Northern Italy has long been high on our list of places to visit. For the summer of 2020, we had booked moorage for Dirona in Genoa and planned to tour the area extensively. The COVID pandemic changed those plans, and we finally filled that gap on a last-minute trip to attend the Italian Grand Prix near Milan.

We started our visit with two nights in Venice, the “City of Canals”. We’d booked a room at the St. Regis overlooking the Grand Canal, and the hotel offered a wonderful and unique (for us) airport transfer service by speedboat. It was a fabulous introduction to the city. After settling into our room, we enjoyed a refreshing late-afternoon glass of champagne on their canal-side terrace.

We then set off on a walk through the city, exploring the myriad alleys and waterways, and taking in the centuries-old architecture. Venice truly is a beautiful city.

We just made it to the Scala Contarini del Bovolo before they closed for the evening. A graceful multi-arched spiral staircase leads up the side of this small palazzo to a viewpoint over the city. Nearby is the Rialto Bridge, one of the more famous landmarks in Venice. The covered bridge, completed in 1591, is the bridge oldest in Venice and until 1834 was the only connection between the two banks of the Grand Canal. Continuing our walk, we passed through numerous café-lined historic plazas on our way to dinner.

We had an excellent meal canal-side at Osteria Fanal del Codega, and later an evening drink overlooking the Grand Canal beneath the wooden Ponte dell’Accademia. Returning back to our hotel, we took in another famous Venice landmark, the Piazza San Marco, where we would spend much of the following day.

We got an early start the next morning with a visit to the top of the Campanile di San Marco, prominent in Piazza San Marco, for sweeping 360-degree views of the city and the ornate surrounding rooftops of St. Mark’s Basilica and Doge’s Palace.

No first-time visit to Venice is complete with a gondola ride through the canals, and we spent an enjoyable half hour gliding through the narrow waterways, passing beneath the house where Mozart stayed in the 18th century and into the Grand Canal alongside our hotel, the St. Regis.

To cover more ground, we next opted for a speedboat tour through the Grand Canal arranged by our hotel. With a glass of champagne, this was a fabulous way to take in the city. The boat dropped us off at the Hotel Danieli, where we had a decadent lunch on their rooftop deck overlooking the Grand Canal.

After lunch, we toured the historic Teatro la Fenice, the Phoenix Theater, the site of many famous operatic premieres. The name reflects the theater company’s ability to rise from the ashes after losing their theater once to an eviction and three times to fire, in 1774, 1836 and 1996. After the most recent fire, the sumptuous interior was rebuilt in the original 19^th-century style and re-opened in 2004.

Next up was a tour of St. Mark’s Basilica and Doge’s Palace, back in Piazza San Marco. The attractions are exceedingly popular, with long lines for tickets and entry. We opted for a guided tour through GetYourGuide, that worked out very well. Our guide was knowledgeable and interesting, and we were able to skip all the entry lines.

Construction of St. Mark’s Basilica began in roughly 1063 and continued into the 13^th century, when the complex external façade was enriched. The spectacular interior is festooned with gold-ground mosaics, and contains much artwork seized from Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade from 1202-1204. Notable among these are four gilded bronze horses, the only surviving equestrian team from the classical-era (8th century BC – 5th century AD).

Attached to St. Mark’s Basilica is the Doge’s Palace, dating from 810. The Doge was an elected-for-life leader of city-states such as Venice and Genoa during the medieval and Renaissance periods. The Doge’s Palace in Venice contained his residence along with government offices and a jail. The palace is richly decorated and designed to impress visiting dignitaries, showcasing Venice’s wealth and success.

When the prison in the Doge’s Palace become overcrowded, the New Prison was built in the 16^th century. An enclosed white bridge across the Rio di Palazzo, connecting the interrogation rooms at the palace to the New Prison, is known as the “Bridge of Sighs” because crossing prisoners would sigh at their last site of beautiful Venice before being incarcerated.

Taking every opportunity for a canal view, we stopped for drinks at the Riva Lounge, the terrace of the iconic Bar Longhi in the Gritti Palace hotel. The classic Bar Longhi is where Hemingway in the late 1940s finished writing Across the River and into the Trees, and the terrace is one of several Riva Lounges around the world built to evoke classic yachting style.

That evening, we had an excellent meal at Gio’s in the St. Regis, at an amazing table on our own private terrace. And we enjoyed our final evening canal view of the trip with a nightcap at the hotel’s Arts Bar.

Our routes around Venice are shown on the interactive map below. Click here for a full-page map.