We Took Our Kids Back to Venice - And This Time, We Stayed a Week

Our first trip to Venice with the boys actually started with a completely unrelated story.

My older son met one of his closest friends in TK, and through years of playdates, our families became close too.

Toward the end of 2023, her family told us they were seriously thinking about moving to Italy. The following year, they decided to spend some time in Lucca, Tuscany, to see if it could be somewhere they'd actually want to live -- and asked if we wanted to come along.

My husband and I love to travel, and Europe has always been our favorite continent to visit. So when someone basically asked us, Do you want to come to Italy? there wasn't exactly a long family meeting required. 😂

They headed straight to Lucca while we decided we'd make our way through Italy and meet them there. Since we'd eventually be heading south toward Rome, we started farther north - in Venice.

I'd visited Venice in my 20's and had such fond memories of it. Now I wanted our boys to see this strange, beautiful place where the roads are canals, the buses are boats, and cars simply don't exist.

I thought they'd think it was cool.

I didn't expect them to fall completely in love with it.

Our First Venice Trip With Kids

In 2024, we originally planned to spend 3 nights in Venice.

We stayed in San Polo, near Campo San Giacomo dell'Orio, and packed quite a bit into those few days. We visited Piazza San Marco, St. Mark's Basilica, Doge's Palace and Rialto. We rode a gondola and took a trip out to Murano, where my older son even got to participate in a glassblowing experience.

But looking back, I don't think those were necessarily the things that made our boys love Venice.

It was the city itself.

And one of our absolute favorite things about Venice was something I hadn't really appreciated until we experienced it with 2 little kids: there are no cars running through the streets.

I don't think I realized how liberating that would feel until we were actually there.

Normally when we're walking around a city with our boys, part of my brain is always on traffic duty. Stop at the corner. Watch out! Car coming. Stay on the sidewalk. Don't run too far ahead.

In Venice, suddenly, that part of my brain could relax.

The boys would zoom through the narrow streets, race across little squares and run away ahead of us, occasionally glancing back to make sure Mom and Dad were still keeping up. And instead of constantly yelling, "Watch out!" or "Car on your right!", we could just let them go -- as long as we could still see them.

Of course, Venice has canals everywhere, and that's a different thing to be mindful of. Interestingly, our boys seemed to understand that naturally. They were cautious around the water without us constantly having to remind them.

For the kids, having that freedom was exciting.

For us? It was so incredibly liberating.

I think my husband and I loved the car-free part of Venice every bit as much as they did.

They loved crossing bridge after bridge, peeking down at the boats, chasing pigeons through little squares and disappearing into narrow passageways that somehow always led somewhere interesting.

And then there was their other favorite thing: the vaporetto.

For adults, the vaporetto is simply Venice's public transportation system. For 2 little boys, apparently it is an amusement ride. 

Whenever we could, we sat in the outdoor seats at the back of the boat. The boys would watch the other boats go by and immediately start making up elaborate games. Sometimes they were police officers. Sometimes they were spies. Somewhere on another boat there was usually an imaginary bad guy they were trying to catch.

You know. Normal little-boy stuff. 😂

We could've been going absolutely nowhere interesting and they wouldn't have cared.

They were on a boat.

That was enough.

By the time our 3 nights were over, my 5-year-old cried because he didn't want to leave Venice.

So...

We stayed another night. 😂

I guess that's probably the best review of Venice I can give from a 5-year-old.

Venice Without a Stroller

One decision we made before that first trip was not to bring a stroller.

Venice has bridges everywhere -- and bridges mean stairs. Add cobblestone streets and narrow alleys, and we figured we'd spend half our vacation carrying the stroller instead of putting a child in it.

So we walked. A lot.

Of course, little leges eventually got tired. Our solution?

Gelato.😂

Sometimes we'd give the boys a mission to find a gelato shop with a certain flavor or even a certain-colored sign. Suddenly the child who couldn't possibly walk another block found the strength to cross 3 more bridges. 

Did it work like magic every time? Absolutely not. But with the right amount of setup and storytelling, we could usually get the little legs moving again.

Why We Went Back the Very Next Year

When we started planning another Italy trip in 2025, there wasn't much debate about whether we'd return to Venice.

The kids remembered it.

They wanted to go back.

And honestly, so did we.

Except this time, instead of giving Venice 3 nights (which accidently became 4), we gave it an entire week.

That changed the trip completely. 

We had already seen many of the major sights the year before, so there wasn't the same pressure to wake up every morning with a checklist.

We could just wander.

We walked through little neighborhoods. We stopped to watch gondolas. The kids chased pigeons and inspected random things that adults would probably walk right past.

We ate. We had gelato.

Then somehow we had more gelato.

The vaporetto was still one of their favorite things, although Venice felt noticeably more crowded this time. In 2024, we could usually find seats without much trouble. In 2025, those outdoor seats at the back were much harder to come by.

It felt less like we were trying to see Venice and more like we were simply spending our days there. 

And I think that was my favorite part of returning.

Making a Venetian Mask -- And Actually Understanding What It Meant

One of the experiences I really wanted the boys to have on our second trip was making a traditional Venetian mask.

But before we went to the workshop, we showed them a YouTube video about the history of Venice and its Carnival, and why those elaborate masks they kept seeing in shop windows all over the city were such a big part of Venetian culture.

I'm so glad we did that first.

By the time we arrived at the workshop, it wasn't just another craft project to our older son. He understood that he was making something that actually belonged to the city he had been exploring all week.

Originally, I thought both boys would make one. But when we asked our younger son which mask he wanted to decorate, he simply told us he wanted to watch his big brother do it.

Okay then. Maybe next time, because I know we're definitely coming back. 😉

So this became our older son's project.

And he took it very seriously.

First, he carefully chose the shape, then the colors and layers of decoration. And he had a reason for everything -- why this color should go here, why he wanted that decoration, and what he was trying to show with it.

It wasn't a quick little children's craft where someone hands you a blank mask, some paint and says, Have fun!

He painted a layer. Dried it. Added another. Dried it again. Chose more details. Added the finishing touches. The whole thing was a process, and he was completely invested in every decision because, in his mind, this wasn't just a Venetian mask anymore.

It was his Venetian mask.

And when he finally finished it, oh my goodness, was he proud.

He wore that thing around Venice for the rest of the day. And then again the next day. 😂

Honestly, watching him walk through the streets of Venice wearing the mask he had designed himself is one of those images from the trip that I don't think I'll ever forget.

And our younger son?

He had been perfectly happy watching his brother make one, but of course we couldn't leave Venice with one child carrying his treasured Venetian mask and the other empty-handed. So later that evening, we went mask shopping together and let him choose one that felt like his.

Of course, our older son was proudly wearing his mask while we were shopping for his little brother. At one point, another shopper stopped us and asked where we'd bought it. 

Oh my goodness, did that make his day. I'll never forget the look on his face when he proudly answered, "I made this." 💓

By the end of the day, both boys had their masks.

One had been carefully created from beginning to end by our older son. The other had been carefully hunted down and chosen by our younger one.

And somehow, both felt equally right for them.

I think that's why the mask-making experience ended up meaning so much more to me than I expected. We weren't just looking at something Venice is famous for through a museum case or a shop window. The boys had learned a little about the history behind it first, and then one of them got to sit down in Venice and create his own version with his own hands.

Now when I see that mask at home, I don't just see another souvenir we brought back from Italy. I see him sitting at the table, carefully making one decision after another, and then walking through Venice wearing his creation like it was the greatest masterpiece the city had ever seen.

Maybe that's what I love most about experiences like this when we travel with our kids.

Sometimes giving them a way to participate in the story of a place helps that place become part of their own story too.

A Rainy Week in Venice

Our second visit also came with quite a bit more rain. We even saw the raised walkways set up for acqua alta, although thankfully we never dealt with serious flooding ourselves. 

But this was another advantage of staying a full week. If it rained heavily, we'd find something indoors, take a break from the city and just enjoy the rain. A rainy afternoon didn't feel like it had ruined one of our precious days.

We had tomorrow. And the next day.

The Memory Our Boys Still Talk About

For all the things we did in Venice, one of our boys' strongest memories from our first trip has absolutely nothing to do with gondolas, palaces or famous landmarks.

It was playing soccer.

Near our Airbnb in San Polo was a relatively quiet little square with a few restaurants around it. After dinner, the 4 of us would walk over there with a ball and play soccer together.

There was a gentleman who worked at one of the restaurants, often standing outside to welcome customers. Whenever things weren't busy, he'd come over and join us.

And somehow, that became our routine.

Dinner. Walk to the square. Say hello to our new friend. Play soccer until one of us got tired.

The boys absolutely loved him.

By the end of our stay, we'd gotten attached enough that we took pictures together before leaving Venice. Our older boy even made him something with his origami paper as a farewell gift. 😂

And here's the part that makes that memory even more special to me.

When we returned to Venice a year later, we went back to that same square.

He recognized us immediately.

A whole year had passed, thousands of tourists had probably walked through that square, and somehow this man remembered the random Asian family with 2 little boys who used to show up and play soccer at night.

The boys were so happy to see him again.

We saw Piazza San Marco. We toured Doge's Palace. We went to Murano. We rode a gondola.

But when our boys talk about Venice, they remember things like racing through the streets, riding the vaporetto and playing soccer with our friend in that little square.

Those are the memories you can't really plan for.

And honestly, they're usually the best ones.

Would I Spend a Week in Venice With Kids Again?

ABSOLUTELY!

Venice isn't necessarily the first place parents imagine when planning an easy vacation with young children. There are endless bridges and stairs. You walk a lot. Stroller can be inconvenient. And yes, there are canals everywhere.

But our boys saw a city where buses were boats, every corner seemed to lead to another bridge, gelato was never very far away, and Mom wasn't constantly yelling, "Watch out for the car!"

Our first trip was supposed to be 3 nights. 

It became 4 because our 5-year-old didn't want to leave.

The next year, we came back and stayed 7.

And somehow, we're still not done with Venice.

Every once in a while, completely out of nowhere, one of our boys will ask us when we're going back.

And every time they do, I realize I'm wondering the exact same thing.