How my romantic trip to Venice turned into a perfect family break
I’ve been dreaming for years about going to Venice with my husband. I knew it was a bit cliche but it’s a one-in-a-life time experience, I thought.
So for my big 4-0 birthday, we booked our tickets to spend a few days in January in Venice together making sure his grand-parents could look after him back in London.
But destiny had other plans… nearer the time a family situation made it impossible for my husband’s parents to come and stay with my son so we had two choices: cancel our trip or…. you’ve guessed it right: taking our son with us!
I’m sure by now you can imagine what we decided: I said goodbye to a lovely, long-awaited weekend with my other half in one of the most romantic cities in the world and reluctantly (at first) welcomed a family break for three. It took me a few days to suck it up but you know what? In the end, it was all so worth it!
Life often throws you some life lessons and here are the 5 things I’ve learnt thanks to our memorable family weekend in Venice:
1) Let it go
I had to let go of this picture-perfect city break I had dreamt of for so long and accept the fact it was going to be a different type of holiday. Only then I started seeing all the positives: it would be such a beautiful experience for my son to see a city like Venice, go abroad where people speak neither English or French, discover another part of the world.
Originally, I was supposed to be away from my son on my birthday and I’m pretty sure I would have missed him so realising that we would be together on my special day brought some positivity onto our little adventure. Nothing better than having your two favourite people with you on your actual birthday, right?
2) Prepare your child before the trip
Once we had committed to the adventure, we told our son and showed him where Venice was on the map. I also remembered a ‘Go Jetters’ episode where Grandmaster Glitch (the ‘villain’ of the cartoon) tries to turn all the canals of Venice into roads. We watched it together to understand what was special about the place. When looking at a map, my son could see that Italy has the shape of a boot and that Venice looks like a fish from above!
We talked about the language, trying to practice our ‘Buon giorno’ and “grazie” on the days leading up to the trip. All these small things were helpful to get excited and curious about this unknown place.
3) Be flexible during the trip
Prior to the change of plan, I had made a list of all the places we could visit. Well, I had to shorten it drastically knowing we were going with our 5-year-old. But you know what? It’s ok. We were lucky with the weather: crispy winter coldness but gorgeous and warm sunshine made our trip a lovely break from grey and freezing London!
There was still a few musts to visit: the Doge’s Palace and Saint Mark’s Basilica. The advantages of visiting Venice in January is that there are much fewer tourists than in peak seasons meaning we didn’t have to queue and we were on our own in most rooms of the Doge’s Palace. Of course, my son was not 100% enthusiastic about going into every room available but we managed to get some interest out of him (with the help of snacks or the promise of an ice cream).
The views on the balcony of Saint Mark’s Basilica were stunning and the details inside so beautiful.
We made sure we got on a Vaporetto boat up the Grand canal and got off near the Jewish quarter which was very quiet and peaceful on a Saturday afternoon. We walked along small canals and stopped in a local bar for an obligatory Spritz (a juice for our little guy) and a selection of ‘cichetti’ (Venitian tapas) chosen by the bar manager himself. Sometimes, the simple things are the best.
4) Take your time
The beauty of Venice is that you are almost cut off from the real world. When you land at the airport, the best way to discover the city is to arrive by water; that view of the well-known silhouette of Venice getting closer and closer is stunning.
Then you are suddenly in this bubble of calm: no cars on sight, no traffic, just boats passing by every now and then and the echo of people calling their kids in the narrow streets.
It’s heaven for the children: they can run everywhere (of course, with caution next to the canals) but it feels really safe. If I ask my son his memories of Venice, he’ll automatically say: “the pigeons, I chased lots of pigeons!”. And that’s so true. He spent 3 days running after pigeons, going round and round to scare them away.
Because we had the time and the weather was perfect, we walked and walked and walked. Everywhere is so full of beautiful architecture and colours that you could walk endlessly. For our son, we had to keep teasing him with the prospect of an ice cream to keep his motivation level up and it worked. We stopped for meals (not always great food but that’s fine): always pasta with tomato sauce for him, the perfect meal!
If you go to Venice, just stop for a ‘caffe’ and a pastry, sit at the table and watch people. In low seasons you definitely see plenty of the locals living their ordinary life. Also everything is happening on the water: deliveries, emergency services and bin men, such an extra-ordinary (literally!) sight.
Outside the main touristy areas, the streets were quiet. One night, by the canal, there was a gorgeous and mysterious mist above the water that made us feel we were back in time somehow.
5. Have fun
We obviously did a trip on a gondola for 20 minutes - how can you not do it? My son loved the experience, something he still remembers now.
We were staying in a small hotel by the Rialto Market that had a room with a bubble bath. Once again, in the absence of intimacy, the three of us all put our swimwear on and had fun pressing the buttons to get gigantic and noisy bubbles one evening.
We were lucky that, on our last day, there was a small fun fair just by the lagoon. With St Mark’s Campanile in a bright winter light in the distance, I could tell I had never seen such a beautiful background for fair games such as hook-a-duck, bumping cars and flying-chair ride.
Would I do it again? Oh yes, definitely. It was clearly not the romantic trip I had planned but being together as a family for such a special experience was priceless. We now often talk about it when we shout “Buon appetito” before eating our homemade pasta dish.
I really invite you to take your children to beautiful places of Europe (when traveling will become possible again, of course!). It enriches them at so many levels and it creates such beautiful family memories…
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Marion & You Photography is a photographer in South London specialising in family, newborn and baby photography.