Venice - wow or ouch?
Venice was one of those places I was never tempted to visit – in fact I was pretty resistant to the idea. But then I was persuaded to spend a few days there. My negative preconceptions were proved correct. But I discovered that the positives far outweighed them. I also realised that one’s experience of Venice largely depends on how you approach it. There are some easy mistakes to make – mistakes that’ll probably mean you come away disappointed. They’re also quite easy to avoid – get a few simple things right and it’s a city I guarantee you’ll fall in love with.
In this post I share some personal tips and insights that you may find helpful. Because that’s what x-raytravel.com is all about – avoiding the usual superficial tourist experiences and getting under the skin for a glimpse of what lies beneath.
Why I thought Venice was best avoided
I figured it would be horribly overcrowded, overrun by groups of American, Japanese and Chinese tourists disgorged daily from cruise ships so huge they ruined the view. I thought everything would be aggressively overpriced with the locals pulling every trick in the book to rip you off, or at least make you feel unwelcome. I expected it to be unbearably smelly and hot. Oh, and sometimes everything would be a few feet underwater, making walking very awkward. Each one of these, individually, could have seriously spoil it for me. And all taken together would mean I couldn’t wait to leave.
In my mind I had an ad for Lingaphone (I’m a copywriter so my brain is a bit of an ad archive) that perfectly expressed my reservations.
An ad that reflects my worst fears about Italian waiters!
Where to stay - if you are loaded
Venice is an archipelago of over a hundred low lying islands in a lagoon. Most are little more than deserted mud banks but about half a dozen of the larger ones have been inhabited for about 2,500 years. The biggest (actually a collection of small islets divided by canals and linked by bridges), is centro storico (historical centre), with about 60,000 permanent residents and 20 million visitors a year.
Staying within the centro storico makes sense, because all the main attractions for which Venice is so famous are within easy walking distance. However, accommodation is relatively scarce and therefore expensive. If you have deep pockets the hotels along the grand canal and around St Mark’s Square must be magical.
Grand Canal, photo courtesy of Photo by Karsten Würth (@karsten.wuerth) on Unsplash
The Hotel Gritti Palace is one of the most legendary. Once the home of some of the wealthiest Venetian families, it was later frequented by Ruskin (who wrote the famous architectural guide to the city, The Stones of Venice), Ernest Hemingway, Churchill, De Gaulle, Chaplin, Garbo, Stravinsky, Elizabeth Taylor, Grace Kelly, Orson Welles, and Frank Lloyd Wright. I just checked the rate and a Friday night in their cheapest room for two is 759 Euros - at the end of November, out of season, and while the city is currently experiencing the worst floods in about 50 years. Same room July 2020 for a Friday night is 1020 Euros, but almost sold out already.
The library of the Gritti Palace Hotel, photo courtesy of Gritti Palace Hotel
Of course there are many other lovely hotels for less. But you are still going to be paying around £300 a night for a room in the summer, if you book early and are lucky.
Budget options
At the other end of the scale there are places in the centro storico that charge considerably less. Obviously they are pretty basic and not in the most desirable locations. Likewise Airbnb – friends of ours have gone this route, and got a good deal (thanks to a last minute cancellation).
However, unless you book way ahead, you’ll find that the budget places have no availability. Looking at booking.com nine months ahead the average is about £150+ a night for a very basic room in high season.
The other budget option is to stay on the mainland, in the city of Mestre. Accommodation here is considerably cheaper, but for a reason. Mestre is a major commercial port and industrial centre with a mass of warehouses, factories, oil refineries and a huge power station. It’s not pretty but there’s a regular and quick rail and bus link to the main island of Venice via the causeway opened by Mussolini in 1933.
Venice Lido, photo courtesy of Photo by Serge Le Strat on Unsplash
The third option
You can also stay on the Lido. This is an 11-kilometre-long sandbar that protects the lagoon from the open sea. Around the middle of the nineteenth century the wealthy started to build summer villas along its shore and a number of luxury hotels swiftly followed. These include the renowned Hotel Excelsior and the Grand Hotel des Bains, the setting for Thomas Mann's classic novel Death in Venice. With St Mark’s Square a mere twenty minutes away by boat the Lido swiftly became Europe’s most desirable beach resort. Hosting the Venice Film Festival since 1937 has done its reputation no harm either.
Staying here, then taking the ferry to Venice, is not a bad idea – the accommodation is plentiful and far more reasonably priced than in the centro storico. It’s pretty, there’s a great beach and it’s not so crowded and frantic. The same goes for the smaller islands in the lagoon. Both Murano and Giudecca are picturesque, just minutes by boat from their bigger neighbour and have some reasonably priced guesthouses.
What’s not to like about the third option?
There’s something magical about the centro storico and if you have to leave every evening, then return next morning, the spell is broken. The Vaporetto water buses are frequent but not cheap (unless you are a local). You’ll spend about an hour in the morning and another at the end of the day getting to the landing stage, sorting your tickets, waiting for the boat. Not as convenient as just stepping from your hotel, guest house or apartment to find yourself surrounded by cafes, restaurants, churches, places and museums – especially if you want to beat the queues and crowds for attractions like St Mark’s Basilica and the Doges Palace.
The Grand Canal at sunset
The biggest plus about staying in the centro storico becomes apparent in the evening. Most of the visitors head back to their cruise ships, the mainland or the Lido as night falls. As the sun sets and the crowds leave, you can almost hear the city heave a sigh of relief – the tourist business of the day done it can be itself once more. The areas around St Mark’s Square and the Rialto bridge are still busy, but just around the corner you find many of the streets, alleyways and squares surprisingly deserted. The popular bars and restaurants in the city are crowded, but in many of them the clientele is largely local.
The night time is the right time
Away from the lights you can sense the ghosts of the past lurking and hundreds of years of history pressing in from every side. The greatest pleasure, for me, is bar hopping in and out of the nooks and crannies frequented by generations of Venetians, knowing that I’m seldom more than a ten minute wander from my bed. Knowing that I had to catch a late night vaparetto back to a hotel on the Lido would, I think, take the edge off the experience for me.
Al fresco nibbles as the sun goes down
Our secret hostelry
Before you go to Venice it pays to do some research (more on this shortly). Before our first visit I did quite a lot of online searches and found a protestant monastery that operates as a guesthouse. It’s probably best described as a hostel that primarily caters for small groups with a variety of accommodation from dormitories to family rooms and doubles. Accommodation and facilities are basic but perfectly adequate, with very reasonable prices. Many rooms have balconies overlooking a canal and the first time we stayed the ceiling was decorated by an exquisite fresco. The bathrooms are not luxurious but the showers are excellent. Breakfast is a help yourself affair with unlimited tea and coffee, fruit juice, rolls, jams, cheese and cereal – but if this doesn’t satisfy you there are some great cafes within a few hundred yards.
Our room adorned by 18th century frescoes
The building itself is an ancient palazzo, listed as an Italian national monument. In 1711, Antonio Francesco Cavanis, from a wealthy family of artists of Bergamo and former owner of an embroidery and golden lace shop in Venice’s Campo San Bartolomeo, purchased the palace from Lucrezia Morosini in Savorgnan. Many of the rooms on the first floor are decorated with frescoed walls and ceilings from the 1700’s and early 1800’s. The fresco on the dining room ceiling was damaged on the night of 26th February 1918 during an air raid by the Austro-Hungarians. As an interesting aside, Venice was the victim of the world’s first air raid – the Austrians dropped bombs on the city from unmanned balloons in 1849. The Waldensian Church purchased the palace in 1868, with the support and solidarity of foreign protestant churches.
View from our balcony - the beer arrives!
The location is pretty good too. A ten-minute walk from the second stop on the ferry ride from the airport. Five minutes’ walk from St Mark’s Square and about the same distance from The Rialto Bridge. In a really quiet and peaceful district which has some great restaurants, cafes and what is perhaps Venice’s smallest bar.
What’s the name and web address of this little gem? Sorry…you’ll have to email me and I’ll happily share the details. With a bit of research you can probably find it yourself but I’m not going to make it too easy – it’s getting increasingly booked up and I want to go back!
The best bars are hard to find…but worth it
It pays to do a little research
Finding somewhere to stay that helps you enjoy Venice to the full, without paying through the nose, takes a bit of research. The same goes for restaurants, bars, museums and the basic layout of the city.
On our second visit our flight arrived at 7pm. Buying ferry tickets we met a couple from who were staying barely 48 hours – not long enough in my opinion. They had no idea of the general layout of the city and were relying on google earth and their phone – which didn’t make it clear which vaporetto stop they had to get off. They had an address for their hotel so I helped them locate it on a proper map. They said “The address is calle something…ooh, there it is!” pointing. They were way off because “calle” is Italian for street, so half the addresses in Venice are calle something (the other half being campo something, campo meaning square or fondamenta something, fondamenta roughly translating as quayside).
Smallest bar in Venice? But no shortage of choice!
If you want to save yourself a lot of time, energy, frustration and money I’d advise doing a little homework with a guidebook, a proper map and some online research. Those that don’t will miss some really great experiences and never get further than the most obvious tourist sights and hotspots – there’s so much to see and do that you want to arrive with some idea of a schedule and routes. Many of the most amazing palaces, museums, churches, bars and other curiosities are incredibly well hidden – you can be stood within a few feet and still not be able to see them around a corner or behind an unassuming door.
Another bar that’s not in any of the guidebooks
Getting lost, and stumbling across the unexpected, is definitely part of the fun. But being totally clueless about the layout, history and culture means you’ll miss so much and go home wondering what all the fuss was about.
Timing is everything
Venice in the summer months is, by all accounts, unbearably hot, crowded and smelly. In winter you can see the snow-capped Dolomites inland and the city is surrounded by water so the winds and fogs can be really cold. Spring and autumn are probably the smartest times to go but be prepared for every kind of weather. We’ve been in April and some days were very chilly and wet. Our most recent trip was October and the weather was warm and dry.
Bar crawl in Canareggio
From October to January you are more likely to encounter acqua alta, tides high enough to flood some of the city. On average this happens about four times a year, with about 10% of the city under water for about six hours. On these occasions the main tourist destination of St Mark’s Square is covered but life elsewhere pretty much goes on as normal.
However, this November they had the highest tides since 1966 and almost the entire city was inundated. The barriers across doorways that normally protect most shops, hotels, museums and churches were overwhelmed. These acqua alta events normally see tides of about 2 ft above mean sea level but this time the waves rose 6ft. The crypt of the Basilica San Marco, which usually stays dry, was under water - along with 80% of the city.
The Acqua Alta bookshop, with flippers and fire exit into canal, 50 yards from our guesthouse.
This was a disaster that has caused massive damage to the buildings and infrastructure – the major disruption also ruined many a holiday. With global warming, and work on a tidal barrier across the lagoon mired in disagreement and financial trouble, you probably need to think twice about visiting in the winter months.
Bon voyage!
Venice is like nowhere else on earth. That’s good. But also not so good – it’s easy to make a few mistakes on your first visit that could take the shine off the experience. I hope you find this post helpful….
