Every Europe trip should have some kind of departure from the big cities. Get a feel for more authentic local culture. I actually stayed in Treviso, a charming old town outside of Venice by 20 minutes or so. There was still an old castle wall with evidence of the moat that once existed around it too. I took a walk around the neighborhood, shopped at the big grocery store to scour through various products (found carbonation tabs you can add to any beverage;hadn’t seen those before!) and got smoked-out of a gelato shop one afternoon by all the cigarette-wielding locals packed onto the screened in verandah. There was also a day trip to a town called Asolo outside of Venice, a picturesque medieval town, a ‘city of one hundred horizons’.