Fun Sized Escapades: Italy/Central Europe Trip: Austin to Venice

In late spring (2018) we talked about taking a trip to Central Europe for our 7th anniversary. Our planning took a slight detour west when we learned our favorite travel vloggers Kara & Nate had a spot open up on their Vespa trip! Sounded fun, so of course we signed up immediately!

note how much I left behind

This trip we needed two Rick Steves books - Italy 2018 and Eastern Europe (9th edition). Since we were not using all parts of the books, I surgically cut out the useful portions and made smaller books. The book lover in me did not like cutting up a book, but it was definitely worth it to save space and weight.

I also purchased some new Chacos and fell in love with them. They provided great support for my feet and after a ton of miles each day, my feel still felt great. Check out my Google Fit calendar to see how much we walked on this trip!!

Austin lounge

We put in a request for upgrade with miles and it cleared the day before we left! Hooray! The Austin to Philadelphia leg was not upgraded, but we did get to check out the Austin airport business lounge for about 30 mins before boarding our flight. It was awesome to check out lounges on our way to visit the king and queen of lounges - Kara & Nate!

storm clouds

Upon landing in Philadelphia, we headed over to the lounge to hang out until the next flight, which took longer due to storms in the area. But it was not bad spot to wait out the delay! They made an announcement over the speaker when our flight was actually boarding, which was perfect so we did not have to keep going between the locations wondering when are we actually leaving.

After boarding and getting all comfy with legroom for days (for this fun-sized person), we had to chill on the tarmac for who knows how long while the backlog of planes waited their turn to take off. After chatting with the guy next to me, I learned he was originally from East Texas - small world!

While airborne, I finally got to watch Black Panther and slept a little bit to keep jet lag at bay. Due to the weather delay in Philly, we landed around noon local time - Happy 4th of July! To get to our hotel in Venice we took a bus from the airport to the Venice bus station then purchased a two-day vaporetto ticket. "Vaps" are like the metro in NYC, but on water.

We were able to get into our room right away at Hotel Mercurio. Cute, tiny room and a very good location, but the shower was slightly problematic. It was minuscule! I barely fit and we thought it was smaller than the camper van or even a cruise shower!

First sightseeing stop was at the Museo Correr. Prior to leaving, I had purchased the "skip the line ticket" covering most of the museums and it was very handy, including here. We were not able to see San Marco square in it's full grandeur due to a concert being held that night. There was a huge stage with scaffolding and a billion chairs set up for the audience taking up most of the square's real estate. Apparently Zuccero was playing.

Next on the agenda was the Grand Canal tour from Rick Steves. We took a vap to the start and caught a #1 vap (stops more often) like he suggested and spent a couple hours learning about Venice. Make sure to sit in the front for the best views.

We continued a few stops past the San Marco stop (where the tour ends) just to see what we could see and decided to catch another boat over to visit the Church of San Giorgio Maggiore. After touring the interior of the church we climbed up for beautiful views of the lagoon from the bell tower. We happened to be up top when the bells chimed. ouch!!!

Several people have asked us after returning home, did Venice stink? I do not remember being put off by a stench. Maybe we weren't there in the stinky part of the year? We also did not see the square flood. After some not so great lasagna and showering in our tiny phone booth, we went to bed.

Thursday morning we had a 9:45am cut the line appointment to enter St. Mark's Basilica. Make sure you reserve a time or you have to join the extremely long line to enter on your own (during peak tourist times). We toured the church then the Doge's Palace + prison next door (get in fast with the skip the line pass).

We then toured the Basilica dei Frari followed by the Scuola Grande di San Rocco which had amazing paintings - felt almost like the Sistine Chapel with the large painted scenes! From here we wondered the alleyways of Venice on our way to walk over the famous Rialto bridge. We had passed under it quite a few times on a vap, but this time we walked.

Next it started raining so we took refuge at a tea house, Caffè Florian, on the square. It was a lovely spot with some great musicians. Just know you will pay a pretty penny to sit outside and enjoy live music. We sat there for a good chunk of time because we had a 6pm appointment at the St. Mark's Campanile (bell tower, 323ft tall). They were kind and let us go up a little earlier than our appointment. The views were fantastic!

After some more wondering, we took a gondola ride through the smaller canals! We ended the night with dinner at a cafe right below our hotel room window.