Visiting Venice- in or out of town?

During the day Venice has rivers of people flowing from the ships to St. Marks. Early in the morning and in the evening they disappear. Staying in Venice and walking early was worth it, a very magical place.

I just looked at the transportation using Google maps. You can save the money and take the bus, but remember, the bus just takes you to the train station. From there you'll need the vaporetto (or a longish walk) to get to most of the sights.

The most magical time of day for me is before sunrise, riding the vaporetto on the Grand Canal in the pre-dawn mists, then watching the sun rise over the lagoon from a deserted Piazza San Marco, before heading back to my hotel for a shower and breakfast to start my sightseeing day. If you want to have a similar experience, you are in for a really really long day and buying breakfast at a cafe. With such a long round-trip to Compolto, you aren't going to be able to pop back to your place for lunch, for a rest at mid-day or before dinner. If you're planning on having dinner at your apartment, are you going to want to then spend close to an hour to go back to the Piazza to hear the dueling bands? How late do the buses run to go back to Campolto? How early do they start? And how tired are you going to be?

So, yes, it is WELL worth the extra bucks to stay in the heart of Venice. Look around at the areas (sestieri) like the Dorsoduro and (perhaps) Cannaregio. They are usually cheaper and parts of them are quite near the Piazza and other sights.

I agree completely with Chani. Venice is the one city where I would splurge (even a budget hotel in Venice is a splurge for me), just to have the city more or less to myself in the early morning or late afternoon/evening. Buy the vaporetto pass, which will save you money if you are staying two nights or more (they are sold by hours and begin with the first validation, validate on every ride). Even if you decide to stay outside of Venice, you should get the vaporetto pass for a long daytrip.

As for cooking, even supermarket or market food is expensive in Venice (almost everything has to be brought in from elsewhere), so I don't know how much you would save by shopping, cooking, and throwing away what you don't use. Find a hotel that includes breakfast in the price. I stayed at Locanda Ca' San Marcuolo last May, it shows 140 euro for a double with breakfast for June 2015 (canal view).

If you decide to stay outside of town, I would suggest Padova, which has many interesting sights on its own and is only 30 minutes from Venice.

That's what I needed to hear, thank you! We'll stay in Venice!

I'm having a hard time finding what I want/can afford in Steve's book so I've been checking other sources. When I went to AirBNB and specified Venice, it gave me lots of places 30-40 minutes outside of Venice. Is there a way to narrow the search request to inside the city?
Suggestions for other housing sites? I've heard VRBO, HomeAway, and FlipKey. Whatever you suggest, any tips you can offer for how to narrow the search per note above would be most appreciated.

Yep - stay on Venice Island. It's worth it just to see all of those frazzled daytrippers as they depart and leave the city in a calm and peaceful state...as it should be seen. To look at those daytrippers and think - "they REALLY don't know what they're missing".

When you are searching in airbnb - use the map option. When you put in your dates and the listings come up on the right is a map - just zoom in on the map to Venice and make sure you have 'search when I move the map' checked. This is assuming you are on a desktop. I'm assuming the map search is also available on the app (I use both). You can also use the pricing filters, and filter for things like wifi/laundry/ac/heat/etc.

Not sure your rate but on our last stay in Venice, we stayed at this lovely quiet little apartment just a few minutes walk to Rialto. restaurants (we enjoyed All Amarone wine bar!) , bank machine and grocery all very close by.

https://www.airbnb.ca/rooms/1683211

Rate is pretty good ($140 Canadian a night, so prob about $110 US since you guys have the exchange rate advantage right now). She's already fairly booked so depends on when you are going.

Our other three trips to Venice we stayed at this B&B

http://alcampaniel.tripod.com/

And yes, please stay in Venice proper. The last trip me and my mom got up and went out at 7am while hubby slept...(I did this the trip before as well)....St Mark's Sq is so amazing at that time of morning - practically empty. The sun coming up over the canal...I want to go back so bad!

Glad to see you're making the right decision. Staying outside the historic center of Venice would be a major mistake.

Booking.com and other sites let you filter by budget, type of accommodation, and will pinpoint your choices on a map.

Fantastic information everyone, thank you. Can any of you pass along emails or websites of places that you think might be a good fit? Nicole had two good suggestions but so far I'm striking out. We're in the $80-120 US dollars price range. A kitchen would be ideal but not critical.

Nicole, do you have an email address (or website) for Yanet, the woman with the Venice apartment you stayed with last time? You gave me an AirBNB link. Her apartment is booked but she's trying to give me information about an alternative, and AirBNB is blocking emails and websites in our correspondence.

My wife and I stayed at Ai Tagliapietra B&B last May at a cost of 100 Euro per night. A great place and the location is very good.

Gosh, that sounds good. Was it a quiet neighborhood? Were walls insulated for sound from the other guests?

If you are going to Venice, be in Venice. The magic times are dawn and dusk before the day trippers descend. Don't be one of those daytrippers. Of all the places I have visited Venice is one of the places I am most glad to have been in the center to enjoy what is beautiful about Venice.

Ah - airbnb is a bugger like that - they don't want people doing transactions on the side...I looked back thru our correspondence and I see a lot of (website hidden) things peppered thru our messages when she was trying to send me a phone number. One way she could get around you getting her email (or you sending her your email) would be if she does something like spell it out....

eg

emailaddress AT (instead of using the @ symbol) whichever company dot (instead of using the '.') com
example ...my very old email address from years ago was:
[email protected] (wow, that is an oldie - don't ask, hubby is a Star Trek fan) so I would type it out :

starbasenova

AT fox

dot nstn

dot ca

Good luck! I know when we booked for our trip in mid-Sept, I booked it in April by the looks of it! And the reason a kitchen is nice - even if you aren't going to be making meals, it's nice to have your breakfast fixings or a fridge to keep some snacks in (they have nice yogurt over there!)...or a little spot to prepare a hot drinks (if you are like my mom and hubby and ONLY like American style coffee and can't get thru the morning without one...no, cappuccino or espresso won't do!)

Take a look at these. Many below your $120 mark.

http://www.cross-pollinate.com/venice/p/1/1426040761636

Thanks again Niccole. Nice post Gerri.

At Ai Tagliapietra B&B I can not say if the walls were insulated but we never did hear any of the other guests. The street outside was noisy until about 10--11pm. I like open windows and can not say definitely how good shut windows were in stopping the noise. We were on a 30 day trip and stayed at quite a few B&Bs. All I can say if we go back to Venice we stay there.

Try the Santa Margherita Guest House I stayed there in February and it was clean, pleasant and well-located. The room included an electric kettle and a mini-fridge. The kitchen was available all the time - microwave, utensils, etc.