Venice Sightseeing

I can address the gondola ride. Yes, get off beaten path and you can negotiate length of ride and price with the gondaleer. Make sure you agree on price and time before you leave.

Take a gondola during the day, otherwise the buildings will be too dark to see.

Rick's book has tips for avoiding lines at St. Marks. That is what we did to bypass a large line at St. Marks.

Here are my favorites, the Doge's Palace and St. Marks church are to be done first in the morning. Check about aqua alta. I am not sure it will be occuring when you are there. It is flooding, for which they have erected walkways and raised the walkways. Just find out when it is and hit the low areas at low tide.

St. Marks Cathederal, Doge's Palace, Friar Church, Rialto Bridge, Morning Fish Market near the Rialto, a trip up and down the Grand Canal. Gondola Ride in the day, at night, you don't see the beautiful buildings. Get lost! Skip the Gugenheim Museum, it is filled with Modern Art, which is not why I came to Venice.

Try a chichetti crawl by visiting different places. Each chichetti pub has their specialties, fried, sandwiches, etc. My favorite is Osteria al Portego. https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g187870-d1034685-Reviews-Osteria_al_Portego-Venice_Veneto.html Their Tiramisu is amazing!

About the gondola ride, I think the night-time ride is wonderful. When I took the Rick Steves Venice tour, they took us on a night one, and a couple of years ago I went at night with friends. You wind your way through narrow canals, that are virtually deserted. Yes, you can't see the buildings as clearly as in the daytime, but they are dark and romantic (with lit up interiors you can peek into), and a little creepy. I would highly recommend it.
We caught a gondola away from St. Marks, the gondolier quoted a price and when we hesitated a bit, he said it would be a very long one, he would take us by famous houses of Casanova & Marco Polo, and he would take us under the Rialto Bridge (which was further than we went on the RS tour), so I knew it was a pretty good deal.
Wow, I disagree with previous poster about the Guggenheim -- the building, view of the grand canal from the open front porch and the art is fantastic -- a beautiful mix of old and modern.

We've taken a gondola during the evening and found that there was plenty of lighting to see the buildings. If fact the ambiance was really heightened with the evening lighting.

I agree with BG about a night-time gondola ride. Much more enjoyable than daytime imo. During the day the boat traffic is crazy. At night, it's calm, beautiful, romantic and very atmospheric... much easier to imagine it back in the day. As TC said, everything is well lit and seeing into windows adds an extra bonus.
We just found a lone gondola/gondalier on a back canal, asked price, thought it was reasonable and went. This was height of summer.

I would not visit San Marco first thing in the morning as suggested above. Book a "skip the line" visit and go between 11am and noon when the mosaics are illuminated.

http://www.basilicasanmarco.it/informazioni-per-i-turisti/orari-di-apertura/?lang=en

I also recommend booking the Secret Itineraries tour of the Doges Palace. They take you into areas not open to the general public, and explain everything. Afterward you are free to explore the rest of the palace on your own.

We were in Venice in July 2015 and enjoyed the Secret itineraries tour at the Doges very much! Book for early in the morning if you can. All you need to do to skip the line at the Basilica is to buy your entry ahead of time. I stood in the Piazza on my smart phone, bought the tickets, and then showed them on my phone at the entrance. It was probably late morning - after the Secret Itineraries tour. Generally, I would advise seeing what you want to see around the Piazza quickly and the moving on to other areas. The rest of Venice (except near Rialto) tends to be quiet and is much more enchanting! An alternative to a gondola ride and a GREAT way to see the City and learn about it is to take rowing lessons from Row Venice. We did a "cicchetti" tour and had really wonderful time - it was a highlight of our two weeks in Italy.

Yes, we found that gondola rides were pretty much fixed-price. You are also along the right track to get off the beaten path so find a gondolier.

Doge's Palace and the Basilica are quite busy on the weekends - even in the shoulder seasons. You should book advance reservations to St Marc's on-line. There is a small convenience fee to book your reservation on-line but it's only a euro or so per ticket. Otherwise, the wait just to receive an entrance time can be quite long. Also, you can't take backpacks or large bags into the Basilica - they must be checked (my Rick Steve's Civita shoulder bag was fine but similarly-sized backpacks were turned away). In my opinion, the best time to visit is 1130-1230 when the interior is fully lighted.

The waterbus (vaporetto) stations at Ferrovia (train station) and St Marc's are REALLY busy particularly morning and late afternoon. I recommend you familiarize yourself with the routes and stops and use alternate stops whenever possible. Of course, if you are able-bodied and have no problems with stair-steps (many-many stair-steps) at bridges, you can walk across the islands faster than taking a waterbus.

One of my favorite memories in Venice is a night-time vaporetto ride down the Grand Canal. You can see all the lighted buildings and it's so peaceful. There was only one other person on the vaporetto ... he said it was like the best Disneyland ride ever.

The gondoliers generally do NOT negotiate prices because they have a monopoly. (That's another reason not to tip them.) But it's true that you'll get a more personalized experience if you hop on a gondola down one of the smaller side canals, on one of the smaller piazzas or near one of the smaller bridges. The ones in St. Mark's Square treat you a lot like cattle.

Even though March is not high season, rumor has it that nearly every day of the year there are enormous cruise ships in Venice. The passengers disembark and they too want to see the same sites that you want to see. You might want to Google something like Venice cruise ship calendar or port of Venice cruise ship schedule.

I hate hate hate standing in line so I would book a skip the line ticket. And, just thought I would mention that my whole family thought the free Rick Steves audio tour of St. Marks worthwhile.

Enjoy every minute of your trip!

Here's a link to cruise ships scheduled in ports worldwide. You can click in the country, then the port you are interested in.

http://ports.cruisett.com/

This shows you which dates which ships are in port, so you can get an idea of how large the boat is and how many passengers will be spilling forth from within its bowels.
Unfortunately, March 2017 is not currently showing.

However, Looking at March 2016, the days cruise ships were in port in Venice were few and I don't know that one year's time would be greatly different.
I was in Venice in March 2015 and I did not notice any great influx of people. Or maybe my idea of a huge crowd is much larger than other people's.
I don't know if any ships were in port, as I had not yet discovered this schedule/chart.

Note Sasha's recommendation to see the mosaics at San Marco. When I was there they were floodlit from 11.30-12.30. Go to the museum in the basilica - it gives you close-up views of the mosaics and access to the balcony for views of the Piazza.

Another way to see the Basilica lighted, that might work with your time frame in Venice is to attend on of the Sunday masses (if that would interest you). We did that in early October, and it worked out great time wise, then we immediately went upstairs to the museum (and out on the balcony overlooking the square) afterwards. Before and then immediately after mass we walked around the Basilica to view features up close. Mass had a good crowd, but there were still a few seats that continued to be filled during the service.

On the next day (a Monday morning) we arrived at Doge's Palace and had a very short wait, maybe 15 minutes (without advance tickets). My husband absolutely LOVED the displays in Doge's Palace.

I was surprised that the main square was not more packed with people. The only place we found crowds somewhat unpleasant was along the main waterfront. Our hotel, Hotel Le Isole, was beautifully situated just a few minutes away from the main square, yet on a quiet small canal......best of both worlds. Our bathroom was very small, but we enjoyed a room with a small balcony overlooking the small canal, and a full window overlooking the other approach on the canal. Just a few minutes to great restaurants, etc.

But, that was early October, not late March.

We did not purchase advance tickets to sights, as we did not know how jet-lagged we would be. I'm glad we remained flexible.

We LOVED the vaparetto cruise of the Grand Canal (as recommended in Rick Steves' guidebook), and we took the advice to just wait for a vaparetto with seats in front of the wheelhouse, which offered incredible views. The front desk person at our hotel recommended a route for us to take that allowed us to enjoy a big loop, and we otherwise would not have known to take that particular route on the varparetto. We purchased tickets at the manned ticket office at the dock.

If we had more time (we only had our arrival day and then a 2/3 of a day before we had to board the SeaCloud), we would have climbed the bell tower (but there was quite a wait for it when we exited Doge's Palace).

When you arrive in Venice, we recommend taking the water taxi from the airport (we booked a shared water taxi on the spot to save a few $s). My husband considers the journey into Venice on the water taxi one of the highlights of the trip!