We again took the port shuttle and then people mover. The people mover is a monorail, and the Italian part of Epcot's World Showcaser is heavily Venice themed, so there was a lot of joking about "are you sure this isn't Disney World?"
"Por favor mantengase alejado de las puertas!"
We wasted no time in leaving the bus plaza and just started walking into the city, but not following signs towards any major tourist attractions. Well, we quit following signs pretty quickly, EVERY direction at the beginning apparently leads to St Mark's somehow.
You still see plenty of canals and lovely gondolas when not on THE main drag.
You see some pretty buildings too! Better yet, we found that Venice DOES have a sense of place, and it felt real and not like a tourist attraction--we just had to get away from the big name areas to find it.
See? Not a lot of people! Yay!
After about two hours of wandering, we were getting hungry--pizza was on our minds! We spotted the cafe below with about 7-8 construction workers inside having lunch. If it is good enough for local workers, we know it will be GOOD.
We were so lucky. Right after we sat down the skies opened and it POURED, HARD, hard rain (and cold rain) for about 20 minutes. I don't think you can really see the rain falling in sheets in the photo, but trust me it was there. Quite a few people from the ship got drenched on their tours that day. We, happily, did not. Instead we had good pizza (not as good as in Herculaneum, but quite tasty nonetheless), wine and sodas from a very nice waitstaff while remaining happily dry. The price was reasonable too. I want to say around 30 Euro.
The storm had completely cleared by the time we were finished eating. We decided we were ready to head back to the ship. With the help of the GPS we looped around and came at the Piazzale Roma from a completely different direction, so we never walked past the same things.
Just before getting to the Piazzale, there was a little gelato stand with reasonably priced (90 cent) scoops. When in Italy, gelato is a must, is it not?
And with that sweet treat, we headed back to the People Mover and onto the ship.
We were really glad we decided to head into Venice with the kids and that we decided to skip the "must sees" For our own family, this was the best memory of VENICE (as opposed to "things in Venice"). we felt like we saw and enjoyed a very nice little city. We got the feel of the canals and the boats and bridges that make Venice unique (well, uniqu--ish) and we really enjoyed the day without any stress. I don't think heading into St Mark's or the Doge's palace would have been as enjoyable for our group, though I am sure they are lovely.
Up next, my favourite stop on the cruise: Dubrovnik.
--Hadley
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