Venice with kids is...

...not for the faint hearted. We made the call to do a "quick" trip to Venice on Friday and almost didn't live to tell about it. Ok actually the four adults probably would have been safe but the four kids each nearly found themselves thrown into the canal for excessive whining. To be fair, it had been a long week of exploring Italy with us, with numerous evenings that went far beyond their usual bedtime. Griffin hadn't had a nap all week, so frankly it was all catching up with us. And despite gorgeous weather most of the week, it was pretty hot that day in Venice, hotter in the non-air conditioned train compartment, and extremely crowded on all those narrow winding Venetian streets. And it's a lot of walking.  All the kids had been great all week, so we might have just pushed too far- maybe we should have done what they wanted and spent the day at the Italian water park/amusement park. But come on, it's Venice!!

Expecting some of this, we brought the stroller so Griffin could crash, and indeed he did and had a hearty nap mid-day while we continued to explore. The problem with that is that Venice is full of stairs, going to all those little cute bridges over all the cute side canals. Oh well, we just picked it up each time.

Here's Griffin in the famous San Marco square- he seemed to enjoy it. :) 

In the end, I'm still glad we went and so is Steve. It's a magical place and nothing can really describe it if you haven't seen it yourself. I love it. And I was glad for the extra time with family, as it was our last day in Italy. We had a nice lunch at an outdoor cafe there, and the two hour train ride each way gave everyone more time to hang out. 

Once back in Bologna, we had a nice family dinner and started packing up. Rylee read books to Griffin before he crashed in bed, and we said goodbye to the kids before our 4am wake up call to head to the airport. Griffin cried because he didn't want to go home, then cried because he did but wanted all his cousins to come too. Lucky for us they're headed back to the States in August and we'll see them all then! 

Thanks to the Little Family for hosting us on such a wonderful trip!!