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Venice planning and cruise ship dates

Posted by (California USA) on

I probably shouldn’t have looked but I did. We are going to be in Venice for 5 nights beginning on a Friday night in July. I checked the cruise ship schedule for Venice and discovered that there will be 7-8 cruise ships in Venice on Saturday and Sunday. The numbers are considerably lower (1-3) for the remaining days of our visit.

I have no experience with this number of cruise ships and excursions they plan for their guests. I’m trying to figure our our strategy for going to Murano/Burano, a gondola lesson for the granddaughters, and going by train to Verona for the day. I’m thinking that all three of these options might be overtaken by the Saturday-Sunday influx of visitors.

I will probably book the gondola lesson now for Saturday or Sunday as there are slots open. I can’t decide about the other potentially crowded weekend day. Go to even smaller islands with the cruise trippers? Get out of Venice and go to Verona?

Also if it says the cruise timetable is 8:00-17:00 does that mean that the 8 cruise ships’s passengers will get back onboard by 17:00 giving a less crowded feel to the island?

We’ve been to Venice before and are staying in Cannaregio again, a bit out of the fray where we can wander the back “roads”.

Any strategy about staying in Venice or escaping for a day by train or boat when you know that there will be an extra 20,000+ day trippers in town?

Posted by
6713 posts

My experience is limited but I'd suggest going to Verona on one of those weekend days. The cruise folks won't be taking trains out of Venice, after all. And might as well go ahead and plan the gondola lesson for the other weekend day since it's available. Likewise, not many cruise people will be doing that, and most likely it will happen someplace well away from the Grand Canal.

Cannareggio is a good choice, well away from San Marco and the main routes between it and the cruise terminal. My observation was that the biggest crowds are around Rialto and San Marco, which you could avoid during the main part of the day.

What time "all aboard" happens is up each cruise line. If you know the names of the ships, you can look on those lines' websites and see what times they set for arrival and departure. Typically passengers must be on board half an hour before departure, and most will leave the central areas in plenty of time to get there. So if departure is 17:00 you can expect that ship's passengers to be mostly aboard, or on their way back, by 16:00. Good luck!

Posted by
3300 posts

You could also consider day trips to Padova, Vicenza or Treviso all of which are short train journeys from Venezia. If you feel adventurous, hop a train to Trieste.

Posted by
5267 posts

With regard to a strategy for Murano and Burano, go as early as possible like (7:30 or 8:00) in the morning. You should be able to have a good experience there before the cruiser start to arrive. But if the cruise lines are offering excursions to the islands then who really knows. On the other hand, you might want to take a day trip out of town on at least one of the busiest days and just haunt the back streets on the other day.

Posted by
2502 posts

I've done a lesson with RowVenice, and we started up in the northern edge of Cannaregio, close to the Maddona dell'Orto church. We stayed in the canals of northern Cannaregio, a quiet, very sparsely touristed area. Normally, we would have headed north into the lagoon, but it was really choppy that day, so we didn't.

Posted by
4127 posts

Thanks all! Today I booked the RowVenice class for them for the first busy day we are there. We may go to Lido in the afternoon if the weather is nice so they can swim. On the second busy cruise ship day we’ll go by train to a nearby town (thanks for the suggestions) during the middle of the day.

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