Venice to Rome ?

Santa Lucia is the name of the train station on the island. Mestre is the name of the train station on the mainland. Buy your ticket for the train departing from which ever train station is closest to your hotel. Just make sure it is a direct Freccia train, and not one requiring changes. Since you have no interest in exploring Venice proper on your arrival day, you might as well stay in a hotel on the mainland- prices will likely be cheaper.

Is it possible to switch your plane ticket for a multi-city ticket where you arrive at one location and leave from a different city? You could fly into Rome and save yourselves a 4-hr train ride the next day, plus begin exploring Rome a little your arrival day.

If you really have no interest in walking around Venice, another option is to take the shuttle bus from the Venice airport to Padova. Then take the direct train from Padova to Rome. Padova would be less confusing to navigate than Venice, your hotel will probably be less expensive, and there’s some nice piazzas & the beautiful Scrovegni Chapel (interior) close to where you would want to stay. (It’s the same train as the one that originates from Venice - just get to sleep in an extra half hour.)

There are 2 main train companies with high-speed train in Italy, the state-run Trenitalia and the newer private company Italo.

https://www.trenitalia.com/en.html

https://www.italotreno.it/en

On either site, you wil save money by purchasing your tickets in advance on the website. For the journey from Venice to Rome, I suggest using Italo, as the website is very user-friendly. The direct trains (no changes on the way) take 4 hours. Since you most likely will not be able to check in to your Zrome hotel until 3 or 4 pm, you can make your travel day easier by booking a train departing Venezia Santa Lucia after noon. Spend your morning enjoying a walk in the quiet hours of Venice and a leisurely breakfast, then checkout at 11 am and make your way to the train station, finding a bakery or other source for picnic lunch for the train ride on the way.

If you are not interested in visiting Venice at all before heading to Rome then you might as well stay at Mestre, which is still part of Venice city but is closer to the airport and on the mainland. All trains departing from Venezia Santa Lucia wil also stop at Mestre before heading to whichever destination they are going. Last time I stayed in Mestre was almost 10 years ago. At the time I stayed at the Hotel Tritone, across from the station, which is now a Best Western Hotel. It is a modern upscale business hotel, with great US style air conditioning (i.e. you can set it as cold as you wish), in case you travel in summer. Restaurant choices are probably few, and many I saw were Asian food or pizza (but I was only driving by for a night to pick up my wife and her sister), but maybe the hotel has some good Italian food suggestions for you. Most Venetians live in Mestre so they must have some decent Italian restaurant for the locals.

I'm a bit curious why you decided to fly into Venice instead of Rome (into Rome; out of Venice) if not wanting to spend time there on the front end. That said, if you can't change your flights then I'll vote with Roberto to just spend the night near the Mestre station in prep for the next day's train trip. You'll likely save some $ on a hotel there versus the island.

What time is your flight expected to arrive?

Have you considered staying in Venice at the beginning of the trip, then going to Rome, and flying home from there? That will eliminate the "lost" time spent going back and forth. Venice is a great place to recover from jet lag. But it isn't the easiest to fly home from unless you stay by the airport.

Mestre hotels are usually quite a lot cheaper than hotels in Venice proper, and there won't be any bridges to cross with your luggage. There's bus service from the airport to Mestre, of course, but I don't know the details about that. I had a traveling companion on my most recent trip to Venice. We spent our last night in Mestre and took a taxi to the airport. I believe that cost about 35 euros (in September 2022). The bus would be cheaper.

I'd look for a hotel near the train station so you don't need to spend more money on a taxi the next morning. Booking.com has a lot of listings in Mestre, including a couple of Best Westerns (usually nice, business-class hotels in Europe) within a few blocks of the train station. The reviews on booking.com are typically reliable, because they are all from people who actually stayed at the property. You can identify good possibilities on that website and then try to book directly if you prefer to do so.

We got a really good price on tickets to fly in & out of Venice. We cannot switch the airport for either. We did consider exploring Venice at the beginning of the trip and then just getting back the night before we leave but I didn’t want any extra stress if we got caught up the last day and couldn’t make it back to Venice on time for our departure.

Understand about tickets locking you in. Only other thing you might consider is going straight to Rome from Venice and not spending the night in Venice. There is a school of thought that says "go to the destination farthest away on the initial travel day(s)". Just food for thought.

Continuing on past Venice is a good idea, because it can take quite a bit of time and trouble to get to one’s hotel in Venice—-often involving many bridges which can be a pain with your luggage. For example, even if you choose a hotel near Piazzale Roma where the airport bus stops, you will likely have to walk across at least one bridge, and the hotels in that area are quite pricy. We paid $350 for a very small double room in late September at the least expensive hotel I could find. And then to take the train the next morning, you would have to either negotiate the big modern bridge across the Grand Canal to reach the train station (it is pretty intimidating with luggage), or pay to ride the vaporetto one stop to cross the canal.

It is a lot of hassle for a hotel in Venice when you aren’t actually going to spend time there until later in your trip.

So instead, you could take the airport bus as far as Mestre, and board the train toward Rome from there. But instead of riding all the way Tom Rome, which takes almost 4 hours, leave the train at Ferrara, only 50 minutes away. This is a delightful small city, great for walking off jet lag in the nice pedestrian zone and piazza, with lots of shops and restaurants close by. And best of all, there is a nice little boutique hotel just a few steps from the Ferrara train station. The main piazza of the city is a pleasant 10-15 minute walk away on a pedestrian path.

https://boutiquehotelferrara.it/

You could be in your hotel in less time than it takes to reach a Venice hotel, pay less for your hotel, enjoy this pleasant and uncrowded city the rest of the afternoon, and have a shorter train ride to Rome the following day.

https://emiliaromagnaturismo.it/en/towns/ferrara

Thank you Lola for your response. I’m not the original poster but certainly appreciate your recommendation of Ferrera. I am thinking of a trip to Ravenna, and perhaps Ferrera, after hearing a similarly positive recommendation from someone else on the website. FANTASTIC folks sharing info!