Finishing up plans for an early June 2-week trip to Italy. We depart Italy from Venice and will have 2 days/3 nights in the area. No car. Might do a brief vaporetto ride thru Venice (been there several times before).
Looking for a b&b/hotel convenient to VCE (at least for the final night) and public transportation. Do you have a favorite?
Ideas for activities and towns worth a visit are welcome. We've been to Padua and Ravenna. Thinking Treviso may be worth a day?
Thank you!
Well, Treviso is lovely and interesting, while Mestre (from what I've read on this forum) is not. We had a car while staying in Treviso for 6 nights, so we just drove to the airport on the morning of our flight home --- I wonder if you could arrange for a taxi. It's at least an hour by public transportation, with one change, but not even half an hour by car. Sometimes there is a shuttle bus from the Treviso train station to VCE. We stayed in an apartment in the oldest part of the town, so I don't know about hotels or B&Bs.
On our Veneto trip, we did greatly enjoy going up and down the grand canal on our way to Chioggia and back (I do not recommend that town although we had a good lunch there) --- it was fun even though we've spent 2 weeks in Venice on previous trips. Also appalling to see the crowds at San Marco and Rialto --- we were glad we were just breezing by them on the water!
Treviso has canals and bridges, plenty of great places to eat, frescoed Venetian-style buildings, old city walls, interesting small churches and museums, a fish market on an island, some cool wire mesh art installations on some of the walls of the buildings, and many pedestrian-only streets and porticoed sidewalks. If there were tourists there, they were Italian.
Treviso is a place I'm looking forward to visiting, whereas Mestre's advantage is almost (but not quite) totally limited to its proximity to Venice itself and to the airport. At least into the city (I haven't checked on VCE), transportation from Mestre is both very frequent and fast. Rick mentions that from some Mestre hotels the bus is faster than walking to the train station and hopping on a train, so I think it's worth taking a look at precise hotel locations.
There is a new tourist attraction in Mestre I learned about from the 2021 edition of the Lonely Planet guidebook: Il Museo M9 at Via Pascoli 11. The book describes it as a multimedia museum (do not expect artifacts) telling the story of Italy in the 20th century through interactive exhibits involving film, photography, audio and virtual reality. It covers demographics, food, war, politics, crime and popular culture. LP calls it absorbing. Current hours are Wed-Fri 10 AM to 6 PM and Sat-Sun 10 AM to 7 PM. Entry costs €10 for non-senior adults. Here's the museum's website: https://www.m9museum.it/en/
Back on the subject of lodging: Rick mentions the town of Marghera as a possibility. It's heavily used by bus tours (which I realize is not a recommendation). As I understand it, if you go out the back side of the Venice-Mestre train station, you're in Marghera. It might be worth using Google Maps to walk the streets in the immediate vicinity of both sides of the Mestre station to see what you think. One thing about that area is that there are a lot of fairly new hotels that have both elevators and air conditioning.
How do you feel about Quarto d'Altino?
Nice atmosphere but not much old in the town.
A country hotel which I have used several times in the past is right on the River Sile, but it has changed hands (or name) and I haven't been there for 2 years for obvious reasons. It needs a car, yours, theirs or taxi to get to the Quarto d'Altino station which goes straight in to Vce. Santa Lucia, convenient with a taxi to airport. It was called Villa Odino. Part of a reply to an email to them a couple of years ago reads, "We are glad to inform you that Borgo cà dei Sospiri is the same hotel as Villa Odino, we have just changed the name but we are the same family." So I'd likely use them again.
Or right at the Quarto d'Altino station is a relatively formulaic Crowne Plaza - I have stayed there and in your circumstances would again. I'm sure it would be easy to taxi to the airport.
Going out of Venice the train which stops at Quarto d'Altino has Treviso as its final destination. It is a Regionale which means tickets are cheap and easy, but also means it stops along the way. Without checking, my memory is that it only stops at Mestre and Vce. Santa Lucia from Quarto d'Altino - it may have had one more stop - don't remember. I don't know how many stops to Treviso... when I wander around the Veneto and Friuli I have always gone west.
Thanks for the ideas!
Treviso looks like it will be a nice place to stay for a couple nights.
Now we could really use b&b/hotel and restaurant recommendations - all for easy walking.
Anyone take a cooking class there? Or food tour?
(Is there a best area of town to position ourselves?)
Might have to get to Mestre for the M9 Museum!
Here's some of the wire mesh art of Mario Martinelli in Treviso: https://www.mariomartinelli.it/en/ombre-rete/
We stayed about 500 feet from the island fish market and 100 feet from the very interesting civic museum: https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/23622993?guests=1&adults=1&s=67&unique_share_id=0b70c008-1a31-4f47-89ed-bb4541a9eccf
Loved that neighborhood, but there are lots of nice areas in the old part of town.
I only have a list we made before the trip of which restaurants we thought about eating at, not which ones we tried or liked. That does not seem very helpful for you.
We stayed in two places very close to the Venice airport and both were great. We had a car and did a day trip to Treviso (liked it) and Asolo (really pretty!). Another day, the owner dropped us off at the bus stop and we took a day trip to Venice, about 20 minutes away. I’m pretty sure both would provide airport transportation. I believe they were called Agriturismo Il Melograno and Agriturismo Ca’Beatrice. But there are others. We were surprised how rural the area was, given how close we were to Venice.
