A latterday Katherine Hepburn. Well, just be careful around canals.

I recommend the La Cusina, restaurant of the Westin Europa and Regina hotel directly on the Grand Canal with views across to the Santa Maria della Salute church. From your hotel on campo S. Maria d. Giglio, all you need do is get yourself through calle de Ostreghe to the large shopping street of calle larga XXII Marzo and look for the signs for Europa and Regina painted right on the street. They have in and outside seating and well-regarded dining. Even if you don't go for dinner, stop by, find your way into the bar (the hotel is very big), observe the beauty of the place on your way in, and find the outdoor platform to have a glass of champagn on the floating deck, view the Saltue church and hear the gondolieri singing and playing their accordians alongside. Heavenly--and very adventurous!

Besides your first dinner, I highly recommend a lunch in the courtyard of Corte Sconda. The place is prettiest in dappled sunshine, and it is difficult to find, so I don't recommend it for your first dinner in Venice. But you'll have better luck finding it --off the Riva degli Schiavoni--in the daytime. Just keep asking folks until you get there. Their seafood appetizer extravaganza of many different tastes is fantastic and maybe all you'll need for lunch--except of course, for several glasses of their zippy wine. Corte Sconda is one of our all-time favorite places to dine--in Venice and in all of Europe. Enjoy your adventure.

What time have you booked your gondola ride?

Dinner in Italy tends to be a drawn out affair, and restaurants in Venice tend to serve dinner earlier than in other Italian cities.

There is also a tradition of eating small plates ( "cicchetti") in bars in the early evening, and that might be a flexible approach for a solo diner with a date to keep with a gondalier. This article describes the custom, but I'm not recommending you eat at the specific places in this article. but attaching a separate link of recommended bars:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2010/feb/13/venice-bar-snacks-cicheti-wine

http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/778455

Hey thank you very very much. Have sent off for a reservation at La Cusina on SundY night at 8.30 pm and was looking at Corte Sconda for lunch but see they are closed on Mondays. Am thinking Tuesday if it fits in with a short tour I hope to do.

Also absolutely loved the link and info you sent zeppole - am looking at them for the other lunches and dinners.

As you both have great info on Venice - I just can't decide on tours for mon and tues - need to be at the railway station at six o'clock on Tuesday... But so many and want to find fabulous ones. Any thoughts?

Are you asking for recommendations of fabulous guided tours in Venice or self-guided ones?

Either way, my own general view of this when it comes to Italy as a whole is that it can be tremendously rewarding to choose a tour that zeroes in something you are personally very enthusiastic about or have a passion for, rather than a wide historical overview or somebody who simply leads you to the most famous sights and explains them.

I don't visit Venice all that often, but one of the unusual aspects of Venice is the amazing variety of special interests that Venice offers --- music, lace, masks, glassmaking/mosaics, mysteries, sex, seafaring, flood-control, metalworking, Jewish history, byzantium, woodworking, papermaking -- really a wide range. And all these things reached a Zenith of skill in Venice. And there are also literary tours you can take, or visiting where famous films were shot in Venice.

So if you are very interested in something as part of your career or as a personal passion, you can often find it in Venice.

Great advice from zeppole. We've been to Venice several times and have never taken a tour. I'll admit that that is because we are far more interested in simply soaking up the beauty which is everywhere (and because my husband loves to take photos and video) than we are in the history of the sights we see. In the vein of "a picture is worth a thousand words," I know we will long remember--even without the physical pictures--a scene or a church or a square, etc. than we will all the information (and sometimes outright trivia) that guides are prone to distill. Venice is infinitely walkable and I frequently see people advise tourists to just "get lost" and see what you see. I concur with them--except for the type of tour that zeppole is recommending which would concentrate on Venice as it relates to a particular passion that you may have.

Susan, Cantinone–già Schiavi (992 Ponte San Trovaso), which is mentioned in the Guardian article that Zeppole has linked to is great – we’ve eaten lunch there half a dozen times. Walk in, point to the morsels that you want to eat (one euro per piece) and they will be put on a paper plate. Have a glass of wine, and pay the barman for both wine and food. Too easy. It can be very crowded, as lots of students gather there.

If you’ve got a lazy hour or three for reading, a couple of Venice trip reports that may interest you, and give you a (biased) view of Venice:

http://www.fodors.com/community/europe/venice-a-sort-of-trip-report.cfm from a year ago, and

http://www.fodors.com/community/europe/venice-trip-report-warning-im-most-verbose.cfm from three years ago.

Thanks for these replies. Have been off the air for a while but now back on the case. Didn't hear back from la cuisina - perhaps one person on a great table is not so appealing for them.

Still in a quandary about tours. I know I should make up my own but I'm a bit overwhelmed... Thanks again. Susan

Peter am def going to check out your referral. Thanks!