ARRIVAL DAY:

I love a traditional Thanksgiving as much as the next person, but this year our family decided to do something different over the Thanksgiving break. I started searching for inexpensive flights for four and soon found a deal that couldn’t be beat. I was a little surprised to find that my family could fly to one of the most beautiful places in Europe for the cost of flying to Vegas, but it soon made sense. Venice has traditionally experienced something called the “acqua alta” or high water in November. Because of the acqua alta, November is an off-season for Venice. While there are still tourists, it isn’t quite the Disneyworld of Europe that it is during the peak season.

We flew into Marco Polo (a Venetian) airport on November 25, and took the Alilaguna straight down the Grand Canal to a stop right by our hotel, the Palazzetto Pisani Grand Canal. We stayed in a suite with two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a dining area and a sitting room that opened directly onto the Grand Canal. Our view every morning was unforgettable.

Our family was determined not to go straight to sleep when we arrived in Venice, soafter dropping our bags at our palazetto, we had some panini at a local sandwich shop and went on a walking tour of the sestiere (an Italian term for one of the six historic districts of Venice) of Dorsodouro. We walked along the Zattere promenade, toured the beautiful church of Santa Maria della Salute, and generally just enjoyed walking the streets and beside the canals of one of the most incredible places I have ever been.

We had dinner at one of the best ristorantes we visited on our trip, La Bitta. As someone who doesn’t eat seafood and whose husband has a shellfish allergy, eating in Venice could be a challenge. But La Bitta is the rare Venice ristorante that doesn’t serve either. After a delicious dinner of pastas and lamp chops, accompanied by local wines, we said buona notte to our first day in Venice.

FIRST FULL DAY…

Our first full day in Venice was dedicated to the “must see” things in the City. Day-trippers do just these things and believe that they have seen Venice, but they do these things for a reason. We walked about ten minutes from our hotel to Piazza San Marco and had breakfast at Caffè Florian. Even had it not been serving Venice since 1720 and allowed you to eat in the same place as had Goethe, Casanova, Lord Byron, Marcel Proust and Charles Dickens, Caffè Florian is worth the visit for its beauty and elegance alone.

Caffè Florian sits along the side of the Piazza San Marco, or St. Mark’s Square, which was the site of the first half of our first full day in Venice. St. Mark’s Square is so named because it is home to St. Mark’s Basilica , which is the home to the remains of the disciple Mark.

How did the Venetians come to own the remains of St. Mark, you ask. Simple, they stole them, as they did half the things you will see if you visit the Piazza San Marco. In researching Venice ahead of this trip, I concluded that it was a city of pirates who traveled the world stealing beautiful things to adorn their city. And while I don’t necessarily approve of their methods, you can’t argue with the results!

We took a tour of St. Mark’s Basilica that allowed you to view the Triumphal Quadriga (four gold-plated bronze horses that were originally in the Hippodrome of Constantinople), the Pala d’Oro, and walk along a balcony overlooking the square.

After our tour of the Basilica, our daughters climbed the Campanile (the Basilica’s bell tower) while my husband and I viewed the Bridge of Sighs and walked to the edge of the square, being careful not to walk between the two pillars to avoid the back luck that doing so brings.

Our family then toured the Doge’s Palace, had lunch at La Piazza Zone and visited the Museo Correr.

Our tour that evening had us venturing into a different sestiere. While we could have walked to where the tour started, instead we took a vaporetto, which I would highly recommend to anyone visiting Venice. You can buy a pass with unlimited rides for however long you are there, and they are easy to use and fun.

Not only did we use our ACTV passes to travel around the city in style, but we also took a vaporetto to tour the outlying islands on day four of our trip and even used it to get to the airport on our way home. An ACTV pass is a must for someone visiting Venice.

After traveling to the sestiere of San Polo via vaporetto, we ended our first full day in Venice with a cicchetti tour. Cicchetti are small snacks or side dishes, such as tiny sandwiches, plates of olives or other vegetables, halved hard-boiled eggs, or small servings of a combination of one or more seafood, meat and vegetable ingredients laid on top of a slice of bread or polenta. Our tour was led by a local Venetian (a type that is becoming harder to find as the city becomes more of a tourist destination than a place for people to live) and focused on local establishments.

The cicchetti tour took us all over the sestiere of San Polo, introduced us to several foods that we have never tried before, such as baccala and Seppie al Nero alla Veneziana, and concluded with the single best piece of tiramisu I have ever eaten.

Our first full day in Venice had been full indeed. Our tour ended back in the sestiere to San Marco, so we enjoyed a short walk through the beautiful streets of Venice back to our palazetto for a well-deserved night’s sleep.