Corinna B April 6, 2016

15 Things You MUST Do In Venice

15 Things
You Must Do In Venice

To visit Venice for just one day is a crime. To visit Italy and not see Venice is a bigger crime. But sometimes all you have is a day, so you need to know how to use that day wisely and not miss out on the best of
Venice by just hanging out where the tourists are. Here are 15 things that you absolutely must do when you are in Venice.

***Scroll to the bottom of this post to get my Top 10 Secret Places To Go In Venice PDF!

Walk (And Walk, And Walk)

Everybody walks in Venice. Walking is an integral part of the social structure of this most unique city in the world. Sit on a bench or a wall anywhere in Venice and watch life happen all around you as the Venetians walk on by, stopping to chat to friends and neighbors.

Your entire experience of Venice is begins and ends with walking. Even if it’s the only thing you do here, just walk and walk and walk.

“The only way to get around Venice, whether you are a countess or a shopkeeper is to walk” ~ John Berendt

Get Lost In Venice

Venice is actually really small, and is also the safest city in Europe, so don’t be scared – get lost! Put your map away and just roam the back streets (where the Venetians live). The bulk of the tourists will all be standing in line outside
the basilica and the Campanile, or buying 15 euro caffe in the Piazza San Marco, so you can finally breathe as you wander and explore little canals that lead to nowhere, footbridges and magical little streets with crumbling plaster
and rusting metal, secret little community squares, private gardens, hidden little coffee shops. It’s wonderful!

Make it your goal to get hopelessly, madly, completely, lost.

Hit Piazza San Marco Early

Technically, if you are going to Venice you really do have to go to St Mark’s Square. The problem is that that is all most people go see. By the time the cruise ships have disgorged their visitors for the day, and the day trippers have arrived, St Marks square / Piazza san Marco turns into a human crush surrounded by vendors selling Made In China cheap Venice knock offs. It gets awful.

So the key is to get there before the crowds descend on the piazza. It is definitely beautiful and magnificent, especially during the off-season!

Take A Tour Of The Doge’s Palace

Either have a local tour guide take you through, or rent an audio tour. You miss far too much and far too many interesting things if you try to freestyle your way through this palace. Walk across the enclosed Bridge Of Sighs, and look out at the last view prisoners had as they were ushered from the court in the Doge’s Palace to the prison on the other side. The prison is well worth walking through as well.

Discover Boutique Hotels In Venice

Walk The Dorsoduro

The Dorsoduro is my favorite of the siesteri. I can walk it for hours and never get bored.

You will find fewer tourists there and endless magnificent things to see. Some of the big attractions include Salute, the Guggenheim Museum (Peggy Guggenheim lived there and is buried in the garden with her dogs) and incredible palazzi including the stupendous Ca’ Rezzonico.

Visit Ca’Rezzonico

Venice is full of grand old palaces, but one of my absolute favorites to visit is Ca’ Rezzonico. To understand Venice you really need to understand the level of opulence, decadence and the staggering displays of wealth that make up it’s history.

Go Deep And Go High

Two keys to understanding and experiencing Venice are to get up high to see the view and then to go deep. Wherever the tourists are, walk in the opposite direction! Wandering through the little streets and alleyways away from the kodak-moment-crowd is the way to see the best of Venice.

Go Bacari Hopping

If you are spending evenings in Venice, and I hope you are, the way to experience the nightlife, or after work life, is to go bacari hopping. Bacari are little bars where you grab a glass of wine, or an ombre (little glass of wine) and some
finger foods akin to tapas. You chat for a while with friends, then move on to another bar. It’s a super social, fun way to spend your early evening.

Eat The Local Cuisine

I wrote a blogpost on what to eat in Venice, read it here.

The key to eating in Venice is to only eat local cuisine. Don’t be ordering pizzas and panini, as big wood burning ovens are prohibited in Venice. The local foods are wonderful, especially if you are a seafood lover. Or a pastries and cookies lover.

Take A Ride On The Vaporetto

Riding around on the vaporetto is a must when you’re in Venice. (The vaporetto is basically a water bus)

It can be congested on the routes taking tourists to St Marks, but everywhere else it is a fabulous way to see the city on the water, from the water.

Drink A Spritz

The spritz is the local drink in Venice. Sit at an outdoor wine bar at the end of the day and watch the world go by, or chat with the locals while sipping on this light and fizzy concoction. A real spritz is made with Aperol and Prosecco, but in some of the touristy joints you will find them made with white wine and sprite. Regardless, have one.

Visit Santa Maria Dal Salute

I am so in love with this church.

It stands proudly on the Grand Canal in the Dorsoduro, and is one of the most recognized and most loved views of Venice. The dome of Santa Maria della Salute is the symbol of the magical Venice skyline, seen by millions of tourists each year – on their way to Piazza San Marco.

Walk all around the outside of the church, the architecture is magnificent! Beware of falling angels – there used to
be a sign posted outside the church warning that the angels up on high, (which still appear to be teetering, but are in fact tethered to the dome) may fall.

Where To Stay In Venice

Visit The Little Church Santa Maria Dei Miracoli

This magnificent little marble church was built between 1481 and 1489 in the siestere of Cannaregio. In 1987 the
organization Save Venice began what they thought would be a 2 year, 1 million dollar restoration, which turned into 10 years and 4 million dollars. The marble cladding of the church contained 14% salts, and was on the verge of
bursting. The restoration involved removing the marble and cleaning it in stainless steel tanks in a solution of distilled water.

Image result for santa maria dei miracoli venice — image via Italy 2 Wed

The interior art, which is spectacular, was blackened, and had to be cleaned and restored.

When the lines at the Basilica are 3 hours long you can normally walk right on in to Santa Maria dei Miracoli, and often be the only people there.

Read more about the falling angels and the Santa Maria dei Miracoli in John Berendt’s fabulous book The City of Falling Angels Berendt wrote Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. And then moved to Venice.

Plan For The Blue Hour

Hopefully you will still be in Venice for the Blue Hour – that magical hour at the end of the day (well, more like 30 minutes actually) just after sunset, when natural light and artificial light mix and with a high sense of drama, turn the world blue. There is no better place in the world to photograph the blue hour.

Okay, so maybe there is. But Venice is breathtaking. Check out Jeff Bell’s fantastic blogpost on the Blue Hour In Venice to get inspired!

Make sure you know where you want to be at sunset to get your perfect shot.

Walk The City In The Wee Hours

If you are lucky enough to be in Venice overnight go walking in the wee hours. Everyone will be tucked in bed and you will have the city to yourself.

It’s moody and mystical, the mist rolls in and makes it ghostly, when the moon is out the lighting is ethereal. Walking Venice in the wee hours is one of life’s truly sensational experiences. Venice is rated the safest city in all of Europe, with negligible violent crime, so you can safely go for 3 AM stroll and pretend the city belongs to you and you alone.

What To Eat In Venice

What To Eat In Venice

Food in Venice often gets a really bad rap, which is such a shame because the local cuisine is fantastic.

Unlike stateside, in Italy there isn’t just one type of Italian food – the food of Italy is regional, so you need to know ahead of time about the local delicacies from the region you are traveling to.

Wood burning ovens are largely prohibited in Venice, so pizzas and breads are not that great. Eat your pizza in Naples, in Venice satiate your hunger with the fruits of the Adriatic.

Venice is a city of seafood. In spite of the lagoon getting churned up by unending cruise ship traffic, it still is full of fish, as well as all the seafood gleaned from the surrounding area in the Adriatic.
A walk through the Rialto Market (in San Polo – you can’t miss it!) will show you a dazzling variety of seafood, some you’ve probably never seen or tasted before. Local restauranteurs shop here, so you are previewing what you will be eating later in the day. You will also find an unbelievable array of spices in the mercado ,having made their way here centuries ago dating back to the spice trade.

** Spices from asia and northern africa accessed the rest of the world via the world trade center, Venice.**

Make sure you try fritto misto, a mixture of deep fried squid, octopus and prawns. Unlike the heavy, oily deep fried seafood you’re used to, Venetian chefs are superbly light handed, creating a divine misto that doesn’t weigh you down.

venice-food

Venetians are also celebrated for their cakes and pastries. Step up to the bar in a coffee shop, order a caffe (espresso to non italians) and enjoy a baicoli or a busolai, little local light biscuit/cookies.

Dolci-Venexiani

Venetian-pastries-and-cookies

One of the most fun ways to enjoy eating in Venice is to go bacari hopping.
A bacaro is a bar. Stop in for the local drink, prosecco, and pair it with a tapas like snack known as ciccheti.

venice-bar-food

These are little finger foods, perfect with a light drink.
Try sarde in saor, grilled octopus, baccala Montevarchi, shrimp prepared in many different ways – it’s a great way to get a taste of Venice.
If you are like me, a total lightweight when it comes to drinking, you can order un’ombra (a shadow) or smaller taste of wine.

By stopping here and there for ciccheti you wind up eating far less than if you are sitting down in a restaurant for a full meal. Plus it’s much more fun, especially in the early evenings when all the locals are out and about, stopping to socialize on their way home.

How To Enjoy The Best Of Venice ~ learn what most tourists don’t see or experience

Another thing you will see is people sipping on sunset colored drinks, normally red or orange. These are the famous Venetian spritz. White wine with a splash of campari (the red) or my favorite, with Aperol (the orange). The loveliest way to end the day and welcome the early evening is to sit outside a bacaro with a spritz and some snacks and watch the world go by. Avoid Piazza San Marco (as it will cost the same as your car payment!) instead head into the other neighborhoods, such as Cannaregio, and join the locals. The people watching is much more fun here! Read more about it in my post on Ca’ D’Oro (linked here)

Spritz-Aperol-Cannaregio-Venice

Read more about traveling in Venice here

Check out my favorite neighborhood in Venice, the magnificent Dorsoduro

Bonus Information:

Want to know which are my favorite restaurants in Venice? And my favorite place, far from the crowds, to enjoy an icy cold glass of prosecco at the end of the day? (You may even see George and Amal Clooney there!) I made a free downloadable PDF of my Top 10 Secret Places In Venice. These are places you won’t read about on my blog.

CLICK HERE for my free PDF

Corinna B September 10, 2015

10 Things NOT To Do In Italy

Being that I am in Italy at the moment leading the Glam Italia II private tour, I thought this blogpost from Fodor’s was particularly pertinent!

10 Things NOT To Do In Italy

The more time you spend in Italy, the more you’ll notice that Italians love telling you what to do…whether you ask them for advice or not. Try this wine. Try it again. Pass that semi truck—you can do it! Wear different shoes. Change your hair; you’re not eighty. Loosen up. Mangia, mangia! For a change of pace, here’s a list of things NOT to do in Italy—a country as beloved for its passionate people as its natural beauty and delicious cuisine.

DON’T….

HEAD TO VATICAN CITY IN A TUBE TOP

We know the desire to charm the Italians with your spaghetti strap sundress might be overwhelming, but visitors in skimpy clothing are forbidden to enter holy sights. If you can’t bring yourself to wear a top that covers your shoulders, tuck a scarf or cardigan into your bag, and use it to make yourself presentable when you’re on holy ground.

PARK INSIDE THE YELLOW LINES

Or the pink ones, if you’re eating for one. Or the blue ones, if you want to save a few euro. Few things are as gutting as heading back to the parking lot and finding a parking ticket on your rental car, or worse, a stark gap where your car used to be. In an Italian parking lot, the white-lined parking spaces are free, the blue-lined are paid, the yellow-lined spots are for disabled motorists, and the pink spots are for expectant mothers. As for potential parking spots that have no lines at all, be sure to look for Zona di Rimozione (Tow Zone) or Divieto di Sosta (No Parking) signs. Or just do as the Italians: cross your fingers and park on the sidewalk. Sideways.

EXPECT THINGS TO HAPPEN ACCORDING TO SCHEDULE

One of the first things any visitor to Italy will learn is that there’s time…and then there’s Italian time. Italian time is elastic (don’t be surprised when your 4 p.m. Colosseum tour starts at 4:30) and so are business hours. Many businesses—even, bafflingly, restaurants—shut down for lunch and will also be closed two days a week, days which vary from business to business. Double-checking business hours is crucial unless you enjoy making empty treks. Public transportation is also often “out of order” or delayed, so give yourself ample padding between travel connections.

GET FLEECED BY A GONDOLIER

Taking a gondola cruise in Venice might seem like the most romantic thing on earth until you get the bill. Surprise: a gondola ride can cost upwards of $65 per person (!), and even more if you have a shady gondolier. If a $65-$130 boat ride isn’t in your budget, but you still have your heart set on floating along Venice’s canals, consider hopping aboard a traghetto—one of the water taxis used by Venetian locals when they want to cross the Grand Canal. The ride will be much shorter, but the traghetto boats are exactly the same as the tourist gondolas and tickets will cost around $5.

TAKE THAT GOOGLE MAPS SHORTCUT

Should you be renting a car to explore the country, you’ll probably be using a GPS or Google Maps. You might be tempted to save on autostrade tolls by taking one of the outlined shortcuts. But the farther south in Italy you go, the worse-kept the roads tend to be. Razor-narrow passages, huge potholes and an absence of streetlights can make navigation difficult for a traveler unfamiliar with Italian motorways; the SS7 (Via Appia)—a mostly-unlit winding coastside path running from Rome to Brindisi—is particularly perilous. You might have to pay a bit extra to take the autostrade, but at least they’re well-kept.

Get-Yourself-Psyched-for-Authentic-Spaghetti-alla-Bolognese-in-Naples.jpg

GET YOURSELF PSYCHED FOR AUTHENTIC SPAGHETTI ALLA BOLOGNESE IN NAPLES

In Italian restaurants outside of Italy, all of the boot’s many regional cuisines are slapped with the giant umbrella title—ITALIAN FOOD—so you’d be forgiven for not knowing that pesto was invented in Genoa and Limoncello is from Sorrento. But you wouldn’t head to Los Angeles hoping for the best barbecue of your life, would you? Do yourself a favor and stick to local foods on your Italian trip. A (very) quick cheat sheet: Genoa for pesto; Naples for pizza; Bologna for bolognese sauce and filled pastas like ravioli, tortellini and lasagne; Milan for risotto alla milanese and ossobucco alla milanese; Rome for spaghetti alla carbonara, spaghetti all’amatriciana and lamb. Gnocchi, bresaola, polenta dishes, and the ultra-popular Italian dessert tiramisù are found all over the country, but are native to the northern Italian regions like Lombardy and Veneto. Prosciutto—or Parma ham—is most commonly associated with central and northern Italy.

TIP EVERYTHING THAT MOVES…NO MATTER WHAT THEY TELL YOU

Tipping is not obligatory or common in Italy. However, tourist-savvy service people may have heard that Americans are genetically programmed to tip everything from waiters to performing rabbits, so the cheekier ones might try to work you for some spare change. Unless they gave you the best service in the history of the planet, resist. They’re getting a living wage.

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ASK YOUR WAITER FOR PARMESAN CHEESE TO PUT ON YOUR SEAFOOD PASTA

Unless you want to see a grown adult cry, that is. One of the holiest commandments of traditional Italian culinary etiquette is that cheese and seafood never, ever mix. Only very recently have certain cheese/seafood pairings cropped up—i.e., ricotta with sea bass, gorgonzola with clams—but this is considered very avant garde (the elder generation won’t touch such dishes). Regardless of your age or level of sophistication, mixing parmesan cheese with seafood remains a cardinal sin, so don’t even ask. And for the love of Saint Peter, don’t let an Italian see you cutting your spaghetti with a fork and knife.

Kill-Yourself-Trying-to-Fit-Rome-into-a-Crowded-Itinerary.jpg

KILL YOURSELF TRYING TO FIT ROME INTO A CROWDED ITINERARY

Twenty regions, so much to see! Most visitors enter Italy throughRome, but if you plan to enter via Sicily or Milan and can’t bear the thought of missing out on Roman ruins during your trip, take heart: the Romans were a busy bunch. Spectacular Roman ruins can be found throughout the peninsula, namely Volterra in Tuscany, Villa Jovis on the Isle of Capri, Pompeii and Oplontis in Campania, Piazza Armerina in Sicily, Verona in Veneto, and Mediolanum in Milan. Use the money you’ll have saved on extra flights to fill up on wine.

PLAN ON CONDUCTING YOUR ENTIRE TRIP TO ITALY IN ENGLISH

Yes, the movies would have you believe that any time you travel, your host country will be chock-full of citizens who speak your language perfectly, albeit with a charming accent. But Italy consistently earns moderate to low proficiency rankings on English proficiency indexes—among the lowest-rated in Europe. You’ll do all right at hotels, historical sites, and restaurants in heavily-touristed cities like Rome and Naples, but set foot outside of those perimeters and, well, in bocca al lupo.

P.S. That means “good luck” in Italian.

Photo Credits: Get Fleeced by a Gondolier: Thats where I live by Saurabh Thakur Attribution-NoDerivs License; Park Inside the Yellow lines: blue like the line by Emiliano Attribution License; Get Yourself Psyched for Authentic Spaghetti alla Bolognese in Naples: Trattoria Anna Maria by Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License; Ask Your Waiter for Parmesan Cheese to Put On Your Seafood Pasta: Getty Images/Hemera; Take That Google Maps Shortcut: Appia Antica by ChrisSteph LewisBoegeman Attribution-NoDerivs License; Head to Vatican City in a Tube Top: Lisja | Dreamstime.com; Kill Yourself Trying to Fit Rome into a Crowded Itinerary: Shootalot | Dreamstime.com