Venice, Italy with ELENA! (September 27, 2025)
The best part of being back in Venice, Italy is not the pizza, pasta carbonara, the many flavors of gelato or even the epic views. Nor is it the lack of noise pollution (which is often the first thing I notice when there are no cars, ambulance or police sirens). It’s that I have been reunited with my wife, Elena Carmody, after three months (almost to the day) and I’m so glad to be back by her side.
One of many selfies in Venice, Italy with Violet and Elena Carmody
Elena took a red eye from New York, so I met her at the airport and showed her to our hotel. She dropped her bags, reconnected with Violet and then the three of us headed out to tour around Venice for the day. We did all the tourist things you might imagine including Saint Mark’s Square and up in the Bell Tower.
What is it with the Carmody’s and high towers after red eyes?
From the St. Mark’s Bell Tower you could see the whole of Venice. I’ll share a gallery of pictures we took from the top, but it’s safe to say this was a great place to venture to and take a bird’s eye view of the city.
What we did NOT do is a gondola ride. That’s because I hadn’t anticipated the need to pay the 90 Euros in cash. We weren’t caring around that much as we didn’t anticipate needing that much cash.
While I had my credit card and was willing to pay what already felt like a lot for a 30 minute ride, I’ve made the mistake of taking a cash advance on my credit card and getting hit with excessive fees and instant credit card interest charges from the day of withdrawal. It’s simply not worth it. I tried to negotiate for a shorter ride with what we did have on hand (70 Euros), but he wasn’t going for it. Oh well.
Watch out for the “green” step. Sure-fire way to end up in the water!
So while we didn’t get to tool around the canals in a gondola, Elena, Violet and I walked over the many bridges and took pictures of the buildings and other tourists taking their rides in the gondolas. Then we ended up on the “Boat Bus” back and enjoyed a scenic ride around the island for the price of a bus ride (about $7.50 Euros).
Now I realize it seems criminal to spend only a day in Venice, but Elena’s true desire is to spend as much time as possible in Rome, Pompeii, Naples & Sicily. And while we’d love to spend quality time everywhere, we must make trade-offs, so this was our day in Venice.
For lunch, we feasted on pasta carbonara, pizza margarita and an Italian salad that was divine. We continued to share in the various deserts especially the berry cheesecake and the tiramisu. We didn’t need to sample all the Italian food on the first day, but that didn’t stop us from feasting.
“Okay, dad, enough already. It’s time to put down the phone and eat.”
I was taking a crazy amount of pictures. It was, afterall, the first day I had three fourths of our family back together. Again, as much as I loved being in Venice, I loved being together with Elena and Violet more. The only thing that would have made this a perfect day would have been to have Will with us. I miss him and would have loved to have had him join us for this reunion.
Okay, onto Rome!
