It’s been a really tough couple of years for our family, between losing my father to cancer, my best friend to suicide, and my husband to one of those mid-life crisis meltdowns that tries annihilate the entire family. At a loss for how to survive it all, I turned to the thing that infuses me with hope, gives me something to look forward to, and creates memories that will last a lifetime for the remaining three of us, enriching us in ways that go beyond words: TRAVEL! I turned 50 last year, and I decided it was time to check some things off my bucket list, and traveling with my teenagers was top on that list.
First stop… Venice!
I love Venice. I had gone as a student backpacking around Europe in 1990 and again in 2000 when I was going to school in Florence. This time, I had a destination: the Atelier of epic historical costume creator, Antonia Sautter. As a connoisseur of costumes and all things glamorous and gorgeous, one of the top things on my bucket list was visiting this studio. Antonia creates incredibly extravagant events every year, including a Ball, Il Balo Del Doge, that is listed on Vanity Fair’s Bucket List, as well as my own Bucket List. If you know me, you know I love extravagant sumptuous over-the-top costumes and parties, so of course Antonia Sautter would catch my eye!
We actually arrived in Venice a day later than planned, because our plane from NYC took off and two hours into the flight, turned around. Great! Awesome! We ended up heading back to JFK, then taking a car into the Manhattan at 3am to sleep at The Palace for a few hours and back again for the next day’s flight. I told the kids this is traveling and we have to stay flexible and roll with the unexpected, as it is often in the “in-between” that true magic happens. When traveling, getting lost, missing planes and trains, detouring to a different place, can seem terrible, but turn out to be wonderful. So we arrived a day late in Venice, but we didn’t care. We were too enchanted with the city.
We took a boat to our hotel, the Bauer Palazzo, and dropped our luggage and went straight to Antonia’s studio. When I say straight, I mean we walked down winding cobblestone alleyways until we found the address which turned out to be very close to our hotel.
There was no door, so we knocked and someone poked their head out from an upstairs window and directed us in how to get in, which involved going down more curving cobblestone alleys. We finally found the door and climbed the steps towards a stunning feathered headdress, and my heart started the little dance it does when I see feathers. The studio was like being dunked in someone’s incredible fantasy world.
Massive ballgowns, easily six feet wide, long trains, jewels winking from every piece of fabric. Tiers of frothy lace, huge headdresses with feathers, sumptuous brocades, shimmering silks, tiaras and crowns and capes… I love to geek out over textiles, and the silk velvets and unique colors stamped in gold or with bejewels dragon flies, all handmade, lit me up. Antonia does a lot of historical gowns based on the actual gowns of such decadent dressers as Marie Antoinette and Madame De Pompadour. They even let us try on some of the headdresses! The studio offers different tours, we chose the historical one. But you can pay a little more and try on gowns, and a lot more and you can go outside and run around the streets of Venice and into a gondola with a photographer in tow, which sounded beyond dreamy to me, but I was already splurging a lot on this trip, so I chose the simple tour. And it was a fantastic introduction to a divinely decadent city.
The Bauer Palazzo Hotel is an incredible location, right across from a beautiful church, next door the Gritti Palace and steps from fantastic shopping and the Piazza San Marco. I was surprised to find Venice so clean! The cobblestone walkways were sparkling clean and the canals were clear.
I had reserved a family suite with two bathrooms for the four of us. Two bathrooms is key when traveling with three girls. Our rooms were spacious with high ceilings, and the location was so central that we could go out and explore every morning, then back for a late afternoon nap before we dressed for dinner and headed back out into the town for dinner and the opera and gondola rides. I had actually looked into renting a palazzo and there were some pretty incredible ones for rent, but in the end, I decided I wanted to stay in the heart of the city, I wanted a bellhop and room service, so I chose the hotel. It was perfect for us. We would head downstairs every morning to have a cappuccino and the included breakfast at tables with the most incredible views. As an added bonus, there was a steady stream of gondolas floating by with the most beautiful singers singing our favorite classics, enhancing the ambience of our breakfast. I loved sitting across from my beloved teens every morning, planning our day and listening to the music and just soaking in the fairy tale magic that is Venice.
I had planned some incredible meals for us in Venice, and as the kids love spaghetti, they were very happy everywhere we went. I made reservations before we went, which worked out great as it gave structure to our day. However, we also stayed flexible and changed plans if something worked out better. For example, the first night, I wanted a truly spectacular meal. I was googling possibilities and ended up coming across the restaurant where George and Amal Clooney had dinner the night before their wedding. It was called Da Ivo. The concierge told me it was very difficult to get a reservation, but it wasn’t difficult at all. They do two seatings, one at 7 and one at 9. We dressed up and made our way through the winding cobblestone alleyways to an adorable little restaurant nestled on the water. Cozy and oozing with charm, with warm colors and brass pans hung from the ceiling, the menu changes daily according to seasonal ingredients, which is my favorite kind of restaurant. In hindsight, I wish we could have taken one of the beautiful wooden boats or a gondola for the most picturesque arrival, but the alleyway was beautiful too. The kids had their spaghetti and they still gush about it being the best spaghetti they have ever had in their lives. On our next visit to Venice, Da Ivo will be top on our list.
Another favorite was Antica Locanda Mtontin for lunch. http://locandamontin.com
It was a long walk for us, but we got to explore a part of Venice we never would have seen. We ate in the garden with a ceiling of flowers, across the Pontevecchio bridge, which we took to get to the Guggenheim as well. I love everything about the Guggenheim. I loved it as a student, and I loved it even more after reading “The Unfinished Palazzo” by Judith Mackrell, and getting all the juicy details about the three heiresses that lived at the Palazzo: Doris Castlerosse, Luisa Marchati, and Peggy Guggenheim. All three were known for supporting artists, creating elaborate parties that were their own kind of work of art, and parading through Venice. It seems I have an inner radar for finding people who create epic parties. The art is whimsical and fantastic, but we had a hard time enjoying it because the heat was really unbearable. I don’t know if the air conditioning was broken, but looking at art with sweat rolling down your back and your hair sticking to your neck isn’t optimal. Then again, maybe it plops you into the perfect hot and sweaty dream state for viewing avant garde art. I was delighted to hear Zoe ask one of the guides about the difference between Dadaism and Surrealism. The young woman told Zoe that Dadaists used their art to try to destroy reality to nothing, while the Surrealists took reality and bent it into something fantastic, beyond reality. Our trip was a combination of both living Dadaism, as we destroyed our painful reality from back home, and Surrealism as we bent that pain into beauty, art, and magic on our journey.
On the path of healing, I was embracing all of the things I had deeply loved but had lost during my marriage. One of those things was opera, and I couldn’t think of a better way to introduce my kids to opera than Attending The Barber of Seville in an ancient Palazzo on the water. The opera company is called “Musica Palazzo,” and the “theater” was the Palazzo Barbarigo Minotto on the Grand Canal. We walked through winding streets and into a dark alleyway where Zoe whispered to me to hang onto my purse, but I wasn’t worried: this is Venice, and most of the city is made up of dark alleyways. It opened up to the gorgeous crumbling palazzo, lit by candles so you felt like you were stepping back in time. When the singing began, those lush voices echoing around those ancient walls, I got chills. We sat on chairs in a massive living room and watched a few whimsical scenes there. Then the entire audience moved to the parlor, where they did some more scenes including bringing out a “Dog” that was a wig on a leash. From there, the whole audience walked into the gorgeous bedroom for the final scene. I’d say the entire experience qualifies as surreal.
The Palazzo Barbarigo Minotto is located on the Grand Canal and was built as a 15th century gothic palace. The Barbarigo were an aristocratic family and their name came from a family member who defeated pirates in the year 880 and returned with six of their beards. Their coat of arms has six beards on it! This story amazed me as I wondered what it might have been like to carry six beards around. How did he carry them? Were they whole? Still on chins? Or just whiskers? Oooh yuck, but still, so fascinating.
The candlelit steps to the ancient palazzo for the opera 
Dapper Henry enjoying some water during intermission
After the opera, Zoe and Henry wanted to go to Piazza San Marco for gelato and Annabelle wanted to go back to the room. She was outvoted, so we headed to Piazza San Marco and it turned out to be the best night of our entire trip. Walking in Venice at night withe the twinkle lights reflecting on the water, the gorgeous bridges, the live music everywhere, and the ancient buildings, was a dream.
The square was nearly empty and freshly scrubbed. The outdoor cafes were still open, live musicians were playing, and the kids ended up dancing around the square under the moon. It was so beautiful and a night we will never forget. In true travel style, different people talked to us, and some drunk British students came up with a soccer ball and Zoe schooled them all, leaving them standing there with their jaws open over her soccer skills. All the kids got to shine, and it was truly one of the best moments of our entire trip.
The last day, we visited the Doge’s Palace, which was hot but so beautiful. The light on the stones was breathtaking!
On our last afternoon, we ran into a family from home, randomly on the street. They were heading to Croatia to explore the mountains. We had dinner together at L’Alcova, and we took a one fo the legendary wooden boat taxis that are so glamorous in Venice. It’s easy to spot the restaurant, it has a massive building-size silver hand sculpture out front.
More spaghetti and a gondola ride home, winding through picturesque canals as the sun was setting and the accordions were playing was a perfect ending to our fairy tale trip to Venice.
