Question - Venice Breakfast

Lamont

Breakfast in Italy rarely consists on anything other than coffee, juice and some form of pastry. So any place that you see that has an espresso machine will usually be open for breakfast. If it is a coffee bar, you'll order a coffee or juice and either grab or point to a pastry and you're good to go. If a bakery or pastry shop you'll have more baked goods selection but generally no coffee. A sit down eggs, meat, bread American or British style breakfast is very hard to come by.

Ron is right. You'll also find that Italians usually stand at the bar counter and quickly down a cappuccino or espresso and maybe some sort of pastry.

Brek, near the train station on the Lista di Spagna - has a variety of breakfasts beginning quite early in the morning.

They don't eat much breakfast in Italy. Brek, near the train station, probably would be a good place but it is a ways from St. Mark's. Have never had breakfast at Brek but our family ate lunch at a Brek in Padova last summer and it was actually quite good.

Thanks for the info. Guidebooks usually don't list as many breakfast choices, compared to lunch and dinner, and I was hoping to locate a few places ahead of time. Rick Steves says that Calle Delle Rasse (just to the east of San Marcos Square) is lined with sandwich bars that open at 7:00 am. Would anyone know if these places served pastries in the mornings? Thanks again for any help.

The reason that many Italians stand at the bar to eat pastry and drink cappuccino is because many times it's twice as expensive to sit at a table!

Most bars open in the morning will serve pastries in addition to the little sandwiches called tramezzi.

In the Cinque Terre area, you buy your coffee and brioche at the bar and then, it you want, sit down inside or outside without extra charge. Italians tend to be very quick about their coffee drinking, compared with most Americans. In Venice, at a neighborhood bar serving mostly Italians, I had the same experience of sitting at a table with my cappuccino for no extra charge. If you are in a heavily touristed area, like the Rialto Bridge area, there may be a two-tier price system. So, find a neighborhood bar and learn the Italian word for what you want.

A hearty American/English breakfast is difficult to find anywhere in Italy, but I noticed a place that advertised omelets on Lista di Spana, at the foot of the bridge closest to the train station. We noted it, but never ate there, as we tended to have breakfast in our apartment in a more leisurely manner.

Good luck, and have a great time in Venice.