I’ve heard plenty of people give out about Venice, over priced, over touristed, dirty etc.. but I still believed it was a must see place so off we went for just a quick 2 night Spring stay. One weird issue I had boking accommodation was that a lot of the hotels in Venice don’t seem arsed doing checkins after about 7pm which is at odds with the fact that the cheap airlines fly at weird times. I had to cancel the first place I booked because of this after I missed the small print but managed to find another that was ok with a late arrival albeit for an extra fee. Rialto Dream was located down a hard enough to find alleyway but very well located within walking distance of Rialto Bridge and the other main tourist attractions. As it turned out we were very badly delayed flying from Dublin (so we drank lots of Guinness and nearly forgot where we were going!) and arrived even later than we had planned, so late that we missed the last connecting bus that I’d pre-booked and had to get an expensive enough taxi from the airport to the main bus station on the island of Venice. We then faced about a 30min sweaty walk down quiet, slightly scary streets at around midnight! We finally found the hotel and were able to self-check in easily enough. The host Elena was lovely and cooked us fresh scrambled eggs every morning as well as giving tips.

The next day after brekkie we set off exploring. I’d pre-booked a morning gondola trip under the Bridge of Sighs as you must and we got our kiss in even though it wasn’t quite at sunset as it’s supposed to be! The canals weren’t anywhere near as dirty or smelly as I’d expected. I suspect some effort is spent keeping them clean these days. Too much tourism depends on it. After that we took a walk around the Piazza San Marco, not bothering to pay into the cathedral or any other attractions. We were lucky to come by the culmination of the “Up and Down the Bridges” charity walk and cultural festival performance in the square.

Then we browsed some shops had coffee and cake and a Limoncello or three before our “Eat like a Venetian” food tour later in the evening. I always like to try food tours wherever I go just to eat the real local food and get some history but they are all hit and miss. You’re never going to like everything given to you to eat and so it was with this one! The main course of “black” (via squid ink) spaghetti was one of the worst things I’ve ever eaten. There were some other nice bits though. But because we weren’t quite satisfied with the food tour we had to grab a quick pizza in a Jazz Club/Pizzeria just to restore some order!

We had to checkout out of the hotel early enough on the last day but had quite a bit of time to kill before our flight so we just strolled around, had some more Limoncellos and Meloncellos (I never knew these existed until this trip, ynom!) then had a nice Italian meal in Trattoria le Colonete before deciding to get a water taxi back to the airport for the crack rather than the bus. Not the gorgeous, wooden, very expensive James Bond style ones but a regular, slightly cramped bigger boat. It went past the famous glass-making island of Murano and straight into the airport!

We left Venice a lot poorer but feeling that 2 nights and 2 days was plenty to get a good feel for the city and tick off another bucket list place.