Venice - beauty in the stink

We had a great time in Venice. It did smell a bit funky though.. It's interesting when you're walking around hungry looking for a restaurant and smell the sewer... You definitely get confused. 

We found a restaurant on the Grand Canal on our first day.

We had lunch at about 4.30pm - it took us about 4 days to get into a routine. We crashed at 6pm the first night and have seen the sun rise most days. 

Gondolas are everywhere - they were 80 Euro for 30 minutes during the day and 100 Euro after 6pm. We chose not to take a ride - I'm so white I would have burnt to a crisp in the sun. And a ride on a slow boat in water that smelled pretty foul wasn't appealing. 

On our second day in Venice we went on a guided tour with Adventure Bellissime. Our guide was great. We got individual headsets so we could hear him as we walked around the main sights of Venice and weaved through some of the back streets to learn about the culture.

We saw Doge's Palace, the Rialto Bridge and went inside St Mark's Basilica.

The tour ended with a 1 hour taxi boat trip on the Grand Canal. A great way to experience Venice - I'd highly recommend it. We booked this tour through Viator.