Top 11 Tourist Mistakes in Venice, Italy                                                (and how to avoid them)

Mistake 1: Hit-and-run visits

The manager of a five-star hotel once told us that, on average, people who book rooms in Venice stay for only 2.8 nights.  Below the luxury level, the typical hotel visit may be even shorter: Guests who reserve through Venere, our discount booking partner, average only 2.1 nights in the city.

What's more, those statistics ignore the day-trippers who represent most of the estimated 16.5 million tourists who come to Venice each year (often for just a quick jaunt from a tour bus or cruise ship to the Piazza San Marco, with a stop at the souvenir stands near the Rialto Bridge).

Visitors from far-flung places like the United States, Canada, Australia, or Japan frequently try to cram too many cities and towns into a one- or two-week vacation. That's a big mistake, for several reasons:

• It doesn't allow time to get acquainted with each destination;
• It means wasting time in airports, on trains, or in buses that could be used for relaxed sightseeing;
• It means spending more on intercity transportation, which leaves less money for museums and other attractions, local transport, hotels, meals, entertainment, and shopping.

Our advice:
If you're coming to Venice, try to stay for a week or longer.

At the very least, spend three days in the historic center, and allow an extra day if you want to tour the outlying (and interesting) islands of Murano, Burano, and Torcello. 

Who knows--maybe you'll end up joining the ranks of Venetophiles who can't get enough of Venice and discover new things about the city with every visit.

Mistake 2: Staying in the wrong location

We often get e-mails that read like these paraphrased examples:

"My 80-year-old father and 76-year-old mother, who uses a cane, have booked a prepaid room at a two-star hotel near the Rialto Bridge. Is there an easy way for them to get to their cruise ship's shuttle bus at the Piazzale Roma without walking?"

• Our reply: "No, unless they hire an expensive water taxi, which may bedifficult for an elderly person to board."

"We have a 6:30 a.m. flight from Marco Polo Airport. Will we have a problem reaching the airport from a hotel on Giudecca at that hour?"

• Our reply: "You'd be much better off staying near the Piazzale Roma and catching the 5:00 a.m. ATVO airport bus, which would get you to the airport in 20 minutes."

In Venice, where moving around the city usually requires walking (with many footbridges to cross) or taking slow, expensive, and often crowded vaporetti or water buses, it makes sense to stay near a convenient arrival and departure point--especially if you're traveling with anything heavier than a carry-on bag.

Don't let a travel agent who's unfamilar with Venice make a booking decision for you, and don't choose a hotel just because the rate looked good on Orbitz or Expedia.

Our articles about hotels for air travelers, hotels near the railroad station, and hotels for cruise passengers are worth reading before you choose a place to sleep. Even if you don't stay at a hotel that we feature, the articles will help you learn which areas are handy to airport transportation, the train station, or the cruise terminals.

• Tip: Our full-page, interactive Venice Hotel Maps are the quickest way to find a hotel near public transportation. (They're based on Google satellite-photo maps, but we've enlarged and edited them by hand with mapping software to make our maps easier to use--and more accurate--than Google's own maps or the maps on hotel-booking sites.)
  
  

  Mistake #3: Commuting from the mainland

  During the past year, about 15 per cent of the readers who reserved hotels through our discout booking partner, Venere, stayed at hotels in the mainland district of Mestre, between Marco Polo Airport and the cluster of 100 small offshore islands that form Venice's historic center.
  To reach the city, they had to take a train, bus, or taxi across the causeway that runs 4 km (2.5 miles) from the Italian mainland. (See Google's satellite photo of the Lagoon for a quick geography lesson.)
  Why did so many readers choose to stay in outside of Venice when they could have slept in one of the world's most beautiful cities?
  In some cases, they might have been trying to save money on a hotel room, but we're guessing that most of those travelers chose the mainland simply because they were arriving in Venice by car. We can understand their reasoning, but in their quest for free or cheap parking, they were missing out on a unique travel experience. Here's why:
  • The best time to be in Venice (at least during high season) is late in the day, after the hordes of day-trippers have gone home, or in the early morning before new busloads of package tourists have arrived. The city can be magical during its quieter hours--and because it's one of the safest cities in Europe, you can wander the sleepy back streets and squares at night without fear of being mugged.
  Still, if you choose to stay on the mainland, be sure to pick a hotel that allows quick commuting to Venice and isn't on an isolated stretch of highway on the edge of town. On our Mestre hotels page, we describe several hotels that are right across the street from the Mestre Railroad Station, where frequent trains from Mestre to Venice reach the city center in only 10 to 12 minutes.
  Commuting from other locations
  Three locations near the historic center are worth considering (especially for leisurely visits during the hot and crowded summer months) as long as you understand that you'll need to reach the sights by boat:
  • The Lido de Venezia (a.k.a. "The Lido") is a long, narrow strip of land that separates the Venetian Lagoon from the Adriatic Sea. In the summer, it's popular with Italian families who come for beach vacations, and it's only a few minutes away from the city by vaporetto. Cars are allowed on the Lido, which is accessible by ferry from Tronchetto.
  • La Giudecca is a car-free island across the Giudecca Canal from Venice's main sights. Giudecca used to be a working-class district, but it's been gentrified in the last few decades. The island is popular with backpackers (who sleep in the Venice Hostel), the rich (who stay at the Hotel Cipriani or as house guests at Elton John's palazzo), and conventioneers (who meet in the Molino Stucky Hilton, a 389-room hotel in a converted 19th Century flour mill and cookie factory). Hotel shuttle boats and public water buses connect Giudecca to the city center.
  • The San Clemente Palace is an upscale hotel on a 17-acre or 7-hectare private island, complete with a 12th Century church, that was a mental asylum and a cat refuge in earlier decades. Free hotel boats offer frequent service to the Piazza San Marco area.

Mistake #4: Following the crowd

Everybody who comes to Venice wants to see the Piazza San Marco, and for most people, deciding to visit St. Mark's Basilica is a no-brainer. Other monuments, museums, and attractions are iffier: Depending on your tastes, you may enjoy yourself more--and make better use of your time or money--by heading off the well-trodden path. For example:

• The Doge's Palace attracts group tours and mobs of individual tourists who feel obliged to see it, but during peak season or on holiday weekends, the entrance lines can be horrendous. Admission isn't cheap, either. Unless you have an irresistible urge to see large, ornately-decorated rooms with paintings by artists like Tintoretto and Veronese, you may be  just as happy visiting places like theisland cemetery of San Michele (inset photo) or the Naval Historical Museum at Arsenale, which is a few minutes east of the Doge's Palace along the St. Mark's Basin waterfront.

• The Rialto Bridge is an impressive sight, and you'll appreciate the views of the Grand Canal from its balustrades. Still, that doesn't mean you need to imitate the lemming-like crowds who linger around souvenir stands and have lunch at tourist restaurants near the bridge. You'll get a better feel for Venice (and suffer fewer bruises from other tourists' elbows) by heading inland from the Grand Canal and exploring typical Venice neighborhoods.

• If paying 15 euros for a small glass of peach juice with sparkling wine doesn't appeal to you, don't feel obligated to join the tourists of Temple Fielding's generation who splurge on Bellinis at Harry's Bar. (While you're at it, avoid the Hard Rock Café unless you need the t-shirt.)

Bottom line: Instead of following the crowds or a guidebook author's itinerary, follow your instincts and inclinations. Your best holiday memories are likely to come from watching daily life in Venice or discovering Venice's lesser-known sights on your own.

Mistake #5: Paying too much for transportation

In an effort to save money, visitors sometimes buy Venice Connected passes online before they leave home, or they stand in line to purchase ACTV Tourist Travel Cards at vaporetto ticket booths the minute they arrive in Venice.

Worse yet, out-of-towners frequently pay €6,50 for a one-way ride on a crowded vaporetto that may be slower and less comfortable than walking--or they may waste an expensive vaporetto ticket to cross the Grand Canal, when crossing by traghetto gondola ferry would be far cheaper.

Our advice: Before buying a transit pass, give some thought to how you'll use it--and plan your sightseeing to make the most efficient use of the time you're paying for.

• Example: During a week-long vacation in Venice, you might want to visit the cemetery island of San Michele, the glassmaking island of Murano, the beaches on the Lido, and the islands of Burano and Torcello in the northern part of the Venetian Lagoon. By visiting those places over two or three days instead of scattering the visits over a full week, you can get by with a 48-  or 72-hour Tourist Travel Card instead of the 7-day version.

We can't emphasize too strongly that Venice is a compact city which is designed for pedestrians:

• Unless you have mobility problems or you're staying on an island like Giudecca or the Lido, you can save time and money the way the locals do--by getting around on foot.

Important: Remember to validate ACTV tickets!

• Before boarding a vaporetto or other water bus of ACTV, the local transit authority, be sure to hold your ticket or pass against the white or green iMob ticket reader at the station entrance. Listen for the confirmation beep.
• If you don't have a ticket and there's no ticket booth or machine at the vaporetto stop, approach the conductor immediately upon boarding the boat.  Traveling without a ticket can result in embarrassment and a heavy fine.
• When traveling on a land bus, you'll also need to validate your ticket. Look for a machine as you board the bus.

Another tip: Don't overspend on airport transportation.

Venice Marco Polo Airport is only 12 km (8 miles) from the city center by road, or about 10 km (just over 6 miles) by boat.

To cover that distance by land taxi will cost €30 or more, and if you take a water taxi to your hotel or cruise ship, you can expect to pay at least €100. We've even had e-mails from readers who were charged marked-up rates of €150 by sleazy hotel concierges or greedy travel agents.

Fortunately, there are much cheaper alternatives, such as the Alilaguna airport boats (which serve a number of locations around the city) and airport buses (which offer frequent service to the Piazzale Roma).

ATVO Treviso Airport buses operate between the Piazzale Roma and Treviso's Antonio Canova Airport, which is used by Ryanair and several other budget airlines.

For more articles on reaching Venice and getting around the city, see our Venice transportation index.

   Mistake #6: Taking unnecessary tours   

Too many tourists arrive in Venice, climb into a sightseeing boat, and cruise along the city's waterfront while a guide with a microphone tells them what they're seeing:

"On your left is the Ca' Bigoli, built in Venetian Gothic style by a 12th Century pasta trader who later became a doge. The interior, which you can't see because you're 50 meters away in a boat, was later redecorated with paintings by a student of Tintoretto..."

(Are you bored by our fictitious example? Think of how bored you'd be if you were in the boat, and how annoyed you'd feel after paying 40 or 50 euros for the equivalent of a narrated vaporetto ride.)

Our advice: Venice is a compact city that any reasonably healthy person can easily explore alone on foot. There's little reason to spend money on tours unless:

• You have mobility problems;

• You're pressed for time; or...

• You enjoy learning cultural and historic tidbits during a private or semi-private walking tour with an expert guide like our friends at Walks Inside Venice.

If you're willing to explore Venice on your own, start by purchasing a good street map of Venice (such as the Touring Club of Italy's 1:5000 series) and a sightseeing-oriented guidebook. Then start walking.

Here are some ideas for do-it-yourself tours using public transportation:

• Ride up the Grand Canal on the No. 1 vaporetto. Sit up front if the boat has as open bow; otherwise, grab a seat in the stern, behind the enclosed cabin.
  
  To avoid crowds, catch the No. 1 vaporetto at the Piazzale Roma in the evening, when day-trippers are on their way home, and ride toward the Piazza San Marco. Stay on the boat until the San Zaccaria stop, or even a few stops beyond if you'd like to enjoy a pleasant walk along the waterfront. (Don't go any farther than S. Elena unless you plan to buy a return ticket at the Lido and ride back toward your starting point.)
• Visit the major islands of the Lagoon by public transportation, following the itinerary in our self-guided islands tour.
• Ride a traghetto, or gondola ferry, across the Grand Canal. The trip is quick, but it costs almost nothing, and it's the best transportation deal in Venice. (Traghetti cross the canal at half a dozen points, and the routes are marked on most good maps.)

Suggestions for escorted tours

If you do feel the need or desire for an escorted tour, see "Tours and Excursions" on the Venice Sightseeing/Culturepage of our Venice Links. (The page also has links for guided tours of attractions such as Ca' Foscari, the former doge's palazzo that is now a university headquarters, and La Fenice, Venice's historic opera house.)

Mistake #7: Overpacking

The admonition to "travel light" may be a cliché, but it's advice worth heeding--especially when you're traveling to Venice, where private transportation is expensive,vaporetto water buses are often jam-packed, and walking usually requires hauling your suitcases over at least a few of the city's 400+ footbridges.

If you're in a tour group, your bags are likely to be delivered to your hotel by the Cooperativa Trasbagagli Venezia, which transports luggage in bulk for travel companies. But as as independent traveler, you'll need to fend for yourself.

Our advice:

• Limit your baggage to one small upright suitcase of carry-on size, plus a lightweight backpack or tote.
• If Venice is just one of the cities on your trip and you insist on traveling around Italy or Europe with bulky luggage, take a small carry-on bag to your hotel in Venice and store your larger suitcase at the Piazzale Roma or Marco Polo Airport. (See our "Left Luggage" article for details.)
• If you're traveling heavy and you can't afford a water taxi, be prepared for long lines at the vaporetto ticket booths by the railroad station and thePiazzale Roma. Also, you may  be required to buy tickets for your luggage: According to ACTV, Venice's transit agency, you're allowed one bag with a combined length, width, and depth of 150 cm or 59 inches. If you go over that limit, your suitcase can be charged a full adult vaporetto fare.
• To witness other tourists struggling with their suitcases, watch our Venice Travel Blog video on The Perils of Overpacking.

  
  

  Mistake #8: Buying useless souvenirs

  First, a disclaimer: We aren't discouraging the purchase of silly or impractical souvenirs per se. After all, there was hardly anything useful about the cheap miniature gondolier's hat that we bought our dog Maggie, except for its value as a photo prop in our Maggie in Venice blog.
  What we are discouraging is the purchase of souvenirs that fall into these two categories:
  • Overpriced souvenirs that will be shoved into a closet and forgotten when you get home, and...
  • Souvenirs that will never make it home because they're difficult or impossible to pack.
  In the first category, one notorious example is the ubiquitous (but non-Venetian) jester's hat. Stuffed multipronged fleece caps with bells or tassles may irresistible to young sports fans and tourists, but how many buyers will wear such hats when they're back in Buffalo, Bristol, or Brisbane?
  In the second category, we include carnival masks with long beaks, Murano glass objects that are much larger than a necklace, and other souvenirs that are likely to get squashed, broken, or left behind in a fit of buyer's remorse.
  Our advice: Buy souvenirs that you can easily take with you, and that you'll continue to enjoy when your Venice trip is just a memory. We're partial to books, maps, small objects and jewelry of Murano glass, refrigerator magnets, and non-electric household items, but your tastes and budget may be more ambitious than ours. (If you have €30,000 or more to spare, a gondola might be a nice purchase--or, better yet, spend 800 to 900 euros on a forcola or Venetian oarlock, which you can put on your canoe to impress your neighbors on Lake Wobegone.)

  
  

  Mistake #9: Being careless with valuables

  Violent crime is practically unknown in Venice, but--like many popular tourist destinations--the city is a magnet for pickpockets, purse thieves, and other crooks who prey on careless or inattentive visitors.
  We've never had anything stolen (maybe because thieves have been intimidated by our scary-looking canine bodyguard), but friends, acquaintances, and relatives haven't always been so lucky:
  • Our niece lost her purse in the railroad station, and we know a travel writer whose video camera disappeared when she set down her tote to buy agelato.
  • At a language school that one of us attended last winter, three women in a class of a dozen students reported having their wallets lifted in Venice.
  Most thefts occur because people make careless (and easily avoided) mistakes such as:
  • Carrying wallets in hip pockets, where they're easy for a pickpocket to reach.
  • Wearing purses over and behind the shoulder.
  • Storing valuables in hip pouches or "fanny packs."
  • Stuffing mobile phones, passports, and other valuables in backpacks.
  • Carrying heavy camera bags (or, worse yet, obvious camera backpacks) that might as well be labeled "Steal me."
  • Resting handbags on top of luggage while concentrating on a map or guidebook.
  • Hanging purses from chair backs in cafés and restaurants.
  • Wearing "neck wallets" outside clothing, in full view of thieves, instead of hidden inside a shirt or blouse.
  Our advice:
  
  • Use common sense, be aware of your possessions and surroundings, and read our "Crime in Europe" article before you leave home.
  • Keep a small amount of cash, a credit card, and an ATM card in a thin wallet that you're carrying in a safe place (such as a zippered shirt security pocket). Store your passport and other valuables in a separate, hidden neck wallet.
  • Carry photocopies of your passport, driver's license, and credit or debit cards in a separate location (e.g., with your companion) so you'll be able to report your losses and get replacements if the originals are lost or stolen.
  

  Mistake #10: Annoying the locals

  On the whole, Venetians are amazingly tolerant of the 16.5 million tourists who descend on their city of 60,000 inhabitants every year. We've seen locals wait patiently for tourists to finish taking photos on bridges, and visitors who ask for directions usually get help (even if it's just a wave of the hand and a polite "sempre dritto" or "straight ahead").

  Still, there are times when the natives (usually older ladies) can appear surly, and it's easy to understand why: Too many tourists are thoughtless or clueless when they're away from home, or they lack the urban skills to coexist with other people in crowded settings. Typical annoying behaviors include:

  • Blocking bridges by sitting and drinking or eating on the steps. (Would the offenders sit down on Fifth Avenue or the Champs-Élysées and have a picnic? Would they lounge in a London crosswalk and expect traffic to go around them?)
  • Posing for snapshots or videos on crowded bridges, or in busy streets, while the photographer fiddles with the camera and pedestrian traffic backs up.
  • Walking three or four abreast down narrow calli and lurching to a stop when a member of the group sees something of interest in a shop window.
  • Waiting until they're at the head of the gelato stand's line to see what flavors are available, or asking for a translation of the ingredients menu at a busy take-out pizza window.
  • Entering the exit side of a vaporetto platform to avoid the boarding queue.
  • Arguing with the clerk at the Internet point who asks for a passport or driver's license, as required by Italy's anti-terrorism and child-pornography laws.
  • Being intentionally stupid like the young man at right, who lay down with a friend in the Piazza San Marco and used crumbs to attract pigeons while he  posed for snapshots with a dildo protruding from his jeans.

  Our advice: In a compact and often crowded city like Venice, being sensitive to  other people--especially in busy tourist areas--will make life more pleasant for locals and visitors alike.

  
  

  Mistake #11: Not coming back

  Venice isn't one of those places that you can see once and forget before you die. If you're like us, you'll become hooked on Venice, and you'll want to spend more time in the city with each passing year.

  In her delightful book, No Vulgar Hotel: The Desire and Pursuit of Venice, Judith Martin (better known as "Miss Manners" ) writes:

  "If...playing at being Venetian sounds like so much Cinderella-crazed girlish nonsense, consider some of the toughies who have thoroughly indulged their own fantasies: Lord Byron, Friedrich Nietzsche, Robert Browning, Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound. And if they all seem to be wild romantics, not to mention disgracefully self-dramatizing show-offs, here is the confession of someone [Henry James] not exactly known for the expression of unfettered personal passions: 'I adore it--have fallen deeply and desperately in love with it.'"

  Don't get us, Judith Martin, or the late Henry James wrong: We aren't suggesting that Venice is perfect. Too many neighborhood stores have been replaced by mask shops or souvenir stands, the summers are hot and humid, and acqua alta--the tidal flooding that can inundate low-lying areas of the city for several hours at a time--is a frequent nuisance from late fall until early spring. Young people must go to Mestre or Verona for pop concerts, and Venice's football club (which last won the Italian Cup in 1940) has declared bankruptcy twice in recent years.

  Still, as Signora Martin tells us, the city has more than enough virtues to attract and entrap Venetophiles:

  "For all of its grandeur, it is built to the human scale. While the tangle of streets, alleys, and canals forms a maze that can confuse even old-timers, the city is small enough to be comprehensible. You will get lost, but it will be in places that are familar and welcoming."

  Another virtue (if one ignores pickpockets) is the fact that, in Martin's words, "Venice is startlingly crime-free....The experience of taking an urban walk at night, finding oneself in a dark passage, and suddenly hearing the echoes of a stranger's footsteps approaching from behind is disorienting in Venice, because all it heralds is the arrival of a matron carrying home a pastry box by its ribbons, and pleasantly open to being of help if you have lost your way."

  By now, it should be clear that Venice is an addictive pleasure, but one that needn't require months in rehab. If you're like many visitors to Venice, you won't need us to tell you that failing to come back is a painful mistake--and a sin that you should make every effort to avoid.