La Serenissima - 10 tips on how to ace your trip to Venice

Venice is one of the most iconic and memorable destinations in Europe. However, it can be expensive and saturated with tourists, even off-season. Here are some tips to get the best from this lovely city. 

 1. Stay in Venice

The vast majority of tourists visit Venice in the daytime. The city will fill with day trippers around 10am and begin to empty out at 6pm. The very best experience can be had by arriving in the morning and staying in a hotel for one or two nights. The aim is to experience Venice in the evening after the cruise ships have departed and the day trippers have dispersed to their mainland hotels.

After 6pm the city empties of people significantly. This can be witnessed most spectacularly in the Piazza San Marco where by 11pm it is practically devoid of tourists altogether and you can have the entire place almost to yourself.

The cost of staying in Venice is not as significant as you may expect. The most expensive hotels can be found within striking distance of the Piazza San Marco. Those on a modest budget should look to the outlying sestieri of Castello and Cannaregio, which are still within walking distance of the central attractions and still offer an authentic Venetian hotel experience.

The Hotel Danieli is the most famous hotel in Venice and has seen guests such as Dickens and Wagner in its time, as well as several fictional guests such as James Bond. Situated on the main quay not far from the Piazza San Marco, you should expect to pay around £1400 for a night here unless you book ahead. Booking.com offered me a room at the Danieli for £271 if I booked five month in advance.

Hotel Danieli can be found at Riva degli Schiavoni 4196, Castello, 30122 Venezia VE
Danieli Website - Marriott Luxury Collection

A budget alternative near the Rialto Bridge is the Hotel Antico Doge, a former residence of the Doge of Venice and offering a good location by the central sights but also bordering the sestieri of Cannaregio where many authentic and affordable restaurants can be found. The hotel offers breakfast and rooms are suitably Venetian in their ambiance. Rooms at the Antico Doge will cost around £150 which is very reasonable for the quality.

Hotel Antico Doge - Fondamenta Trapolin 5643, 30131 Venezia VE
Antico Doge Website

One word of advice about Venice, the street numbering system can be undecipherable to the uninitiated and it is always best to have a good idea of where your hotel is via Google maps before you travel. I worked out the location of the Antico Doge relative to the Rialto bridge on Google Maps and found it this way rather than relying on other methods.  

2. Disregard the Tourist Triangle

   
Venice attracts a great many tourists but the day trippers tend to frequent a limited number of sights and the thoroughfares between them are very busy with souvenir vendors and low quality food outlets. The points of Piazza San Marco, Bridge of Sighs and Rialto Bridge form a triangle in which most of the foot traffic can be found in the city. Deviate from this area and you will find a surprisingly quiet city, often deserted in places and groaning with secluded churches to visit.

If you would like to experience an authentic Venice one can visit the sestieri of Canneregio to the north of the city. This area is home to many native Venetians and is unmolested by the hoards. Piercing the heart of Cannaregio is the Cannaregio Canal, which was the main entry point into the city before the construction of the railway. Along this canal can be found many local, authentic bars and restaurants serving Venetian cuisine. Cannaregio is also home to the Jewish Gheto (the Gheto Vecchio) the first ghetto in the world and is home to five synagogues and remains the centre of Jewish life in the city. 

The sestieri of Dorsoduro lies to the south and is home to the Peggy Guggenheim Museum and well as several notable churches and the only remaining gondola workshop in the city. This area is also great for avoiding crowds. Castello lies to the east of the city and is home to the Arsenale and the Church of San Zaccaria, rumoured to be one of Elton John's favourite Venetian sightseeing destinations. 

Roam these areas and discover your own Venice. Make sure you have a good sense of direction though - the city can be disorientating especially at night. 

3. Do not eat the tourist fare

 

4. Take a late evening stroll

5. Visit the suburbs

 

 

6. Pay through the nose for a coffee in Piazza San Marco

A lot of people would disagree with me with this one, there are plenty of blogs and guides that would tell you to steer clear. I must warn you that sitting down for refreshment in the Piazza San Marco will make your wallet cry, but the experience is one for the books. Try not to think of it as an expensive coffee but more of an immersive experience.

Piazza San Marco is the main square in Venice and was referred to as 'the drawing room of Europe' by Napoleon himself. Coffee houses sprung up in Venice in the 1700s and the piazza boasts one of the finest, the Caffe Florian.

The Caffe Florian is the oldest coffee house in continuous operation in Italy the the second oldest in the world. Its patrons have included Goethe, Casanova and Marcel Proust as well as Lord Byron and Charles Dickens. Sitting at a table will instantly connect you to another age, your tourist peers will marvel at your sophistication and/or foolishness as you order a coffee and are charged over the odds. A coke here will set you back around 5.50 euros as will most non-alcoholic refreshments. A beer weighs in at 7 euros and a bellini 11 euros. It is standard fare but the service and surroundings cannot be matched. The bar menu has some snacks in the form of sandwiches and filled croissants ranging from 5-10 euros. There is interior seating - and it is opulent - but the best value is derived from sitting out in the early evening during aperitivo time for the maximum experience / wallet impact ratio. The coffee will come with olives and peanuts which will offset the shock of the tab when it arrives, which will include service (exclusive of tip) and the ambiance of the orchestra should it be playing while you are seated (6 euros per customer). If you are extremely lucky, as we were, the orchestra will play Por una Cabeza and a couple will get up and do an impromptu tango right there in the piazza.

This, I must stress, is the joy in cafe culture in Piazza San Marco. For a brief moment in time you are able to follow in the footsteps of literary giants, gaze upon one of the most iconic and spectacular open public spaces in the world and sit smugly whilst passers-by attempt to gauge your salary and wonder if you are an Internet millionaire or an oligarch. My dad still ribs me about the times I've been to the Florian, reminding me that the same coffee is cheaper round the corner, but the experience would not be there. You can't buy this feeling at Starbucks.

Caffe Florian can be found at Piazza San Marco, 57, 30124 Venezia VE
https://www.caffeflorian.com/en/

7. Visit the churches

 

8. Plan ahead and catch the regatta

 

9. Visit the outlying islands

 

10. Footwear

 

An Introduction

Hello to you. My name is Sean Chester and if you have come to my blog, I assume that you love travelling. I also have a love of travel and like nothing more than planning my next trip away.

As humans there is something about travelling which is bewitching. The promise of a new view, a new taste and a different way of seeing the world is too much for an inquisitive mind to resist.

As a Chester I have a genetic predisposition to travel. Many Chesters in the past have seen the world, quite often on state-sponsored outings with guns and equipment. During this time the Chester DNA has adapted with by imbibing all subsequent Chesters with a sense of curiosity, an ability to travel light and the capability of sleeping anywhere.

I lived in Europe as a child and travelled extensively around Germany, Denmark, Benelux and the Alpine regions as well as Italy. These road trips gave me a lifelong yearning to pack up the car and hit the road - to this day I am not a great flier but will do so if the experience is worth the vertigo. My wife Emma would rather fly, her love of travelling extends to sampling the finer ways of travelling that hark back to a golden age. My children Charlotte and Max will quietly put up with anything that our travels throw in their way, from breakdowns in the alps to cancelled flights. They enjoy weekends away, hot sunshine and water.

Many of our journeys feature a fifth member, a 2002 Skoda Octavia vRS named the Octopus. Although I would like to think of this as a reliable roadrunner, it is not. She cries every fluid I pour into her and whilst stopping short of complete failure, has given me the shakes on nearly every trip. Now on 180,000 miles, it is my intention to get the Octopus to 240,000 miles so I can say I have driven it to the moon.

Well, that's enough for now. I am off to plan my next trip and dig out some ones to write about. maybe I'll bump into you at the Caffe Florian one day.

Sean