Places to stay in Venice and Rome and other advice needed

July. Height of tourist travel month.

Expect massive crowds so the tip is pre book entry tickets to Colosseum in Rome.

Other tip is buy and read or at a minimum see if your library has the RS Rome travel guide. Lots of practical info to be culled from it.

Wear well worn comfortable shoes or sandals. Cobblestone and dirt paths can take a toll on ankles.

If female do forget scarf in case you enter a church and don’t wear short shorts. Dip a scarf into fountain to keep cool.

Loads of internet websites regarding hidden gems, restaurants, travel in Italy, etc.

Lastly on the header of the website on the left are horizontal lines. Click on them. The Search box will appear.

Its the weekend. Time for research.

Ciao

Unless you are very used to high humidity and heat, be absolutely sure to book all your accommodations with AC.
July can be brutal.

Who is "we" and what sort of accomodations are you looking for?
Hotels? apartments?

A good starting point is Booking.com- use the filters for price, location, amenities. AC will be a must in July.

We prefer the Pantheon/P Navonna area. From there you can walk most anywhere.
A favorite here on the forum is Hotel Smeraldo.
We stayed in Trastevere last trip for "something different" and honestly didn't enjoy it all that much. It's a crowded party scene from about 2 pm thru the night. We were not doing any major sightseeing so that was fine, but it is a longer walk to the sights from Trastevere.

Rome will be our last day and we will be taking the train to the
airport in the am of our last day so I'd like to have that in mind as

Really no need to worry about this and not necessary to stay near the train station. You can always take a cab to airport fixed rate 50 euros or a cab from your lodgings to Termini to catch the LE.
If "'we' is more than 2 people a cab is not much more than the train cost (15 euros each now I think?).

We will be flying into Venice to start our trip and from the best I
can tell, you can take a water taxi from the airport directly into
these areas but I could be wrong.
well.

There are multiple ways to get into Venice from VCE- water taxi, bus then vaporetto, alilaguna boats.
Once you have chosen your lodgings come back and get help on best way to get there.

Hi there -
In case you haven't found it yet, the search function at the top of the page can be very useful for finding threads with answers to questions same or similar to yours. For instance:

Type "restaurants, Rome" in the search box and hit "go"

On the next page, choose "Travel Forum" in the "Filter by type" box

On the page after that, choose how far back you want to search under "Filter by date": for this exercise, I'll choose "1 year and newer"

Ta-da: a list of threads about eating in Rome pops up!
https://search.ricksteves.com/?button=&date_range=1y&filter=Travel+Forum&query=Restaurants%2C+Rome&utf8=✓

Take some time to browse through them for good ideas. You can do the same for restaurants in Venice, and the same for hotels in either city. It's a good place to start. :O)

I would agree With Christine that the Pantheon/P Navonna area is about as central as you can get, and with ALL the respondents who've warned that it will be hot so AC is a MUST.

As well, it'll be smack in the middle of high season so advance tickets/booked tours to the most-visited attractions (e.g. Colosseum/forum/Palatine and Vatican Museums) will also be a MUST. And do visit the Forum and Palatine as well as the Colosseum: I'd recommend booking a MORNING tour(because of the heat) which includes all 3: here's some recommended companies for starters:

www.walksofitaly.com
www.througheternity.com
www.theromanguy.com

LOL, I don't think "hidden gems" is a thing, really. If made public, they're not really hidden, right? :O) They may also be less visited as they're not of interest to many beyond, say, those with a very keen interest in a very particular subject. It may also depend on how much TIME you have to explore beyond the more obvious attractions. How many days will you be in Rome and Venice?

When in Rome we stay here: https://charmechic.com/

It's lovely and has ice cold AC, which will be a must in Rome in July. It gets oppressively hot.

Venice - the ATVO/ACTV bus is easy, inexpensive, and will drop you at Piazzale Roma which is near the train station.

After buses and water taxis will cost a lot more. Hotel Abbazia is a restored monestary which is pretty cool. It's walkable form the Piazzale Roma (where you catch busses and taxis). Also Antiche Figure is another nice hotel. You can walk to the Piazzale Roma as well, but some steps over a bridge may be required. We managed it with no problem. We have found the bus is the easiest to/and from the airport. Both hotels are by the train station and you can pick up the vaporetto easily from there.

Thank you for the tips. The search feature on the forum is great. Never used it. Appreciate all the advice.

I’ll add to Kathy’ “search” instructions

Because there was so little travel in past 2 years or more due to pandemic you might need to filter a bit farther back.

Every time I arrived I Rome it was on the train and got economical hotels near Roma Termini. You can walk from there to coliseum in 15 minutes. There are also some good but not fancy restaurants around there. However, there are also a bunch of low life's - pickpockets in the train station, people running from the police in the station, and some menacing looking guys. I did not personally experience any trouble but I believe it and saw a YT video of a guy actually mugged by a group of youth. I am not sure where to tell you to go to be close to the station for your early train but to be in a nice area.

I have been to the same general area twice, and it worked out. If you can walk a bit - you can do as we did - walked to Roman ruins, to the Fascist monument, the Trevi fountain, the Spanish Steps, the Pantheon, a few nice squares with fountains, and back. So it's do-able.

We were in Venice last July and stayed at Suites alla Maddalena. We had no problem getting away from crowds, all you had to do was walk a few blocks off. Lots of cafes away from the masses on side canals. It had adequate AC.

https://www.camariele.com/suites-alla-maddalena/

We were also in Rome, stayed in an AirBnb. It was a block off of Pizza Navona.

https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/2610082?check_in=2023-01-17&check_out=2023-01-22&guests=1&adults=6&s=67&unique_share_id=b99a147f-91de-4246-9537-03f7243ecb87

Both were great values, I thought. We have a family of four and it was hard to find hotel rooms that would sleep all of us in the same room. My sons are old enough to not be considered children but not old enough to be in their own room.