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.