I usually spend Memorial Day weekend camping in the woods with my family. However, this year, since we’re already heading to America for two weeks at the end of July, that just wasn’t feasible.

In the UK, they have an end of May bank holiday on the same Monday we usually celebrate Memorial Day, so my boyfriend and I decided we were going to go on an adventure.

…or, maybe, to be more precise, I told him we were going on an adventure and he said ok.

On Instagram I often see this influencer who posts about her £250 European weekend getaways and I thought we could totally do that.

And around this same time, I saw an ad for plane tickets to Venice for like £46 round trip – which isn’t weird, it’s super easy to find really cheap flights to tons of places in mainland Europe.

However.

I quickly learned the time to take these cheaper trips is not the May bank holiday weekend.

My original £250 (approx. $320) trip was actually $1,235.30.

But you know what? It was great.

We flew out of Stanstead airport (kind of a pain for us to get to and an added cost of the Stanstead Express) with Ryanair. We did check one bag. I think we could’ve made it work with just the backpacks but in the end, I was really glad we did because I was able to bring back 3 bottles of wine.

The boyfriend bought the plane tickets and I booked the hotel. We actually booked through bed-and-breakfast.it and stayed at a lovely place called Pane E Tulipani, Frederico’s home. He was so kind and the room was great and in a fantastic location for us. It was a 15 minute walk to almost everywhere we wanted to go – we ventured a little further one day. But within 15 minutes we could be over by St. Mark’s Square or over by the water taxis. There were also lots of cute little places around there, but it was a quieter area and a nice little canal right out front, often with a gondolier hanging out there.

It was also one of the best priced options to stay on the island and not in a hostel, cheaper than the big hotels. For three nights, it was €360.

We took the Alilaguna water taxis from the airport to Venice. There are some cheaper options and some more expensive ones, but, to be honest, it was actually all pretty confusing when we arrived at the airport. Neither of our Italian is very good, so the €27 round trip ticket was fine with us. There were kiosks near the baggage claim to buy the tickets.

We thought we might go out and grab some dinner, but we both just crashed when we got to the bed and breakfast around 10 pm.

The breakfast part of the bed and breakfast was just some coffee and toast, which wasn’t a big deal since we needed to head out early for a tour.

Another financial fail but happiness gain, the last few weeks have just been abject chaos. Too much school work, tons of regular work, a bunch of thesis work, prepping for a second round of a competition and then I got Covid on top of it all. April and May were already going to be a lot and then it just got even crazier.

So instead of sorting out what to do in Venice, we just booked a full day tour. You can absolutely do these things cheaper, but we did just a full day tour that took us to the Doge’s Palace, St. Mark’s Basilica, a gondola ride, to Murano for a glass blowing demonstration and Burano for a lace making demonstration. It was around $415 for both of us, so a little over $200 each.

Without the tour, the entrance to the Doge’s Palace would’ve been €30 for my boyfriend and €16 for me. St. Mark’s Basilica would’ve been €3 each. A glass blowing demonstration would’ve been €5. The vaporetto, the local water taxi, would’ve been €22.50 each. A gondola ride during the day is €90 for 30 minutes.

So, without the tour, to do the same things, for the boyfriend would’ve been €105.50 and for me €91.50.

Essentially a savings of 50%.

But we would’ve had to figure out how to get from place to place and we did get to skip every line.

So was it worth it? If I were doing it again, I might just do the afternoon tour to Murano and Burano. The water taxi’s aren’t super hard to use, but with my limited Italian, they could be a little frustrating. And I know my boyfriend does not love uncertainty, so I think for the added peace in our relationship, just being shuttled around to these places was good.

However, the tour

to St. Mark’s Basilica only went through the main church part and didn’t go up in the tower, which was a little bit of a let down. We could’ve just gone back (it was €7 more to go up in the tower), but that seemed a little silly after seeing most of the Basilica.

Overall, it would’ve been very easy to just do Doge’s Palace and St. Mark’s Basilica ourselves. Also, our tour started at 9 AM, so if we had been in line to go into the Doge’s Palace then there would’ve been pretty much no wait. The Basilica would’ve been a bit of a wait, but not big deal.

And the best part, the gondola ride, happened during a downpour. And, since we were with a group, they loaded up every gondola so we went on our romantic gondola ride, in the rain, with two older ladies. Who were very nice but the whole thing was kind of ridiculous.

The break for lunch was very short too, and we wound up taking cover around the corner from the Basilica and finding my favorite food in Venice. Cicchetto. Tiny sandwiches with different toppings. We then ate several over the weekend and Café Vero, a block from the Basilica, was still my favorite.

I also drank my first of quite a few Aperol Spritz’s. Venice has their own special spritz, a Select Spritz and I did try one, but I preferred the slightly sweeter Aperol ones.

That evening, we headed back to the bed and breakfast before going out for dinner since we were soaked. We stopped at the local Co-op to get a snack, which is their grocery store. We bought some prosciutto, crackers and cherries for like €10.

We got there and realized we were pretty knackered. We had to pop back out to the ATM to pay for the bed and breakfast, since they asked if w

e could do cash at the last minute. We popped back into the Co-op and got a second container of prosciutto and a loaf of bread and had dinner in bed watching Moana, which is actually called Vianna in Italy due to copyright issues (a fun pub quiz-ish fact we learned).

The next day we slept in a little bit and then just spent the day wandering. I had found a few things I wanted to see – a cute bookstore called Libreria Acqua Alta – the Rialto Bridge, and a walk along one of the further edges of Venice where we could take pictures of St. Mark’s Square across the water. We also did our favorite thing of the trip that day when we stopped in to eat more cicchetto and have a drink at a canal-side restaurant with a gorgeous view right as they opened. We sat there and watched the boat s on the water for like an hour. I think we were just lucky we were there right when they opened because it was hopping by the time we left.

It was actually a pretty warm day, so we went back and took a nap after lunch and then went back out to walk around a little more later in the afternoon. We had a seafood pasta dinner next to the water again and then we decided to spring for a proper gondola experience (€110 for 35 minutes is… nuts… but as excellent as our Venetian weekend was, I don’t really see us ever going back, so we went f

or it). It was actually really nice. I still think it’s funny that a few sandwiches in the shade next to the water was our favorite part of the trip but the gondola ride (the not soaking wet one) was also up there on the list of things we both liked.

We also ate a ridiculous amount of gelato. I have no regrets.

On Monday, we checked out of the bed and breakfast and brought our bags over to a storage place near the water taxi back to the airport. It was €20 and our original plan was to just bring our bags around with us, but I think we made the right choice. There’s so much walking and it was really hot on Monday. I think I would’ve been miserable dragging the bag and wearing my full backpack through the crowds.

After dropping off our bags, we went in search of some wine. It was less than ideal to carry around wine bottles but we had plans at 12:30 and we were leaving around 3:30, so since I wanted to pop into one of the little local wine shops, it had to happen before the siesta. I bought one bottle of wine and I kind of regret not just having a glass of the local stuff even though it was early.

We walked around a bit more and had more cicchetto before heading to a mask making workshop we had booked. This was around $100 each but it was actually really cool. And I was anxious about us just wandering around for hours in the potential heat with no plan, so I wanted us to have a plan for the last day without a hotel room to go to. I’d read some mixed reviews about different mask making places after we booked and so I entered the whole thing with really low expectations but it was sort of awesome. The guy leading the workshop made masks and his whole family made masks. We did some simple painting on them and I thought my mask was like… meh. But then the mask master puts the final touches on them and they actually really come to life. We were both really happy with the workshop.

Afterwards, we stopped to have one more Aperol spritz, popped into a few more shops (there is this chocolate store, I think VizioVirtu, which has several shops in the tourist areas and they give out tons of free samples), I got a little bamboozled (pf blogger fail) into buying some limoncello after too many samples of the stuff. We then popped into the Co-op once more and I grabbed two more bottles of wine that were from a list I had found of good brands to try before leaving for the trip. I will say that those wines from the Co-op (both of them together) were less than the one bottle from the local wine shop. I’ll have to report back after drinking them to see if there’s actually a quality difference.

I probably won’t be able to tell. I’m not a super knowledgeable wine person.

So while it wasn’t the budget getaway I thought it might be, it was pretty freaking awesome and I’m glad we decided to go over for the weekend, which was the perfect amount of time over there.

Have you been to Venice? What was your favorite part?