Arriving in Venice

We flew into Venice, where we'll stay for 4 nights, and in daylight it was spectacular from the air. The Island of Venice itself doesn’t seem very big from up there, and there seems to be lots of farmland on the mainland nearby. 

Venice from the air

The airport is a very manageable size, and getting through it took only a few minutes. The airport is a boat or bus ride from the city, and then a connection to another boat, or possibly a walk through the narrow streets and over the little bridges to our apartment. Since there were 6 of us arriving at the same time, we elected to hire a water taxi to take us right to our apartment near the Accademia bridge. We exited the airport building and walked out to the pier, where water taxis were waiting. The weather was nice, and even with some choppy water, we were in the city and on the Grand Canal in just a few minutes. The private water taxi cost about 20 euros each, 120 euros total, so it would have been a splurge if we hadn't had 6 people splitting it.

Our water taxi navigating the Grand Canal

The write-up for our rental indicated that we had direct access from the Grand Canal into a private courtyard for our building. Nonetheless, our water-taxi driver let us off at the Accademia vaporetto (water bus) stop, which was very close to our place. We arrived at about 5:30. Caterina and Marco had arrived the day before so they could attend Easter Sunday Mass at St. Mark's, and had stayed in a hotel for their first night. They were at the apartment to check us in at 4, then waited at a nearby bar for our arrival.

The neighborhoods of Venice. We're staying in Dorsoduro

Since it was Easter Sunday, my fear was that the stores would all be closed and we wouldn’t be able to get groceries. I put a question out on the TripAdvisor Forum for Venice, and got some good input from people more knowledgeable about the situation. All the responses indicated that not only would the grocery stores be closed this late on Easter Sunday (or any Sunday, really), but that Easter Monday was also a holiday, so there might be closures then too. OK, so we packed some coffee, tea, and oatmeal, just in case. The other dilemma was that we might need some dinner, but I hated to reserve a big table on Easter Sunday in case our group was too jet-lagged to stay up and go out to eat at a restaurant. 

We got to our apartment, and sorted ourselves and our stuff into bedrooms. My goal for this trip was to find rentals with 5 bedrooms and 5 bathrooms, and this apartment met the criteria. It’s a fairly big place, in an old palazzo, with a modern kitchen and big table that seated all 10 of us. The entry (back door, I guess) was kind of convoluted, through a very nondescript door, up a narrow staircase, around a corner, over a threshold and across a tiny landing, and around another corner to the door. I wondered if there might be a nicer entrance from the courtyard, but it was off-limits to us, if there was. 

Once we got settled we decided that we were all hungry, and we headed out to find dinner. The neighborhood had lots of possibilities.

A little canal in our neighborhood of Dorsoduro

We stopped at Ai Cugnai, which we were able to check out on TripAdvisor, and asked about a table for the 8 of us. We lucked out and got seated, and the food was great. Giuliana remembers having spaghetti carbonara, which she pronounced delicious. The bill for 8 of us was 168 euros.

We went back to our apartment, enjoying the little lanes and lights of our Dorsoduro neighborhood. It looked like a place we would be very comfortable.

Principessa and Giovanni arrived at 1:00 a.m., and Caterina and Marco stayed awake to let them in.