Who doesn’t love Venice? Even if you’ve never actually visited this unique island city, you will surely have dreamed of doing so…

The gondolas, the canals, the bridges, the buildings, the churches, the art, the mosaics, the music, the food…it is the stuff of fairytale romance and hedonistic joys. And Venice is a rich diet indeed.

When we lived in Padua (Padova) in the early 1990s, this most extraordinary of cities was right on our doorstep. I just had to hop on a train and in 20 minutes or so I was disembarking onto the Grand Canal. No other train station in the world has quite such an entrance. The first time you go, your jaw literally drops, but things are subtly changing and sometimes I fear for her future…

I will never forget visiting a work colleague of my husband’s in Venice just a week or two after we arrived for our six month work placement in Padua. We were there to collect a television she was lending us for our little flat. I have this image in my mind’s eye of my (not yet) husband standing holding this television (the big square sort of old) at the end of a little passageway near the San Toma vaporetto, staring out across the Grand Canal, not quite able to believe what we saw, or that we were actually there. Holding a television! Because, yes, people actually lived here in those days. Real life went on. Shops and businesses thrived. This was home to so many proud Venetians.

Sadly, over the intervening decades, much has changed. Cheap flights and mass tourism bring visitors to Venice in their hoards - so much so that the locals have slowly been moving back onto the mainland and with them the shops and business of old have started to close. The pandemic has been the final straw for many. I visited a few years before it, before the damage had taken its toll, and then again on this ‘Italy Revisited’ trip last year, 2022, when elements of the pandemic were still in place. What I noticed is that even more of the beautiful old traditional trattorias have closed down, replaced now by Irish pubs and fluorescently lit Asian and fast-food bars and eateries, together with an unfathomable proliferation of sweet shops where old oak barrels overflow with sugary nightmares in every colour of the rainbow. It is like turning this most venerable and elegant old lady into some sort of drag queen - dumbed down and hyped up for the masses, as every last scrap of dignity is washed away in the dirty canal water.

Yet if you look hard enough you will still find pockets of pure Venice. Just wander, wander, wander…and get lost! This is the best way to feel the essence of the city, far from St Mark’s Square, the Rialto Bridge and all the other tourist hotspots. Get lost in a labyrinth of little alleyways until you stumble across a hidden gem - a canal side eatery, a tiny little dark bar, a magnificent church, a captivating courtyard, a stone well or a delightful garden. They are all there to be discovered, even today. All is not totally lost. Yet this is a city which needs to be nurtured and handled with care if it is to survive for future generations to enjoy in all its idiosyncratic and historic glory.

I hope the following photos will give you a flavour of Venice, by day and by night, and inspire you to go exploring yourselves! For more Venice reels and pictures, do visit my instagram account @in_spire_living where you will find them if you scroll down a bit or look at the reels tab. Below is a quick summary of how to get the best out of Venice:-

Travel by train if you can as parking can be difficult
If you arrive by plane, consider taking a water taxi or one of the Vaporetto boats from the airport as a magical way to approach the city
Carnival in February is a busy time to visit - but also a once in a lifetime experience
Try to visit out of peak holiday times. Late Autumn and early Spring are highly recommended, or even January when the streets are misty and quiet and highly atmospheric
You will be doing a lot of walking so wear comfortable shoes
Travel out to the islands by boat. Burano is famous for its colourful houses, while Torcello is known for its lacemaking and Murano, of course, for its glass.
Stop for a glass of local wine in a little backstreet bar or ‘campo’ and watch the world go by
Avoid the main tourist areas for eating and drinking to get a more ‘authentic’ experience
Do take time to pop your head inside some of the many other churches, not just St Marks
Consider taking time to visit some of Venice’s many hidden gardens
Hop over to the Giudecca and the Island of San Giorgio to get some fresh perspectives on the city
Most of all, just enjoy yourself and soak up the atmosphere of this unique destination