Venice - is a 2 nights stay enough to enjoy the City?

That is the exact amount of time I spent in Venice on my first trip there. You don't mention where else you are going, so it's hard to say if you're giving too much time to this one place or not enough.

Either way, it's a lovely first taste of the city. Prepare for daytime crowds and possible heat. Hope you have a lovely time!

Thanks for the reply. We’re also going to Florence and Rome with possible day trips to other cities in Tuscany.

is a 2 nights stay enough to enjoy the City?

Yes--- just realize there will be more to see/do on the next trip.

2 nights is better than 1 night, but not as good as 3 nights. I guess I would say, the shorter the time, perhaps the more negative would be your opinion, since it is crowded during the day, even in the middle of winter. But the place grows on you. The sense of history is overwhelming, and where else can you go where the city buses are boats. Walk around the neighborhoods on a morning and witness how the garbage is collected, or how a supermarket gets its goods. Ride the vaporetti and there is the UPS boat, and there is the Fedex boat. Look at a print from the 16th century, and look at the same scene now and all the buildings are exactly the same. The only boats tearing around at high speed (think of "The Italian Job") are the ambulance boats.

The more time you give it, the more you will enjoy it, but if 2 nights is all you got, then so be it.

My husband and I are going to Venice in Sept. for 2 days in the last leg of our vacation....We are taking the train from Austria through the Brenner Pass.

We plan just to walk and walk and walk...We have no specific tours in mind, nothing we have to do at a specific time...just enjoy. Now, that's not to say if someone has a "must see" suggestion we would not do it!
If you go to cruisetimetable.com and input your dates, it tells you if cruise ships are docking those days. We have 1 day with no cruise ships so we are hoping the crowds won t be quite as bad!

It would be nice if there were a decent, easy to use and accurate predictor of cruise crowds there and in the Cinque Terre towns. Unfortunately the place that the previous poster mentioned is a domain for sale so unusable.

I'm heading back to Venice for the umpty umpth time this summer and thought it might be nice to be able to see the cruise ships flow but it will have to be a different app or webpage.

I agree completely with Sam above that 2 nights is better than 1, but much less good than three. You will only get the thinnest of overviews and won't have time to get to the juicy untrammeled bits of the town nor out to the islands with only one full day there. I know that you say three days, but isn't day one the day you arrive (from where? will you have jetlag? what time do you arrive? by train or plane?) and day three the day you leave (same questions, really), so it is one full day, two evenings and nights and two part days?

I agree with the "3 night"group, Venice is simply magical! I've been all over Europe and Venice has so much to see and experience that is unique. If you have time be sure to go to some of the islands in the lagoon, I enjoyed Murano and Burano. St. Marks Squre at night is awesome, and be sure to take a gondola ride (yes it is touristy) but if you do it toward sunset the cruise ship folks are gone and the city is quiet and beautiful.

If you can fit 1 more night (3 total) then do that. You absolutely will be glad you did.

Two nights will give you enough time to see the cathedral, Dolce Palace and the Rialto bridge without being rushed. You can add trips in the grand canal if you want. We did 3 nights but we went to Murano & Burano one day. Have fun.

I'd really recommend getting up early one morning and heading to Rialto/St Marks Sq - then you can enjoy them without being annoyed by the hundreds of other people. Head out at 7am for an hour or two, watch the city wake up, then go back to your room and enjoy breakfast - then head back out and get annoyed at the crowds.

I think 3 nights is perfect - but our first visit, we only had 1 night - it was enough to make me fall in love and we've since returned 3 more times (I think about 10 nights total) and have plans to go back again for another 3 or 4 nights.

If you do decide you want to see the Doge's Palace, don't do what we did our first visit - which was stand in line for over an hour of our precious 30-ish hrs in the city. You can buy a combo ticket at the Correr Museum (interesting in it's own right) nearby and waltz past those suckers standing in the regular line (which we did on our 2nd visit).

If you want to go up one of the clock towers (campanile) - don't go up St Mark's Campanile - head across the lagoon to San Giorgio - not only will there most likely be no line (we stood in line probably 45 min to get up SM campanile - but we were up there when the bells started ringing only a couple feet above our heads - that was awesome...and really really loud), but it's cheaper, and you can see all of SM Sq, the Bridge of Sighs.

And even if the line into San Marco looks horrendous - it moves relatively quick. We were about 2/3rds of the way across SMS in our line and it took 20 min to get to the door - not too bad, since it looked like it would take an hour.

Thank you all for the awesome tips and suggestions!!

Especially in the heat and crowds of August, a 3rd night is a good idea. You won't be able to do much in the peak of the heat. Early mornings and evenings will be your best touring times. Get up early (you'll be jetlagged so that should not be so hard) and walk around in the early hours. We always head out at 6:00 am for a couple of hours of wandering before breakfast, or even eat our breakfast in a bar, like Italians, while we are wandering. Then when you go back out later in the morning, you'll see the crowds descend. Take a pausa in the afternoon, after lunch, during the hot hours, or find a cool museum to tour.

Evenings are magical if you get away from the main paths between San Marco and Rialto.

You mention 2 nights so 3 days: Really your arrival day will not allow for much activity. You'll be tired and by the time you check in, shower, have a little lunch, it will be hot out and you will feel drained. You'll have the evening, but you will want to crash by 9:00 pm. The next day is your only full day, as you will no doubt have to check out of your lodging before noon on departure day, so not much chance of doing anything other than that early morning walk. And then you need to be off and do the whole transfer/check-in/get-oriented thing in the next city.

There are very few places I would recommend only a 2-night stay.

Hello all. It looks like 3 is the magic number for Venice. Thank you all for the tips! If you have more keep them coming. I appreciate all your suggestions as it is going to be my family’s first time there.

My absolute favorite memory of Venice was standing on the Accademia bridge at dusk, watching a flotilla of at least a dozen gondolas coming up the Grand Canal from San Marco, to the music of Santa Lucia (an accordion player and singer were in the first gondola). It was such a "Venice" moment and a great photo op. I don't know if they do this daily; you could probably walk down to the gondola stand near San Marco in the late afternoon, and ask if they're assembling a group of gondolas for that day, and what time they will begin the journey.

Regarding cruise ship timetables -- I always use ports.cruisett.com. But I can't really vouch for its accuracy. I would love to know if anyone -- Nigel? -- has any information about this website.

Our first visit was for six nights, nowhere near enough. Since then, we have returned half a dozen times, about eight months in total. We are captivated by the second and third ranked attractions, the Tre Ochi photo museum, the Biennales (both art and architecture), doing a kayak tour a couple of times, Torcello, Certosa, the hospital library, the list goes on.

It all depends on whether Venice grabs you.

As been suggested on many posts in the past, get off the main streets and keep away from the tourist spots during the day. Walk everywhere and use the back streets, usually just one block away. Or as Rick says get lost in Venice...The side of the Grand Canal away from San Marco etc. tends to be less crowded. Here you will find the gondola builders’ workshops, picturesque and in use for hundreds of years, on a small side canal. During a hot and humid day I spent an hour in Santa Maria Della Salute surrounded by works of art by Tinterreto and Titian and the organist playing. Get hold of a copy of Brunetti Walks by Donna Leon. She writes mystery novels set in Venice and her cop, Brunetti walks every where and these walks have been compiled into a useful guide for exploring the back streets of Venice. In fact, I’d recommend her books just to get a good feel for the city from an author who has lived there for many years.

Visit the Guggenheim Museum, not just for the artwork but for the pleasant gardens and the cafe that serves pleasant lunches. I find that the modern art displayed at there is rather refreshing after all the Renaissance material in the other museums.

As been suggested on many posts in the past, get off the main streets and keep away from the tourist spots during the day. Walk everywhere and use the back streets, usually just one block away. Or as Rick says get lost in Venice...The side of the Grand Canal away from San Marco etc. tends to be less crowded. Here you will find the gondola builders’ workshops, picturesque and in use for hundreds of years, on a small side canal. During a hot and humid day I spent an hour in Santa Maria Della Salute surrounded by works of art by Tinterreto and Titian and the organist playing. Get hold of a copy of Brunetti Walks by Donna Leon. She writes mystery novels set in Venice and her cop, Brunetti walks every where and these walks have been compiled into a useful guide for exploring the back streets of Venice. In fact, I’d recommend her books just to get a good feel for the city from an author who has lived there for many years.

Visit the Guggenheim Museum, not just for the artwork but for the pleasant gardens and the cafe that serves pleasant lunches. I find that the modern art displayed at there is rather refreshing after all the Renaissance material in the other museums.

Wow! Again, thank you all for these tips and suggestions. We’re definitely staying 3 nights in Venice.

Glad you’re considering extra time in Venice; it’s our favorite European city!

We love just wandering around the city and purposely getting lost. On our last trip, I reserved the clock tower tour on-line, and we really enjoyed it. The clock tower is located in San Marco near the Cathedral and opposite the Camponile tower. The tour is a small group, and we stopped at each level of the building to hear and/ or see historical aspects of the clock and Venice’s history. The view from the top was beautiful. If I remember correctly, the ticket included the Correr Museum, also.

Quite a lot of Donna Leon's books have been filmed in German, with the location photography done in Venice. The films exist with English subtitles; they've been shown on US TV by the MHz network. Perhaps they are available from a source you have access to, like Netflix.

The Katharine Hepburn film, Summertime, has nice Venetian exteriors, as I recall, though you'll have a hard time finding it as uncrowded as it probably looks in that film!

Cruise ships docking in Venice.

http://crew-center.com/venice-italy-cruise-port-schedule-august-december-2018

Following! We're doing 2 nights 3 days in March, but the first day should be a FULL day as we're arriving on the overnight train from Vienna.

Another novel set in Venice is “The Venetian Game” by Phil Jones. Also “Vengeance in Venice”, to be published in a couple of months. Phil’s a resident in Venice, so there is a lot of local colour.

Read what Rick Steves writes about Venice (with care) and consider avoiding it altogether. You might have more fun in Bolzano, Verona, or Padova, and experience less aggravation.

One of my favorite Venice memories is riding the vaporetto along the Grand Canal in the evening with my husband, watching the lights from the buildings shining off the water -- very romantic!!

That's really helpful, gerri