obscure2k

Ai Cavalieri and Ai Reali are owned by the same company. The locations are only about 10 minutes apart but Ai Reali is in a very frenetic area and Ai Cavalllieri is in a very tranquil neighborhood. You can request a canal view at Ai Cavallieri. Really lovely.

Perche

I'd have to disagree. You cannot say that Venice is so small that the whole place would, "have you being in a touristy spot." You can walk for an hour, and not see five people unless you enter a bacaro or bar. It is not so tiny that you cannot get lost in back streets.

I've lived there about half time since 2010. Yet, last night going back to my apartment in Castello I thought I'd never get there. It's a new apartment, but in an area I know very well. I walked around for 45 minutes in the back streets before finding it, and maybe passing only 10 people. But the back streets of Venice is one of the most beautiful walks you could experience in life. At all costs avoid being near the commercial, "main arterial," if you want to experience Venice.

Perhaps the reason why Venice is your least favorite Italian destination is that you stay near the "main arterial" One shouldn't be on any of the main arterials except to see them before 9AM or after 9PM, before the crowds arrive. They are a mess, to be seen once, then avoided, like the picture of San Marco that I sent to OP that she commented on above. You can barely move in them they are so packed, and there is really no off-season any more.

Instead of seeing super romantic Venice, on the main arterials you'll just be seeing a Venetian version of a shopping mall.

Two nights ago in Cannaregio I got so darn lost, and I know the place very well. I walked and walked for about half an hour, knowing I'd find my way, and only saw a few people. Finally, I saw an elderly couple and asked them where the heck I was, and told them I need to get to Castello. They said, "We know, this place is a labyrinth, follow us." After about five minutes with us being the only people on the street the lady said, "this is our apartment," but told her husband, "you should walk him the rest of the way to the vaporetto stop, it's too far to walk to Castello."

It's not too far to walk, I walked from my apartment to Piazzale Roma and back yesterday, which covers one end of Venice to the other, but I do it all through the back streets. In the back streets most people will think they are seeing one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Walking the main arterials, most people will think they are in one of the most annoying cities in the world.

This is the thing to know about Venice: getting lost in the back streets is actually what you go there for, not to see the commercial main arterials. There are places in Rome, Naples, Milan, where I don't want to be at night, for safety. But in Venice, follow the darkest alleys you can, and just keep going deeper and deeper into the dark. There is virtually no crime. And eventually, you'll get back to your place. It's an island(s), so you can only get so lost before you wind up back. The further in you go, the better. Then you find that great little unknown restaurant. That's what I was doing in Canareggio.

The worst thing you can do in Venice is stay in the main areas, like around San Marco, the Rialto Bridge (where Ai Reali and the Disney Land Store are), or even worse, the train station. Last night I had to take the train back from Mestre, and I couldn't believe again how commercial and ugly it is. A person might as well go to the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas. They'll probably eat better there, too. Plazas full of people throwing these luminescent whirly gigs in the air, no place to move, restaurants where almost all of the food served is microwaved, frozen food. Worst place of all to stay in Venice.

I'll throw out the name of a nice hotel. Hotel Bisanzio. And if you reserve well enough in advance, they have four apartments as well as the hotel. Very, very nice, but if you want an apartment you'd have to reserve very early to get them. The hotel itself is down an alley, but very easy to find because it's right down an alley directly in front of the San Zaccaria vaporetto stop.

As close as you'll want to be to San Marco, so that you can walk to it in the morning or at night when it is empty. Or, you can walk 50 feet straight ahead and instead of being in front of the Disney Land store where people are buying Mickey Mouse hats and t-shirts, you'll be right at the main water front, with one of its most spectacular views. Or you can walk into Castello and get yourself as lost as you possibly can. Some of the best restaurants in Venice are within a 10-15 minute walk of the hotel, e.g., Al Covo, Corte Sconta, Il Ridotta, Wildner, Nuove Galleon, and there are great local bars for cicchetti.

I did not recommend Metropole Hotel. I said it's near one of Venice's great streets, Via Garibaldi. Notice the article I sent from Dissapore, Niente e Sacro Tranne il Cibo, "Mangia Bene, Spende Poco," (eat well and spend a little), 3-4 or four of those places were on Via Garibaldi. Garibaldi is the only street in Venice wide enough to have the name, "Via," but it is not a main arterial for tourists, only for locals. It's where the locals tend to live.

But for what it's worth, I'd rather stay in Metropole and have access to Garibaldi and be in Castello than to stay down the street from the Disney Land Store and other touristy shops. But, there are better options.

I haven't been to Il Cavalliere, but I know the area very well. It's very near a great restaurant called Alle Testiere. Piazza Santa Maria Formosa is quaint, charming, not touristy at all, all world away from what would experience on the main arterials. Heck, it was walking from that Piazza to my apartment last night that I got lost, because I decided to try an alternative route.

Perche

I just got back from another stay in Venice on Tuesday. Unfortunately, I don't go back for another six weeks. Venice is so popular that the off-season is now only about six weeks long. At least I caught the first two weeks of it.

The only top restaurant that I couldn't get into because it was, "completo," meaning fully booked even during the off-season, was Antiche Carampane. During high season, which is all but a few weeks of the year now, you can't get into any good restaurant without a reservation made at least a few days to weeks in advance.

I just came across this article that explains why you should stay away from the main areas, like San Marco, Rialto, train station, etc., for all but a few weeks of the year, if you don't want to find Venice to be too commercial and annoying. I think it's useful for those planning a trip. (Note, Riva degli Schiavone is the main drag along the waterfront.)
http://veneziablog.blogspot.com/2015...ly-of-few.html

obscure2k

Thanks Perche for posting that blog. A good explanation as to why we choose to go to Venice mid-late November each year.

Perche

Venice is magical. There is no other place like it in the world. You just have to know where to stay.

John Hooper is a notable European journalist who has been a foreign correspondent from England, who has covered Italy, and Spain since the fall of Franco. He is sort of a grandfather of journalism.

Last year he wrote a well regarded book about Italy and its culture after having lived in Rome for 20 years. For his book publication he was interviewed by the New York Times Book Review, and they asked him:

"What would be your first response if someone said: “I’m going to Italy next week. What should I do?”

His response was, "Go to Venice. There’s just nowhere like it. Don’t expect the cuisine to be anything like what you imagine Italian cuisine to be. It’s a legume-based cuisine, and you find small aquatic creatures fried in batter and pickled dishes and goodness knows what else. Drink wines from the area. Don’t go to Venice, order Chianti and expect that you’re going to get something good. Order wine from the Veneto. Try to get as far away as you can from Piazza San Marco. Look for areas of the city where there are still Venetians living. There are parts of Cannaregio where you can walk a number of streets and not come across a tourist."

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/08/tr...ist-traps.html

That pretty much sums it up. There is no place in Italy like Venice.

How in the world did Venice even happen, and what is a lagoon? Not condescending, but people have asked me what a lagoon is, many times. A circle is 360 degrees. Imagine cutting off about 30 degrees of the circle. On the outside of the circle is the Adriatic sea, on the inside of the circle is the lagoon. Venice is composed of 107 tiny islands in the middle of the Venetian lagoon. Actually, the opening of the Venetian lagoon out into the sea was moved, I think about 100 years ago. That closed it off temporarily, making it what would be called a lake, while they opened up a new outlet into the sea a few hundred yards away. This was done for better shipping purposes.

People keep talking about the demise of Venice, but it has been around for over 1,400 years, and it isn't going to sink or fail. The most improbable thing is how it even came to exist. In the 400's, people lived on the mainland, not on any of the clustered islands in the center of the lagoon. Barbarians from the north kept invading them, burning down their towns, and carrying off their wives and daughters. They realized that they couldn't defend themselves any longer against such invaders.

Out in the middle of the lagoon there were the clustered, tiny little islands that we now call Venice. The lagoon is very shallow. It is too shallow for any type of boat, except for one with a completely flat bottom. That is why all Venetian boats, like a gondola, have a flat bottom. It is also why only in Venice, the person paddling the boat is standing up in the back like a gondoliere, because the water in the lagoon is so shallow that they have to stand up to see that they are not paddling into water that is too shallow and that will ground them. That meant that no boats carrying troops could invade them, and because the mud is like quicksand, no army could invade them. They formed Venice, and survived the northern invaders that sacked the rest of the Roman Empire.

How the Venetians turned about 107 tightly clustered islands in the middle of a lagoon into what was once the richest, and most powerful country in the western world, is almost too hard to believe.

It was not possible to build a house or a structure on one of the tiny mud-like islands in the middle of this lagoon. They were just mud, so, the Venetians did the impossible. Imagine cutting down a 50 foot tree, and cutting off all of the branches. You would have a gigantic wooden structure, tapered at one end, like a gigantic toothpick. Venetians somehow cut down millions of millions of trees, and turned them into giant toothpicks, or nail-like shapes. They cut down trees all over the Veneto, and as far away as Croatia, Montenegro, and Slovenia. They cut them into 50 foot long giant nails, and towed them to those tiny islands of mud in the middle of the lagoon.

Somehow, they were able to stand them up, pointy side down, and drive them into the mud like nails, into the solid ground beneath. They would drive thousands of them right next to each other, to form a platform. Then, they would cover the platform with something like marble, stone, or cement, so that they would have a block, street, or campo.

Most people who know Venice know the Church Santa Maria della Salute. It is what you look at as one of the most stunning sites across the canal from Piazza San Marco. Della Salute alone is built on over 1.7 million upside down trees driven into the mud to form its platform.

I don't remember the number of trees that are the foundation of Piazza San Marco. I suspect that when you are standing in Piazza San Marco, you are standing on a platform of perhaps 3-4 million upside down trees driven into the mud, that is holding the whole thing up.

Trees rot, so why hasn't Venice sunk into the mud? Trees rot because of microorganisms and oxygen. Those organisms cannot survive deep under the Venetian mud where there is too much salt, and too little oxygen, so they are not subject to corrosion. The higher parts of those trees, the parts that are not deep in the mud, had their carbon washed out due to hundreds of years of sea water flowing in and out twice a day, so that they are now basically petrified, or stone-like, like the skeletons of a dinosaur. There is no longer any biological material in them.

Where do you stay in Venice? This is not a hard question to answer. I don't really like to give exact, specific names of hotels, restaurants, except in response to a specific question, because then I would be responsible for any misadventure, but I can give general guidelines.

Stay as far as possible from Piazza San Marco, the Rialto Bridge, and any place in between them. Venice is small, but it gets more cruise ship visits than any other city in Europe. Each cruise ship is generally about three times the size of the Titanic. Each one, "disgorges" between 4-6 thousand tourists each day, totaling around 60,000 per day. Venice only has about 55,000 residents. All of those tourists do as they are told, and head straight to Piazza San Marco, and then to the Rialto Bridge. You have to stay away from hotels near these places. Piazza San Marco and the Rialto Bridge are so famous that hotels on the complete opposite side of Venice, as far away as you can be from Piazza San Marco, advertise on TripAdvisor, "Close to San Marco and Rialto."

90% of the people who say they have been to Venice, have never actually seen it. They also say they didn't like it. They arrive on a cruise ship, or some other type of tour service, pour out, stay the day, then go back to sleep on the ship, and say they, "did Venice," and didn't like it. It is impossible to see Venice that way. Venice has the touristy San Marco and Rialto areas where 90% of the people restrict themselves to, but to see Venice you have to stay away from these two places, and you need time.

Cities in Italy don't just start anywhere. First, there have to be roads. However, a city doesn't just start anyerwhere on a road. Most start where two roads intersect. If you think about that, it means roughly the shape of an X. For that reason, almost all cities are divided into quartiere, or quarters, each for the four parts inside the lines of an X formed by two intersecting roads. Not in Venice, because there are no roads. Venice is divided into sestiere, or sixths, for no real reason.

Think of Venice as the only city not divided into quarters, because it actually has the shape of a fish. The head of the fish is east, as in far east Castello, Sant' Elena, and the tail being the train station, Piazzale Rome, and the bridge connecting it to the mainland. Stay as far into the head of the fish as you can.

1. Sestiere San Marco. The Basilica is so, so beautiful. If you go there early in the morning, before the 9 AM disgorgement of the cruise ships you can have it almost to yourself. You can actually walk from the Basilica to Ponte Rialto in 6-7 minutes using extreme back street knowledge, because the Grand Canal is shaped like an S, and the two are as if in the middle of the S, close by. No one will be able to do this without tutelage. And without that, to get from one to the other have to be on the horrible, terrible, overwhelmingly crowded, commercial streets connecting San Marco with Ponte Rialto, and it will take an hour, walking very slowly like a zombie, because you will be stuck in a huge crowd of 60,000 tourists in streets that are very narrow because they were built before the idea of a car was ever conceived. It's a horror show.

There are some hotels on the edges of Sestiere San Marco where it is possible to have a pleasant stay because the hotels are great. For example, the hotel Danieli is in Sestiere San Marco. At least it is a 5 minute walk to Piazza San Marco, and if you exit and go left towards Castello (head of the fish), instead of going right towards Piazza San Marco, you can be in a nice neighborhood.

Hotel Gritti is in Sestiere San Marco. I've stayed in Danieli, but not at Gritti, but I've met friends there, to take them around. The Gritti has great views of Della Salute if you get a view room, or it's warm enough to have breakfast outside on their terrace. However, once you go outside, you are on the main shopping street for tourists; Prada, Gucci, Versace, etc., one after another.

San Marco is an extremely hard place to stay at if you want to get to know Venice. Tourism has always been in Venice, but the cruise ships have not always been. Cruise ships are up about 450% in the last 15 years, and have just about killed Sestiere San Marco.

2. Sestiere San Polo. The Rialto bridge connects sestiere San Marco with sestiere San Polo, so it has the good and the bad. On the San Marco side, any hotel near the bridge is going to be bad. Most people stay in that narrow zone between San Marco and Rialto, walk in that narrow zone, and eat in that narrow zone, and justifiably say that they didn't like Venice. San Polo is the other side of the bridge, away from San Marco.

San Polo, however is a large sestiere. Once you get into it, walking as far away from the Ponte Rialto as you can, the better it gets. Venetian streets are so complicated that even Venetians are always lost, except when they are in their own sestiere where they grew up. You cannot ask someone in San Marco how to get to a place in San Polo. Then, there is campanillismo, meaning more or less, your parish. Every Venetian neighborhood is built around a campo or square. Every few hundred yards their will be a church with a bell tower, or campanile. If you ask someone from Venice where they are from, they won't respond by saying Italy. They won't even say they are from Venice. They won't even say which sestiere. They will identify with which church campanile they grew up closest too, even though Italians are probably the least likely people in the entire christian world to actually go to church.

San Polo, once you get away from the Rialto Bridge, gets to be a Venetian city again. I'll plead guilty to my own campanillisimo, San Martino and San Zaccaria in Castello, but in Venice, I often have to go to San Polo. Away from the bridge, it is always fascinating. If you walk to Campo dei Frari, you are going to see nothing but moms with baby carriages, old ladies sitting on park benches gossiping, and real venetian street life. Staying there wouldn't be bad.

Campo San Rocco is not to be missed. It is like a guild or something. During Venice's time as the richest independent country in the western world people with a lot of money would group together and start a "scuola," or neighborhood club. Scuola Grande di San Rocco is amazing. Your neck will be sore from looking up at all of the great art on the walls, and your feet will freeze from standing on the most fantastic marble floors of this place.

San Polo is not a place that I prefer to stay, but I know it has a lot of great places, and I never mind being there once I get away from the Rialto Bridge. You just have to be absolutely sure that you are not staying anywhere near the Rialto Bridge.

3. Santa Croce. This is the only place in Venice with cars, an artificial island that forms a parking lot, the train station, the Maritime (cruise ship) station, the giant square of Piazzale Roma which is a gigantic circle for buses that shuttle the "pendolari" back and forth to terra firma, or the mainland. Most people who work in Venice cannot afford to live there. They are called pendolari, because like a pendulum, they swing back and forth, in and out of the city, as if they are on a pendulum between Venice and where they live on terra firma," or firm land.

I'm sure that you can find great hotels and restaurants in Santa Croce, but in generalizing, I think it's safe to say that it is not where you want to be, unless you make a particular spectacular find.

4. Dorsoduro. I had a very nice apartment there for a semester at school one time. You can almost divide Venice into two parts; one side of the Grand Canal, and the other side. Dorsoduro would have to be considered, "the other side" because it is on the other side of the Grand Canal from Piazza San Marco. It is where the Guggenheim Museum, the Accademia, and many other excellent places are. The University Ca Foscari is there. Piazza Margherita, a nice hang out for younger people is there. The best bakery in the city, Tonolo is there. If you consider San Marco to be downtown and want to go there a lot, it's a 20-30 minute pleasant walk, but there is nothing wrong with most parts of Dorsoduro. Calle Lunga San Barnaba has some of the best restaurants in Venice.

I'd recommend not staying too close to the Accademia Bridge. Dorsoduro has some parts that are so isolated, so purely Venetian, that it is hard to know what century you are in when you get there. I'm thinking about out near the Church San Nicola dei Mendicati, or Saint Nicholas of the Beggars. It was built around the year 600. You won't find anybody out there. You can just go walking around, and you will be in Venice. Stop in a bar and have a coffee. The lady at the bar will be shocked to see that a tourist has stopped there, and will stutter, not only because they don't speak english, buy because they won't even be able to speak Italian. They only speak Venetian dialect.

5. Cannaregio. This is the largest of the sestiere. It is where most Venetians live. It is also an "opposite side" of the city. It is on the San Marco side of the Grand Canal, but its waterside faces the other side of the lagoon. You have a completely different waterfront. You can usually see the snow capped Dolomite Mountains if you go to the waterfront here. The only problem is that of course, part of it borders on San Polo, San Marco, and Santa Croce. As you get closer to those three areas, things go downhill. However, if you stay away from the borders, this is one of the places where you can just about go into any bar or restaurant, and eat well. This is where you will find artisans, making crafts.

To give an example, when I was in Venice last month I stayed in Castello as usual, but I had to go to Dorsoduro every day. I needed a gym to work out, so one day I went to the gym located in Dorsoduro. It was nothing special, but a day pass costed 15 euros, plus 2 euros if I wanted a towel. I was only there for a week, and I only wanted one work out, so I did it. I've been to that gym on two occasions.

A few months before I was staying in an apartment in Castello for a month, and mostly working there. There is a gym down a side alley in nearby Cannaregion. They actually are on the water practically, because that is where most of the people go to work out by taking out a boat. They have lots of boats. I asked how much it would cost to work out there for a month. The lady said, "12 euros for one month." This hole in the wall had better equipment than the fancier place in Dorsoduro.

In Italy, exercise is taken at a different pace. I was actually sweating while I worked out. Twice, two other gym members came up to me to tell me with deep concern that if I kept exercising that hard, it will damage my body. Another time, my sweat was dropping on the floor and the manager came over to me and started yelling, "tutto e' bagnato," that is, I was soaking everything. He told me not to come back next time unless I had a head sweat band and wrist bands to keep my sweat from falling on the floor of the gym. In Italy, even when you exercise, you are not supposed to sweat. I felt bad, and I mopped the floor for him.

Cannaregio is a part of Venice where you can have experiences like that. You are not going to get that on a day trip from a cruise ship.

6. Castello. This is the place, at least for me. If it didn't have electricity, for the most part, you wouldn't know if you were walking around there in the 15th or the 21st century. This is where the laundry is hanging out the window on a string going across the street. This is where the kids are kicking around soccer balls. This is where, when you come to a campo or small plaza, there are a bunch of mothers with baby carriages, talking. In the afternoon, it's where you see legions of school children getting out of school, and deliriously happy to be out, running home. It's full of bakeries and coffee shops. It's where you stop into any bar, and the lady behind the counter looks at you with a touch of fear, because she knows you don't speak her language. Then you talk to her in Italian, and she will squint, and understand a little, because she only speaks Venetian, with some restaurant Italian like, "what you want?"

That is not to say that it is completely rustic. After all, Al Covo, Corte Sconta, Al Nuovo Galleon, some of the best restaurants, not to mention the best ciccheteria are located in Castello. However, the deeper into it you go, down its lonely alley ways, tiny streets, dark places, the more you get to know Venice. And, since there is virtually no crime, staying in and exploring the back streets of Castello is the best thing to do, and Castello is the best place to stay for an authentic experience.

In summary, if you go to Venice, and all that you do is go to San Marco, then walk at a zombie pace with all of the crowds along the blocked shopping streets towards Rialto, you are going to hate Venice. If you stay in inner Cannaregio, certain parts of Dorsoduro, and practically anywhere in Castello, you are going to find Venice to be one of the most beautiful, fascinating places in the world.

Reds2011

Perche Thank you for such an in depth and informative post. Very timely as we are planning a visit to Venice at the end of March and I have been searching around for a decent option to avoid the worst of the high traffic areas. Just before Easter so hopefully we will avoid the worst of the crowds.

Funny you mention that all the hotels claim they are close to the Rialto and San Marco! I have noticed that with almost every listing after looking at their position on the map.

obscure2k

I am very fond of Campo Santa Maria Formosa and Campo Santa Marina. Few tourists, nice residential area of Castello and quite centrally located. I suggest looking at hotels in that area. Second recommendation by Perche of the Sestiere Castello

cbastian

If you're looking for somewhere different and local to stay, I would recommend the Ca’ Pozzo Inn. it's tucked in an alley off a side street along the first canal you cross walking from the train station to Piazza San Marco. There's a local fish market outside in the morning, and you're right around the corner from the Jewish Ghetto. Also, there's an airport vaporetto stop nearby. It's under $100 a night, and the decor is Italian modern with lots of contemporary artwork.