Rose Astor, Contributor
My mother first took me to Venice when I was a wide-eye nine-year-old. My memory is of pure, unadulterated Italian glamour: heels clicking down cobbled streets, laughter and music tumbling out of the cracks of elegant old buildings, sleek boats and gondolas ferrying fur-coated bella donnas to impossibly exotic rendezvous. It feels appropriate, almost a rite of passage, to take my 10-year-old daughter to capture those memories through her gaze.
We go thanks to Riccardo Lanza, a Venetian events planner who organised George Clooney’s wedding and is, fortuitously, godfather to our principessa. He has arranged a three-day trip for us, WhatsApping me a hit list so that we can experience the city like a local – of which there are scant few left, he laments.
Disembarking at Marco Polo Airport is itself a serious buzz. There is no hire-car coronary, no rush-hour taxis, just a dashing Jean-Paul Belmondo spin-off at the wheel of a pre-booked walnut and cream-leather taxi boat who zooms us to the recently refurbished Gritti Palace. You can’t beat the Gritti for location, right on the Grand Canal opposite the Salute and the Peggy Guggenheim Museum. On arrival, my daughter is helped off the boat by a charming concierge and presented with the hotel’s Venice for Kids guidebook and a stuffed Gritti Lion. I know the Italians love children, but the attention she receives over the three days dispels any worries I had that the hotel would be too smart for small people. We bed down in the Hemingway Suite, which could house my family of five quite comfortably (cots and foldaway beds are free for under-12s). There are also interconnecting family rooms, though beware if you come with toddlers: precious heirlooms adorn every surface.
On our first night, Riccardo introduces us to the fabulous Bianca and Giberto Arrivabene, who now live with their five children on the top floor of the Palazzo Papadopoli, their centuries-old family home. ‘Go down every calle [street]. Go through every door. Get lost!’ Bianca advises us over risotto con trufa. Thanks to my phone battery, this is exactly what we end up doing.
It’s hard not to fall for a cliché in Venice. On our first morning we are woken by gondoliers singing operettas below our open windows and spend a good half an hour soaking it all up. When we make it down to breakfast in the canalside bar we gorge on homemade pastries, eggs and granola (the Gritti also has a renowned cookery school that offers children’s classes) and just sit, watch and listen. The boats, the language, the extraordinary buildings… Venice TV, we call it.
Taking Bianca’s words to heart, we remain alert for open doors. En route to see the Tintorettos at the Scuola Grande di San Rocco (tip: get the iPod guide and lie on the floor of the Sala Superiore to appreciate the ceiling fully), I pull my daughter into a tiny church, where we light a candle, pray and listen to cellists warming up for a concert. There isn’t a single other visitor in sight. We plunge down tiny alleyways off St Mark’s Square that are stuffed with pocket-money souvenir shops (Venetian masks make excellent party-bag fodder). We buy beautiful notebooks from the exquisite stationery shop Gianni Basso Stampatore, which my daughter fills with holiday scribblings back at the hotel.
On the Arrivabenes’ advice, we rent a boat from Brussa Is Boat, which leads to a glorious couple of hours pootling about pretend palazzo-hunting and getting delightfully lost, more National Lampoon’s Vacation than Don’t Look Now. It would be wrong not to ride in an actual gondola, though, so we take a traghetto to Dorsoduro, where we whizz through the magnificent Punta della Dogana gallery (short is sweet with children – you almost want to flash-card them the sights). I hold my daughter’s attention at the incredible Peggy Guggenheim Museum by telling her how Mrs Guggenheim would remove a certain male appendage from a Picasso sculpture facing the canal every morning when the nuns sailed past, then stick it back on.
For scare-seeking children, the Secret Itineraries Tour at the Palazzo Ducale is brilliant. Hearing tales of murders and executions thrills my oddly bloodthirsty daughter, who delights in recounting them to her brothers back home. The concierge has pre-booked our tickets, and on his advice we go in the afternoon to avoid the midday crush. He also bundles us off with tickets for the Giardini della Biennale, as well as St Mark’s Basilica and bell tower, from where we survey the Venetian skyline and count the towers (I get to 24). We then hop on a vaporetto to the Giardini, which has an excellent café where we discuss what we’ve seen. Or rather, where my daughter declares most of the city’s artworks ‘easy-peasy, I could do that’.
Watching the Murano glass-blowers is fun, but you don’t need a whole day. We go on our way back to the airport, stamping our own molten-glass souvenirs at the centuries-old Seguso factory before grabbing a final risotto at Trattoria da Romano amid the colourful fishermen’s houses of Burano.
Venice gets mixed reviews foodwise, which is why insider tips are invaluable. Book Harry’s Bar for an early club sandwich and Woody Allen-style character spotting. The best pizza we find is at the Pizzeria Casin dei Nobili. And the gianduiotto ice cream from Nico’s in Dorsoduro results in an afternoon nap that is more coma than siesta. Antiche Carampane is a great spot for lunch with a good fish menu, and before dinner one evening Riccardo takes us to the Cantine del Vino già Schiavi wine bar, where the after-work crowd spills onto the small bridge outside.
Our trip is short, but my daughter’s diary is testament to how much we cram in, bulging as it is with ticket stubs, maps and receipts. Pre-booking activities and restaurants to avoid queues while allowing ourselves the freedom to segue into open doors feels like a good balance. We are already planning our return so we can work through another layer of this mystical city.
BOOK IT Doubles at The Gritti Palace, A Luxury Collection Hotel, Venice, from about £485, including breakfast. +39 041 794611; thegrittipalace.com
Originally published in the June 2018 issue of Condé Nast Traveller
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