San Zaccharia. Santa Maria Miracoli is a beautiful church with some great frescos and statue of Madonna. But our fav was San Zaccharia - with amazing frescos across the walls and ceiling. For the second half of the day we planned a tour to the islands of Murano and Burano. I am quite a DIY person, however wanted to be toured around on this one. We booked the Murano and Burano tour through City Wonders and set off on the Vaporette bang on time. Murano is an island which used to house a number of glass blowing factories which are now closed. There are only 8 families remaining on the islands who still pass on the glass blowing tradition to their generations. We visited one such factory and were stunned by the glass maestro’s skill of turning sand into a beautiful glass horse in a matter of minutes! 


Burano island

After spending an hour wandering through the glass shop ( we couldn’t afford to buy any & lug it around Italy) we then proceeded to the much awaited (by me) Burano island. Burano is the colourful one you would have seen photos of. Every house looks similar and to distinguish one’s house they have it painted in bright pinks, purple, green, orange etc. Its an Instagram fav! Burano is also known for traditional lace making which you would see being sold in most shops. We spent an hour or so wandering around the small town, clicked a zillion pics ( I couldn’t get enough of the colours) and then headed back to mainland Venice. 

Burano
Burano


Venice is a beautiful city, with buildings over a 500yrs old, the city’s lazy, romantic charm does not disappoint. 

Next stop... Florence!

View from Rialto Bridge

Tell me what you think!  Comment | Share | Subscribe
Labels:
Location: Venice, Metropolitan City of Venice, Italy

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Bhutan : Measuring the Gross National Happiness - The Planning & Itinerary

Its been a year or two since we had been planning to visit Bhutan. Finally this October it materialized. The Kingdom of Bhutan is a beautiful country nestled in the Himalayas known to be the happiest nation in the world and that got us curious. Bhutan is pretty big and given we had about 8-9 days we could cover only the north-west towns of Bhutan. Bhutan is a country with a different view every 90 degrees- simple beautiful; right out of a picture postcard! You wont get tired of clicking pics.. Bhutanese people are very content and none are in a hurry to get anywhere. There are no traffic signals, no crime; an easy going life with immense love for the King.  Almost everything in Bhutan is regulated by the Govt including tourism which helps control the number of tourists in the country and maintain the biodiversity.  Its not too much of a DIY country in-terms of planning itinerary and booking your stay. We set out enquiring with a few recommendations we got from friends to...
Post a Comment
Read more

The magic of Prague... a 3 day itinerary

My fascination with the Czech Republic and Prague started with my dad's stories of his stay in CzechSlovakia way back in the 60s and 70s. Hence Prague just had to be on my list!  I took a early morning bus from Berlin (pre-booked on FlixBus) and landed in Prague around 12 noon at the main railway station. My German number decided not work as soon as I crossed the border and hence I had no internet. I enter the railway station to realize that everything is in Czech! With the help of some broken English and sign language managed to get a new sim (Vodafone was a recognizable name :P) and activate it. Phew! Now I was ready to take on Prahaaaaa...  I had booked an Air B&B close to Wenceslas square only to realize it is a bit of a distance from the happening places around Old Town Square. Tip of the day: live closer to where all the attractions are and that's in and around Old Town Square. Trust me, you will realize this when you have to walk back after a long day ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The land of Mozart! Vienna.. in 2 days

Vienna.. the land of art, culture and music. The bustling capital city of Austria is an amalgamation of various cultures - pieces from the Ottommon empire right to the Bohemian empire and ofcourse German culture and traditions. Getting around the city is easy and all the sights are at walking distance. However, I had taken the Vienna City card which gave me unlimited use of the public transport - metro, tram or bus and also some discounts on the entry tickets for the sight. I had booked an Air B&B one stop away from  Stephansplatz and it was very convenient. As always I started off with a free walking tour ( I have decided I will do this in every city) by Good tours.. I like the little anecdotes shared by the tour guides, something you don't get to read in all the pre-planning research that you do. The tour quickly covers all the main sights but I also had my eyes on a few I had to do which weren't covered in the tour. St Stephans Cathedral is the most popular one, bu...
Post a Comment
Read more