While the focus of our trip was hiking in the Dolomites, we thought it would be neat to spend a day in Venice at the end of our trip. The week before our trip we were obsessively checking the weather forecast and saw that rain was predicted a day after our arrival. We decided to spend a day in Venice after arriving in Milan so we could use one of our travel days on the rainy day. This worked out well, but now we had to scramble for a hotel room in Venice on short notice. We got lucky and scored a reasonably priced room at Hotel Airone, conveniently located by the train station.

With plans in place, we were off to Italy! We left NYC Friday evening and arrived in Milan the next morning. After a bus ride to the Centrale train station and a train ride to Venice, we finally were at our first destination (and surprisingly still standing - we were pretty tired!). After checking in we set off to explore. We spent a lot of time riding the vaporettos (between the airplane, bus, train, and vaporettos - our public transportation loving kiddo was in heaven), walked around Piazza San Marco, and most importantly, visited the bakeries and gelaterias. :)

Although our visit was brief, we loved the uniqueness and beauty of Venice and are glad we had a chance to experience it.