Early Morning Transportation in Venice

Dorsoduro is a great place to stay. However, it could be a long walk with many footbridges to cross the small canals. With these footbridges, it's bumpty-bump up the stairs and bumpty-bump down the stairs with your luggage. If walking to the Piazzale Roma is important, look into the Hotel Papadopoli. It's within 300' and one footbridge from the buses. It's also rated #55 of 437 hotels on www.tripadvisor.com. Our neighbors just stayed there and said it was great. The Hotel Papadopoli is within walking distance of the cruise ships. To get to most of the sights down the Grand Canal, you will be on the vaporettos to get to and from them. On the reverse, if you stay further down the Grand Canal (i.e. San Marco, Salute), you will have to take the last "N" vaporetto coming through to make the 4:40am or 5:00am buses. We've had to have people be at their vaporetto stops as early as 3:40am to catch the N vaporetto to get to the Piazzale Roma in time for the 4:40 bus. It only took 15 minutes on the vaporetto but that is what was needed to catch the last N boat. Since you seem to know the www.atvo.it website, try running some dummy schedules using vaporetto stops down the Grand Canal to the Piazzale Roma. The website will tell you which vaporettos you need and at what time to catch them. As a hint when working this part of the ATVO site, it doesn't fully display. Just scroll down a bit and the remainder will appear.

Actually, the vaporettos begin running at 5:00am. Plus, there is a night vaporetto. There are two bus lines to the airport from the Piazzale Roma. The first departure for one of them is 4:40am. Note that the airport does not open until 5:00am. Where is your hotel? You could be within walking distance to the bus or you could be 30 minutes away. Knowing the hotel name and nearest vaporetto stop can give us the information we need to provide you with times and routes.

Thanks for the info; I didn't see that the vaporettos started that early on the ATVO website. We haven't chosen a hotel yet, partly because of this situation; I didn't want to get us in a situation where we were going to have to walk all the way to the bus station from somewhere near San Zaccaria. Looks like if we are in Dosuduro we could walk though?

Another option - albeit expensive - is to take a water taxi to the airport. It's a very memorable way to end your vacation!

There are essentially two methods of reaching Marco Polo from Venice, via land or via water. Each have basically two options. For the land portion, as you have mentioned you'll have to make your way to P le Roma and then either take the orange ACTV bus or the blue ATVO bus to the airport. Both are around 5 euro and take about 25 minutes. All land transport drops you at the terminal entrance. You can also take a taxi, I don't know the cost. If you choose that route, I'd suggest having your hotel arrange for one to meet you at P le Roma. Via water, you also have two choices. The private water taxi mentioned will pick you up at the closest water landing by your hotel and take you straight to the airport in about 30 minutes. Then it is about a 10 minute walk to the terminal from the docks. The normal cost is around 100 euro per boat (not per rider) and there could be an extra charge for an early pick up. You can also take Alilaguna. It is a shuttle boat that runs from Venice to the airport, similar to an airport shuttle bus over here. www.alilaguna.it You want Linea Blu. The boat leaves San Marco at 3:40 and arrives at the airport at 4:59. If you are staying closer to Fondamenta Nove, the boat leaves there at 4:20. Current cost is 15 euro per person. If you want to stay somewhere within walking distance of the San Marco or San Zaccaria or the Arsenale or Fon Nove stops then I'd suggest Alilaguna. Price is only 3 euro more than the vaporetto and the bus.