As always we used Luxrest Venice for our accomodation and booked their Canal Grande apartment and then extended an invitation to stay to close friends. My besties from high school, college and today heeded the call - two flying from Sydney and the other from the UK. It was meant to be.
What was NOT meant to be was "the beast from the East" which for the last week of February turned the weather upside down. We dealt with -8 and -15 degrees celsius temperatures in Slovenia (the day we travelled to Lake Bled is permanently etched in my memory thanks to the freeze) before arriving in our beloved Italy, first to Trieste and then to our second home. VENICE.
And we experienced something we've never experienced here before. SNOW. Arriving at lunch-time on the 1st March (yes this post is somewhat delayed lol) at Santa Lucia train station, as always we stopped and took in the view. We were home. Then we walked up from the train station (in hindsight should have caught the vaporetto as we didn't realise how slippery it would be in the snow) and 20 minutes later weaved our way around to one of our favourite tavernas to meet the Luxrest people - because as luck (or so we thought it at the time) would have it, our apartment just happened to be right next door to Taverna al Remer! We were originally delighted by this until we realised it had changed a lot in the past couple of years and our favourite menu options and our so-called "businessman's lunch" were no longer offered. That said, the first night two of my friends arrived in Venice we took them to dinner there and they loved it. It was still excellent, just not as affordable as previous visits, and it was fucking noisy at night time. Between that and the bars across at Rialto, I'm glad I packed earplugs!
I digress. What this post is about! SNOW! IN VENICE! Yes, we had snow. Snow everywhere. Here are some pics from when we arrived - keeping in mind the weather had turned and it was raining as well so they were taken with my phone while holding up an umbrella! There's a video on my Instagram page here that showed the canal from our apartment.
Unfortunately the next day it well and truly rained which meant everything white disappeared. It would have been a sight up at St Marks - we know it was a site, we saw the drone footage! - but I still think seeing snow was a little miracle for us. It was beautiful.
