This was a great route – immediate left into Calle de la Misericordia as you head away from the station and immediately you’re into calm, local streets. We stopped straight away at a little bar on this Calle and had a quick coffee: friendly, local (ie, minimally touristy: almost nowhere makes no concession to the insane amount of tourist traffic and, if you’re running a business, you’d be a bit mad not to. In this case, it had a list of its top ten wines with witty descriptions of each in English).
Quickly on from there and into a lovely little park with high beech trees and a great playground which the kids loved. There was technical institute at one end of park and the sounds from the classrooms drifted through the open windows and into the playground. A pair of municipal workers chatted by their handcarts while mothers pushed their children on the swings. Yes, it was pretty idyllic.
We carried on, passing through the Jewish Quarter, stocked with kosher bars, the synagogue, and where the usual glassware and artisan craft shops took on a Judaic spin. 
Then onto the Rio Della Misericordia where Isa found a workshop where a man was busy making mosaic pieces. We stopped and chatted with Mino, who had been making pieces for the newly-completed council building in Murano. He gave our girls a piece of mosaic tile each.
A little further on, Isa found a leather shop and spent a long time talking to the man there, eventually moving towards getting him to make some leather cushion covers for our sofa. She left with his phone number.
We stopped here for lunch; originally, we wanted the Paradiso Perduto, which was an authentic fish-oriented Venetiian restaurant on the fondamnta, but it was too early and they weren’t ready to serve. We ended up a few doors down at a less authentic place where the waiter was really lovely but food was pretty dire. At least he gave us a free pudding when Isa told him the omlette was overcooked and greasy. A glass of prosecco each and a half bottle of Valpolicella helped, too. And Lola enjoyed her penne arrabiata, though she said it wasn’t spicy enough, and appealed to the waiter for more chili.
It was then we created the Chili Club. The first rule of Chili Club, I (predictably) said, was that you must not talk about Chili Club. At which Neve pointed out that stating the rule caused the rule itself to be broken. Smartypants.
Then up to fondomanta nove, past the hospital, with its line of water-ambulances outside and the cemetery, somewhat aptly, on the island opposite. Coming off the fondamenta and heading towards Arsenale, I lost GPS and had to resort to old-fashioned methods of navigation. The locals helped us towards the Fondamenta Arsenale and we found a fabulous little bar/restaurant where we went due to the girls’ need for a pee and ended up staying for an hour drinking spritz and eating yummy fishy snacks and getting my phone charged. We took a business card, so we could come back for a proper meal some day.
The last leg of our trip took us down past the Arsenale [shurely, “Up The Arsenal!”, Ed] and onwards to the Giardini della Biennale. We (parents) were flagging a little by now. We let the kids play for 10 mins in the playground there and then headed for the tragetto and chugged back to the Stazione. Somehow, once there, we got slightly diverted (needed another loo stop) and ended up spending half an hour or more buying pastries for Nonna and gifts for the girls’ friends.
Then the train back, complete with fun with the inspector as he plugged my bought-online ticket codes into his mobile gizmo to verify them.
tl;dr: What an amazing city. I still want to spend a year here, writing my novel*.
* please send any financial contributions to this project to, er, me.
