Our hotel was a less than five minute walk to the Rialto Bridge. This was my second favourite sight in Venice. Around Rialto bridge there's lots of restaurants, we didn't find the food prices expensive. We had a pizza & fries facing the bridge and it came to around €15 that's with drinks.
What is there to see in Venice...
I'm obsessed with seeing all the sights a place has to see and if I miss one I'd be desperate to go back (this happened in Rome, when using Google maps abroad would brake the bank). So I make a list of all the sights I want to see and tick them off as we go along. I spend a lot of time checking maps and making the list in order of where they are so we aren't walking to and from different areas. My FAVOURITE app is Visit a City, this app is a god send for travel lovers, type the place in, click sights and you have everything your destination has to offer! There was one thing I wanted to see that wasn't on the app, but i'm going to list everything you need to see when in Venice.
Piazza San Marco.
St. Marks Square, dating back to the 12th century!
Basilica di San Marco.
Venice's most famous church, this you will find in St. Marks Square.
Campanile di San Marco.
9th Century bell tower part of the Basilica di San Marco.
Torre dell'Orologio.
The clock tower on St. Marks Square. It's very beautiful.
Palazzo Ducale.
The Doge's Palace. This was once home to the rulers of Venice. This building is so beautiful! It was also a prison which leads on to the next sight..
Ponte dei Sospiri.
The bridge of sighs. The beautiful bridge connects the Doge's Palace to the old prison. So convicts could go straight to their prison cell from being sentenced. It's said to be called the Bridge of Sighs because the prisoners who crossed the bridge 'sighed' as they had their last look at the free world through the windows before going to their cell.
Ponte di Rialto.
The most beautiful & most famous of the 4 bridges that cross the Grand Canal.
Santa Maria della Salute.
This is a beautiful church. We found it quite hard to get to as its on the other side of the canal and to view it from across the water you would have to go into the gorgeous (very expensive) hotels. We crossed the canal at Accademia bridge and google mapped it.
Scala Contarini del Bovolo.
My favourite sight in Venice. It's so beautiful and not as crowded as everywhere else, walking to it you will feel like you are in the wrong place but just follow your google maps and you will not be disappointed. You can also go to the top for a pretty view over Venice. There was probably only 5-6 people there when we visited.
There is obviously more to see in Venice these are just the most popular sights, the streets are a sight themselves with gondolas all over. We pretty much did all the sights on our first afternoon because on our second day we were doing a day trip to Burano. If you've not heard of Burano it's a beautiful island known for its brightly painted houses. It's stunning, you can't stay on the island. To get there you can do a day trip which you usually would go to Murano & Torcello. We decided to make our own way there by the water bus. We walked to Fondamente Nove and caught the boat there . It probably took around 30/40 minutes, but it doesn't feel that long as you get to see Venice and so many other beautiful things on the way over. Can't remember exactly how much tickets are for the water bus, maybe around €6. But it's so worth going and exploring it's tiny streets and seeing the houses you've seen on Instagram.
Our next two days of our trip were in Verona. We caught the train for Venice into Verona which took around an hour and a half. Again we booked our train in advance because we were staying in Verona for two nights.
We arrived in Verona around 1pm then headed straight out with my check list of sights Verona is most famous for Shakespeare's classic Romeo & Juliet. One of the main reasons I wanted to visit Verona is the film Letters to Juliet.
There's not an awful lot to see in Verona as it is quite small but it's so beautiful...
Casa do Giuletta.
Juliet's house, where the entrance is full of letters to Juliet and the courtyard was so full with people taking their picture with the bronze statue of Juliet and on the famous balcony looking over into the courtyard.
Arena di Verona.
A 30AD arena. The arena is still used to this day for opera!
CastlVecchio Bridge.
This was constructed in 1354.
Piazza delle Erbe.
A gorgeous market square dating back to the ancient roman era.
Torre dei Lamberti.
Piazza delle Erbe's 1172 bell tower.
Arco dei Gavi.
A triumphal arch from the first century.
Verona Cathedral.
Arche Scaligeri.
5 Scaligeri family gothic burial monuments. The 14th century rulers.
Piazzale Castel San Pietro.
The beautiful Verona view point. Such amazing views over Verona.
While we were at the viewpoint and had checked the final Verona sight off our list, we were thinking what are we going to do with our full day in Verona the day after when we had done everything within a few hours. We decided that we would go back to everything, if you can go in it then we will go in. We then heard someone saying they were on a day trip from Venice, so when we got back to our room we decided to see where was around 2 hours away on the train and that is how we stumbled on to our day trip to Milan.
I had always wanted to go to Milan but I knew there wasn't a lot to see there and if we were ever going to go it would be a stop off on our next Italian adventure. I saw this as the perfect opportunity to go and see a city i'd always wanted to visit. So we woke up the day after walked to the train station and booked the train to Milan (1 and a half hour going with the €25 tickets and 2 hours coming home with the €12.50 tickets). We had to book a time to come back to Verona so we only had 3 hours in Milan! We got to Milan train station went to the metro and got off at the Duomo stop and there it was the INCREDIBLE...
Milan Cathedral.
Honestly one of the most beautiful buildings I have ever seen. Its just stunning. You can go inside and up it but with our strict 3 hour schedule the outside we just enough. (I probably took around 100 pictures of this cathedral). I would say its in my top 3 of the most amazing sights I've ever seen.
Piazza del Duomo.
This is the main square site of the Duomo and other historic buildings.
Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II.
A beautiful shopping mall. Pretty much every designer boutique and fabulous restaurants.
Castello Sforzesco.
A huge medieval-renaissance fortress.
Porta Sempione.
Triumphal arch within Parco Sempione.
Im glad we did Milan on a day trip because there was not a lot to do. Im sure if we had a full day or one night we would have been fine and there are some amazing bars/restaurants that look onto the cathedral, I would have loved to have gone to one of them and watched the sun set over the Duomo. Im not sure I would recommend going for a full city break but I would 100% recommend going on a day trip, maybe giving yourself more than 3 hours so you can relax in the gorgeous bars facing the Duomo. In our three hours we wanted the check off the main sites so that's what we paid attention to. We managed to do everything in 2 hours which gave us time for lunch. NOW if your going to day trip I would recommend booking the tickets that were around €25 because the €12.50 train journey home was a packed full train with no aircon and it was a longer journey home, not to mention the temperature was 30 degrees! The train going was fast, air-coned, you were assigned a seat so it wasn't over packed. But we were on a budget because the trip was so last minuet!
I hope this blog post gave you some travel inspo and if your going to any of the places I had been to it gave you a nice easy itinerary! My MUST SEE spot is 1000% the Scala Contarini del Bovolo. I know people say its hard to find but that's why its a gem! I'm so happy I stumbled across a picture of it on Pintrest, otherwise i'd have never known of it. I love Italy and I can't wait to explore more of it!
Ciao for now Italia.
