Part 1 of Salimarkle summer vacation.
Venice is only a short 1 hour flight from Basel and I've always wanted to go. If I'm being honest, my ideal trip to Venice was more so a date night with hubby rather than a trip with young kids. But I have recently learned the hard way that everyone in Europe books their vacations well in advance and we had not... so... off to Venice with A & Z in tow!
First to get to our place! I had arranged a private transfer because the public one was going to take over an hour and I never know how the kids will be after a flight. In any case, it's fun to have your own water taxi! We had arranged it beforehand with Consorzio Motoscafi. While our trip there and back actually worked out fine, I can't really recommend them because the service operators didn't give us some complete information and even hung up on me (intentionally) when we were trying to figure out where they were at 5AM in the morning. It was the only negative of this part of the trip though...
We decided to stay on Venice Lido, an island directly across from Venice, as we heard it was better for kids. It was totally flat so made for easy walking, isn't too big so everything is relatively close, and there's an impressive sand beach with warm shallow water for them to play. We stayed at the Oasis Lagoon in a lovely 3BR apartment overlooking the lagoon and Venice proper. Great sunsets overlooking the island of Venice itself! I can definitely recommend the Lido for kids and specifically our apart-hotel!
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| Our living room overlooking Venice and the lagoon. Only about 10 minutes walk from the Ferry terminal. |
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| The sunsets kept coming night after night - view from our place. The big dome is St. Mark's. |
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| The local grocery store had wine on tap - my kind of place!!! |
First day was explore Lido day. This involved going to the beach for the most part. There are public beaches on the north end but then to use the facilities, you have to pay. We just really wanted to rinse off and paid a hefty sum for it. We intended to come back later that day but never did so that was a bit of a waste. Ah well, live and learn! Instead of going back to the beach, we rented bikes and took a tour of the island! The kids loved this and it's very bike friendly. We put both of them in baby seats on the front / back of our bikes but they did also have some little kid bikes for slightly older kids.
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| Floating in the lagoon - quite nice and warm and shallow |
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| Bikes with seats on the back |
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| And bikes with seats on the front! |
Day 2 was off to Venice proper. I'm glad we didn't bring the stroller! So many stairs and narrow alleys. We saw some poor families struggling to make it up and down the bridges with their strollers. We decided to start with the morning ferry from Lido to St. Mark's Square. Since we were coming back that evening, we decided to get a 24 hour ticket, which was much cheaper than buying individually.
We were there early enough to avoid the crowds and heat. From there, we wandered the alleys over the infamous Rialto bridge and into some areas to look for good coffee. We found it at Caffe di Doge. So chocolatey! That gave the kids energy to keep going and walk all the way to the park that we could see from our view on the Lido on the tip of the island. We played there for quite some time and finally packed our crew back onto the ferry to head home for nap time. After nap time, it was back on the boat to go to dinner in Venice and, of course, a gondola ride! The gondola ride was fun - the kids enjoyed it (Amaya wore her recently acquired Venice mask to go authentic). The dinner itself was unremarkable but at least we got to do some people watching in between ducking the flying food from our kids.
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| A in St. Mark's square early in the morning before the crowds came |
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| Bridges bridges everywhere! |
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| Playing in the park |
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| OBVIOUSLY, A needed a purple mask. And a ride in the gondola to complete the look |
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| Rialto bridge from the gondola |
On the final full day there, we took advice from a friend who grew up in the general area and went off to Burano (instead of the more commonly known sister, Murano). The boat ride was a bit long for the kids (about 45-50 min) but we enjoyed the colourful houses! We found a little cafe and there is a nice park right there as well. To be honest, not a ton to do here (they're known for the lace making but that's not really my thing) but it's definitely visually very interesting. We finished off the day back at the beach, dinner, and gelato.
Overall, we had a really lovely trip. Even though Venice itself isn't necessarily kid friendly in the thick of the August crowds, the Lido was a perfect way to experience it and have fun while doing it. Definitely would go back (if there weren't so many other places to explore first anyway!)
We left super early the next morning for Croatia - more to come on that!
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