Venice: Day 2

For our first full day in Venice, I had booked an Essential Venice 4 hour private walking tour from Karen at The Venice Experience. I read about her and her husband's tours at Trip Advisor, and I can't recommend them enough. We walked through all the city neighborhoods while she pointed out important buildings and discussed their history. She's full of knowledge of the city and its history and easily customizes the tour to the group. In our case, we skipped entering churches that might bore the kids, and she was sure to show us a mask maker, a glass blower, and the last remaining gondola maker in the city. She also recommended good restaurants off the tourist path and answered all our questions. The kids had a lot of questions for her, so it ended up being a tour that all of us enjoyed. Abbie only complained of sore, tired legs at one point, and a quick stop for a Coke cured all her ails. It's amazing what a little caffeine and sugar will accomplish!

Here are a few things we learned from the tour:

• The city was built on salt marshes, and the canals are all natural. Buildings were built on land, but they get flooded during high waters. (Brendan)
  
  
• The Grand Canal is like a Big S. (Brendan)
  

• Since they don't have cars, firetrucks are actually fire boats. They also have garbage boats. Deliveries are made by boat and they use the fisherman's throw. (C.J.)
  
• You can take a short boat ride just to cross the Grand Canal instead of walking to the nearest bridge. (Abbie)
• It takes a year to make a gondola and it is custom made for the gondolier. (C.J.)
• There is ice cream (gelato) on every corner, and it's really good. (Abbie)

On the way home, we returned to the Rialto market to pick up fixings for an afternoon snack. We went to "the best cheese man in Venice" and got a selection of cheeses, salami, olives, and roast beef. We then hit the fruit and vegetable stands for strawberries, melon, and artichoke hearts. We though we were getting the whole artichoke, but these ended up being great -- and easy. I just fried them up with a little butter. Since we were all a bit tired at this point, we headed back to the apartment We enjoyed a video Skype call with the McEntees, which just goes to show how small the world is. We love being able to steal wifi from someone in the building! I guess they don't have an older brother to teach them to lock down their network. (The apartment does have wired internet.)

We decided to eat at a restaurant across town, and the boys were our guides. They took control of the map and did a great job navigating us through the back alleys, across bridges, and to the door of the restaurant. Unfortunately, it took us longer to walk there than expected and the tables were booked. After a few tries at full restaurants, we found a place that could take us, but it wasn't nearly as good as the previous night's dinner.

Here's the link to all our photos.