I think I have discovered the best way to beat the January Blues. Take one fairy tale city, place under the light of a full moon, add two planets in alignment, and some beautifully clear weather.

I give you my Venetian holiday.

The bf and I spent four days in Venice, though the first and last were mainly spent travelling (to be fair, the last was mainly spent in a pub in London, since there was five hours between our flight getting in and our train setting off!).

We live in a fairytale city. It’s beautiful. It’s magical. It’s currently the backdrop to a TV show about Angelic Lawyers. And like a lot of fairytale cities that appear regularly on TV it’s nothing like the way it’s portrayed. So when we set off for Venice I prepared myself for a city like my own – some nice Medieval bits scattered through quite a lot of rather more modern bits, and some cute back alleys.

Nope. All of Venice looks like this. The further you get from the touristy bits the more it looks like this.

There is no traffic whatsoever in Venice. The streets are too narrow for cars and the bridges have too many steps for bicycle (in the more touristy areas ramps have been placed to allow some disabled access, but it’s still pretty limited).  The buildings are mostly medieval, with a few more recent, but it’s only right up by the connection to the mainland that you really see any modern buildings. If it wasn’t for the clothes you could be at any time in the last five centuries. Utterly, utterly magical.

We only had two full days there, so we spent one day in Saint Mark’s Square. The Campinile is currently closed for refurbishment, but we did the Basilica, the Doge’s Palace and the Museo Correr. Venice is all about the art, really – though the Museo is ostensibly about the history of Venice, the only aspect of Venice’s history that’s really gone into any detail about is the development of Venetian Art.

The square floods daily, which I was disappointed to miss (the bf wasn’t, but then, I’d brought wellies and he hadn’t). However, the church nearest to our hotel, the San Zaccaria, is the only building in Venice to be permanently flooded, so we went to see that.

We spent the morning of day two on the buses. Which are boats. That cruise slowly down the Grand Canal, giving you views a gondolier couldn’t guarantee. Isn’t public transport wonderful?

We then went to see more art (as you do, in Venice), checking out the Gallerie dell’Accademia, the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, the church of San Rocco and San Maria Gloriosa del Friari. My knowledge of religious art has been exponentially expanded. We spent quite a lot of time looking up saints on the bf’s phone (mine’s still suffering the aftereffects of it’s Atlantic swim).

We didn’t go on a gondola, in the end. The private ones were too expensive, and every time we tried to find a traghetto (gondola-barges across the river) we ended up at a bridge, which is pretty much the opposite way round to how it’s meant to work! We spent a lot of time just wandering around; as long as you’re not in a hurry to be somewhere it’s the best way to see Venice. You can’t get that lost: the islands aren’t big enough.

And, of course, there was the food. Venetian food isn’t meant to rank that highly amongst the Italian culinary elite, but that’s like saying a diamond doesn’t rank highly amongst the Crown Jewels. Now, I’m allergic to fish, and I’ve never worked up the nerve to find out if I’m allergic to seafood in general, so I missed out on a lot of Venetian specialities, it being a coastal city and all. But I still ate incredibly well. Pizza, pasta, cichetti…

Special mention has to go to the Bistrot de Venise, which we went to on the last night. They focus on historical recipes (the bf is working on a dissertation about the presentation of historical recipes in museums, so it was practically research!) so we ordered from the sample menu to try as many as we could. As well as the three courses we ordered (for me: pumpkin gnocci, duck, and tiramisu) we were offered a free starter, a free pre-desert, and a free post-desert, which pretty much won me the  “Italy has the best puddings, not France” debate the bf and I had had in a previous restaurant.

We had beautiful weather the whole time we were there, clear but not too cold, and because it was January it was relatively quiet. I’d still say about half the people we encountered were tourists, even though it was the off season, but we did manage to find a few squares populated by mostly Venetians. As fun as Carnivale sounds, I don’t think I’d like to go when it’s busy- I’m not great with crowds – so this time of year was perfect for me. The only shame is because it’s the off season a lot of places are in the midst of refurbishments, which they’re not great at warning you about until you’ve wandered through the building site a couple of times. The Blue Guide we took with us was immensely useful, especially in terms of context.

We’re definitely going back. There’s so much we didn’t get a chance to see: the Capanile, Murano and the other islands, Ca’ d’Oro, Museum di Storia Naturale, Museum Storia Navale, the Peggy Guggenheim centre… Oh, and we might save up a little extra next time for a gondola.

And that was Venice.