Bologna Ferrara Venice Rome in December with kids

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Ferrara

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Bologna to Ferrara by train = 30 minutes

What went well

My husband signed up for a different kind of cooking class and had a terrific time with a group of friends who cook together at one of their apartments — I joined them for dessert and they switched to English for me: https://www.tripadvisor.com/AttractionProductReview-g194760-d26337067-Private_Cooking_Class_of_Ferrarese_cuisine-Ferrara_Province_of_Ferrara_Emilia_Roma.html

Palazzo Schifanoia frescoes cover the walls in a huge room and were fantastic in every sense of the word: https://smarthistory.org/sala-dei-mesi-at-palazzo-schifanoia/ And nobody was there — we had the room all to ourselves and could walk around pointing and exclaiming at the details. I think that even a person with no interest in art would like to see these frescoes.

Casa Romei had some beautiful frescoes in a 14th century merchant's house. If you have to pick one, though, see Schifanoia.

The Museo della Cattedrale had cool sculptures of the months and the activities done in each month.

https://notaboutthemiles.com/things-to-do-in-ferrara/

Monastero di Sant’Antonio. Three 14th century chapels covered in school-of-Giotto frescoes with the kind of uncommon details I like to see (such as a D.I.Y. Jesus climbing a ladder up to his cross). My husband has had his fill of medieval and Renaissance art, but this monastery visit turned out to be one of his favorite experiences in Italy. You ring the monastery bell and ask to visit the frescoes. A little nun who is allowed to have contact with the public whispers her patter throughout the tour, which includes the dripping tomb of a nun (the holy water is collected in bottles and used for I-don’t-know-what). No photos. At the end, donate or buy some postcards. See: Monastero di Sant'Antonio in Polesine — Ferrara Terra e Acqua
https://iviaggidiraffaella.blogspot.com/2017/08/ferrara-gli-affreschi-del-monastero-di.html

We enjoyed eating at I Tri Scalin (recommended by my husband’s cooking class buddies for traditional food) and Trattoria da Noemi.

How did we run out of time with four nights and pretty much six whole days, and having visited Ferrara on a long day trip once before? We would have liked to spend more time wandering and just living in this town for a while.

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Venice

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Ferrara to Venice is an hour by train.

What went well
Despite having stepped out from the Venice train station onto the first canal view several times on previous trips, and despite not being a big crier, I teared up again at the first sight of Venice. I am starting to suspect I may be like one of Pavlov’s dogs.

We stayed in Cannaregio, a new neighborhood for us — it was ideal and quiet.

Pre-Christmas was a great time to visit Venice, so many lovely lights and decorations, and some unexpected sights like a giant crocheted Christmas tree. Venice was not crowded, not even around San Marco. We had no reservations to go into the basilica, for instance, and waited in line just five minutes.

Our 6-year-old granddaughter drove some Italians crazy by running around not only without a coat but wearing a sleeveless dress. My husband explained in Italian to heavily bundled up people who looked worried or amused, but didn’t bother with the people giving her and us the stink-eye. 55 degrees is balmy to a Minnesotan.

The kids loved the search-and-find scratch-off booklets I made with 100 photos of things to look for in Venice: black squid-ink pasta, a lion with wings, an ambulance boat, S-shaped cookies, etc. The rule was that if either child saw something, both could scratch off the sticker in their almost-identical booklets. There was no final prize, but each photo had a number of points under the scratch-off sticker, according to how easy or hard the thing was to spot. I got the scratch-off stickers on Amazon, but you could just print up photos and the kids could check off the photo out when they saw the thing.

The vaporetto app Che Bateo, and the interactive vaporetto map (https://actv.avmspa.it/sites/default/files/avm/navigazione/MAP/interattiva.html), and Google Maps were all useful. Our passes allowed us to take a vaporetto whenever we wanted to, including just for fun and to cross the Grand Canal between bridges — we all loved sitting in the outdoor front or back parts of the boats. The kids enjoyed “beeping” our six passes to validate a ride. They were the first to notice that some passengers were beeping their pass while it was still in a pocket or bag or glove. We had to ask the kids not to get TOO inventive with where to conceal their own passes and still be able to beep them (“How about in my SOCK?” etc.). Taking the cheap and quick traghetto ride to the Rialto market was a decent sub for an expensive gondola ride (I’d rather watch other people in a gondola than be in one myself!).

It was fun for the kids to hunt for the narrowest alley in Venice, testing each one with their arms outstretched (it’s Calle Varisco, almost 21” wide). They also liked finding the only two remaining bridges without railings (one is on Torcello) and were surprisingly cautious about crossing them.

The kids made friends with lots of dogs and were amazed to see so many in sweaters and down jackets and booties. Spotting dogs that were the same Italian breed as our dog was a special treat because the kids had never seen another Lagotto Romagnolo in real life.

The shower in our apartment was tiny and there was no place except the floor to put my bar of soap or shampoo bottle, so I hung up a covid mask I didn’t want to wear because it was pink and it made a fine holder. This made me feel like a temporary genius.

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More Venice

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The kids did appreciate things they saw, just at lightning speed, like “Oh, wow, we are up high in this belltower, now what are we going to do?” They want to DO stuff, not SEE stuff.
We knew better than to take these two into museums or art galleries but they did like the Leonardo d Vinci interactive museum and brief visits inside San Marco (one kid, in a loud whisper: “”There are NAKED PEOPLE on the ceiling!”) and other churches. It depends on what your kids are like — our own two sons when they were kids would have been fine in museums, etc. for at least 45 minutes, but these two got restless after about 10 minutes. If you think “climbing the walls” is just an expression, you do not know what our grandchildren are capable of.

Our granddaughter made a colorful card for a street musician playing the accordion — he was the first of several people to call her “Principessa” and once we translated that for her, she was enthralled. She also drew pictures for the owners and servers in restaurants and wrote merry Christmas and happy new year in Italian. It’s funny what strikes a kid: seeing a bright red glass table top in a cafe, she murmured in an awed voice: “It’s perfectly beautiful.”

In shop windows there were larger-than-life Lego figures made from glass and from marble, and also elaborate scenes of Venice made from real Lego bricks.

Scooters had become a thing since the last time we were in Venice. Dozens of tiny scooters in all different colors were parked outside of preschools including one with a cute pink unicorn’s head and we saw lots of little Venetian kids riding along beside a walking parent.

The Bovolo staircase was a hit with both kids, but the athletic 6-year-old especially liked it. She might be the only visitor to Venice who was bummed that some of the towers have elevators.

Our early morning visit to Torcello, walking along the canal, seeing the fields and flowers, climbing the belltower, seeing the mosaics in the church and the church’s thick stone window shutters on stone hinges — Torcello was a favorite outing for all of us. Nobody else was there, although we saw a tour group arriving as we left. Burano was great although considerably more crowded. It was a good idea to visit Murano separately from the more distant islands of Torcello and Burano. The glass blowing demo at the Glass Cathedral was cool and worth the money, but seemed just a bit perfunctory. However, it had no sales pitch and was not attached to any scary glassware shop for our two young “bulls” to crash around in.The kids could see plenty of little fragile glass goodies by walking along the canals and window shopping. Murano looked like an interesting island beyond the glass shops — I now wonder if there are good restaurants and if it’s a nice place to stay while in Venice. Next time we’ll check it out more.

We greatly enjoyed our tour of the Arzana squero museum in Cannaregio and my husband enjoyed his tour of the working boatyard Squero di San Trovaso in Dorsoduro. Contact the Arzana people through Row Venice. My husband did Row Venice for the third time, despite a painful ankle that required surgery a few weeks later and six months of recovery. So I think just about anybody could learn to row a Venetian boat. I prefer my passenger role.

We went to the Correr Museum to see the wood blocks for the old Barbari map of Venice. We were surprised by how big this museum — the map is at the very, very end of all the rooms. Lots of interesting things to see on the way, though.

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More Venice

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Surprisingly, we were able to eat long lunches in restaurants, even though the 6-year-old is quite picky and the mere thought of a future gelato took away her appetite for actual food. We had plenty for them to do, such as coloring pages, mazes, I Spy games, etc. all printed up from the internet while still at home. Plus colored pencils, Rubick’s cubes, their iPads, and their scratch-off booklets. The restaurant owners and servers were all just wonderful with the kids and there were no problems ordering plain pasta with butter and cheese when necessary. Both kids adored pizza with french fries and hotdog slices (looks awful, but actually tastes quite good!).

Since I loathe seafood and rarely eat meat, my husband always finds us places to eat with at least one antipasto and one primo that I can eat, even in fishy Venice. My husband and I loved eating at La Rampa in Castello for the 2nd time, and Osteria La Zucca for the 2nd or 3rd time (the first time may have been 23 years before). Osteria da Pampo in Castello was great for the whole family, as was La Palanca on the Giudecca — worker guys ate there early when we did and then regular customers came in at 1:30pm. It was fun to eat outdoors at a canal-side place unpromisingly named Very Good, but it was indeed very good. There were several restaurants that Google thought were open, but were closed and not just for that day either. Most notably the sandwich place Bar L'archivio. Next time.

Both kids’ memories of Venice, I am happy to say, are not of crowds and heat and boredom, but of things they had never seen before (like worker guys setting cobblestones to repair a street) and of alleys and open areas and bridges and passageways through buildings that they had all to themselves — they could explore freely without having to be careful about cars, buses, motorcycles, or even bicycles. However, whether they remember anything or not, we loved being with them while they experienced Venice.

What went not so well
The first time we went to take a vaporetto, we discovered that they were on strike — not a big deal, but we thought it was funny that, while we now know to check for train and airport strikes, it never occurred to us to check for a strike of the vaporetti. We walked. It was done an hour later.

There are posters up in Venice warning people to beware of the seagulls. We thought this was an exaggeration until my husband was just about to take his first bite of a gelato and happened to walk past a steely-eyed gull. The gull flew up behind him and expertly snatched the whole cone out of his hand. Well, we were all laughing, so I guess this story could be in the “Things That Went Well” section.

I completely understand why reservations for popular (and even unpopular) places are now necessary, but having to make reservations and figure out the timing jigsaw puzzle was a pain. We had to forfeit the ticket price several times or had to hurry through one site to get to another and we never made it to the Guggenheim, the San Marco museum (with the bronze horses and view), the Scuola San Giorgio degli Schiavoni, the clock tower, or the (free) department store rooftop terrace.

The kids missed seeing the Regata dei Babbi Natale by only an hour, although the family hurried from the airport, but we enjoyed seeing it again even without them. Rowers race and parade along the Grand Canal dressed up like Santa Clauses or sometimes as elves. Look for it if you go to Venice around the 2nd weekend in December.

For my second time visiting the Accademia, I was confident that I’d done my homework and knew that the big Bellini and Carpaccio paintings of Venetian street scenes I wanted to see again were all done being restored and were back in their own room. But I sadly discovered that their ROOM was now being remodeled and they could not be seen. Next time.

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Bologna

** (all six of us)
Venice to Bologna by train takes less than an hour and a half.

What went well
Our lactose-intolerant son was happy to find lactose-free gelato at Mucho Gusto (https://gelateriemuchogusto.it/dove-siamo/).

What went not so well
We all got COVID (my husband and me for the first time), so we were glad that we’d rented a huge apartment with extra bedrooms and bathrooms. Husband, who fell ill first and was the sickest, went to the ER but could not get Paxlovid due to all his other medications. For the rest of the trip, even recovered and not infectious, we could only manage to do one thing before lunch and little or nothing after lunch. Our family didn’t really get to experience Bologna’s many wonderful porticoes and we never made it to San Luca. We had tickets to various Christmas concerts we were too sick to use. Never made it to the castle Vignola either. We had reservations for all six of us at a cheese factory, but my daughter-in-law and I were too tired to go, but no refunds. We never made it to any food market with the family — kind of a shame, one of the big reasons we stayed in Bologna.

Before the trip, my woodworker/cook husband turned a 41” cherrywood rolling pin (mattarello) for his cooking classes and it was not fun lugging that around in an old fishing rod case — it caused various awkward problems and some extra airlines fees. AND he never got to use it except during his week of cooking classes. My advice, which I hope everyone takes, is not to take your giant rolling pin to Italy.

In the apartment, a neighbor was driving me crazy by turning on their TV really LOUDLY at midnight every night until 6:00 am. Then I remembered that I could listen to Super Deep Brown Noise on youtube (I used https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P48QELwruQs but there are lots of options) and it masked the noise completely. Try it — it’s a nicer noise than white noise.

The gelato museum was closed (we found this out right before the trip started but it was one big reason we had chosen to stay in Bologna with our grandchildren). Because we go to Europe in the off season and because we can’t do infinite research before a trip (and also sometimes just mysteriously “because”), we do find museums and restaurants and other things unexpectedly closed. It happens when you travel. We try to apply the mantra from our granddaughter’s kindergarten class: “You get what you get, and you don’t get upset.”

The Voltone del Podesta whispering walls didn’t work out because there was too much crowd noise to hear even our loudest voices — if you go, try going in the early morning: https://www.bolognawelcome.com/en/places/towers-historic-buildings/voltone-del-podesta-en

We had looked forward to returning to Portico di Romagna with our family to show them the town’s dozens and dozens of creative nativity scenes we saw in 2016. Our previous visit was before Christmas and this visit was after Christmas — almost all of the nativity scenes were gone. But the kids enjoyed just running around exploring the town and its little bridge. So, visit before Christmas.

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Rome

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Bologna to Rome by train takes two hours.

What went well
The most successful thing, kid-wise, that we did in Rome was to go to Ostia Antica. They explored the ruins like a giant maze, plus they did a dance performance and a pretend-boxing exhibition in the amphitheater. The 9-year-old looked for which “house” he’d like to buy (I had shown the kids “my” chosen palazzo on the Grand Canal while we were in Venice).

Castel Sant’Angelo was sooooooo much more crowded than when we went there pre-pandemic at the exact same time of year, but everybody still enjoyed it.

For restaurants, Arianna al Borghetto near Ostia Antica and Trattoria Lilli near Castel Sant’Angelo were both fun and very un-touristy.

What went not so well
We got such a late start the day of our trip to Ostia Antica that we needed lunch before visiting the ruined city, so our time there was very short and the kids didn’t even get far enough into the ruins to see the multiple-hole toilet. Also, and I was seriously bummed about this, the wonderful mosaics were covered up with tarps for the winter — I suppose we could somehow have checked on this, but it never even occurred to us that we wouldn’t be able to see them.

This is a great report. I'm bookmarking for the Bologna sights.

Thank you!

I enjoyed reading this, especially since we are going to Venice and Bologna this coming June. I could feel the fun with your grandchildren!!

I am so sorry about the Covid encounters. It certainly does mess with a holiday.

--"The shower in our apartment was tiny and there was no place except the floor to put my bar of soap or shampoo bottle, so I hung up a covid mask I didn’t want to wear because it was pink and it made a fine holder. This made me feel like a temporary genius." -- I am totally remembering this tip. Wish I'd had during an October trip to Italy where we had the same problem?

Thanks for letting us share your experience vicariously. You are such an entertaining writer!

Nancys8, thank you so much for posting your trip report! I will be going back to Ferrara again next year, so I am bookmarking your report. My daughter and I enjoyed eating at Trattoria da Noemi last time, so I will try your other choice, too.

Your comment about the tiny shower with no spot to sit anything made me smile! I tested a KN95 mask at home as a potential soap holder before my trip last May to southern Italy, expecting to need to create a fix to hold my small bar of soap & tiny shampoo. The “cradle” of the nose section worked well, and I cut a few slits (think making cut-out snowflakes) so it would drain any water quickly. It worked well! For anyone reading this, a small carabiner works well to secure the two loops of the mask. Just wind the loops in opposite directions around the shower pipe until the loops are short and secure the two together with the carabiner.

I loved reading that you gave the kids such a nice experience of Venice! Well done! : )

Wonderful trip report! Thank you for taking the time to write and post it.

I hope I'm not alone in saying this - the search and scratch book idea sounds fun and not just for children. I kind of want to do one of those myself! Haha.