100 Best Things to do in Venice
 

I do hope to get this started. Especially since I made an awful blooper on another Venice thread today.

I'll start with an easy pick:

1. Ride the front of the vaporetto down the Grand Canal.

2. Go to Piazza San Marco in the evening and enjoy the orchestras playing.

2. Order that espresso on St Mark's Square, no matter the cost!

4. try a spritz

5. take the ferry to Burano

6. Take a gondola ride!

Take the vaporetto across to San Giorgio, then pay the friar a couple of euros to ride up the elevator to the top of the bell tower and enjoy the most incredible panoramic view of Venice available anywhere!

8. just walk and walk and be surprised at the beauty and history at almost every turn!

9. Go look at the mosaic floors in St. Marks Basilica.

10. Take a traghetto

11. Get lost, find your bearings, get lost again...... You may get lost, but there are no worries of being hit by a car, a bus or as in most of Italy, a Vespa!

12. Most of all, enjoy the city when it at its best, early evening after all the daytrippers have left the city. Once the crowds have left, Venice is truely magical.

Tom

Drink cold white wine for breakfast standing at a marble counter along the sidewalk.

14. Sit on Peggy Guggenheim's terrace and pretend it's your Palazzo on the Grand Canal.

15. Be in Piazza San Marco at midnight for the Marangona (bell in the Campanile).

(Suze I really like your idea too.) :)

16. Take the Secret Itineraries Tour of the Doge's Palace

What exactly is a spritz?

spritz recipe:
Ingredients:
2 fingers of dry white wine, ideally a little bubbly prosecco (nothing fancy)
1 finger of the aperitif of choice (Select, Aperol, Campari, or Cynar)
splash of mineral water (fizzy or naturale)
With Campari or Cynar add little slice of lemon. (Some bars drop in a green olive.)
With Aperol or Select, add a slice of orange.

17. Get lost on one of the more residential islands and away from the tourists. See how the Italians live their everyday lives and find some really great authentic, local restaurants.

Go to the post office

Shop.

19. Go to Tonolo, in Dorsoduro (3764 in Crosera San Pantalon, Salizzada S.Pantalon) and buy some outrageous pastry, find a nook or bench by a canal and devour!

bookmarking

Have dinner at Da Ivo

Visit the Ghetto

20. Dinner, gondola, romance. ((*))

Go to a bacaro and order a plate of cicchetti.

For some reason, I was always afraid to do this, until I finally did it. Fun and delicious.

25. While on the Vaporetto, get off at one of the stops across the canal from St. Marks & wander. Find a pizza place and have a slice standing up at the counter, next to local workers.

26. Go to the outdoor fish market!

27. Take a day to do a ferry trip to Murano (or go on a free tour arranged by your hotel), watch the glass blowers, then take the ferry to Murano and wander 'til the last ferry back.

28. Discover the unknown in midst of the bustle - best example: come in winter when there are less crowds and talk the priest of the San Marco Basilica into opening the crypt for you, which is way older than the church, gorgeous, splendidly restored, and totally unknown by the zillions of tourists who visit upstairs every year
29. experience contemporary art in historic settings at the Biennale
30. prepare food that I can prepare nowhere else than in Venice and that is so typically Venetian that not even the restaurants (that are exclusively catering to the taste of tourists) serve it - e.g. moeche, latti di seppia, gò
31. order creatively designed hand-made shoes from Giovanna Zanella
32. make friend with some locals and see how they maintain a modern daily life in spite of the arduous circumstances in a purely medieval city, and in spite of the hordes of tourists

Ride the vaparetto from end to end on a rainy day; sit inside and cuddle up with your honey

Ride the vaparetto from end to end on a warm night; stand at the railing and look into any of the lit up windows to see the beautiful Murano chandeliers

Walk walk walk

36. eat a fritto misto at Trattoria Antiche Carampane in San Polo.

37. Feed the pigeons at St. mark's.
38. Drink a $ 15 martini at Harry's Bar.
39. Get roaring drunk with the McDonnells at a small trattoria. My wife and I never met them again.

(oops, sorry, forgot to number. Thanks for carrying on afterwards.)

bookmk
thanks
love those mc donnells

(a $15 drink at Harry's Bar is a bargain compared to the 20E glasses of wine we had at the Hotel Chevre d'Or in Eze, France!)

40. Bring 'Sonnets from the Portuguese' by Elizabeth Barrett Browning - or your favourite poem - and find a quiet corner in Ca Rezzonica to read it your love, or in memory of someone you loved.

41. Buy a watercolour from one of the artists near San Marco.

42. Make a vow to speak nothing but Italian, hand signals allowed, for one hour.

43. Take a trip to the Lido to see where Venetians live.

Get out asp and find real Italy

bookmarking

44. Wake up real early, sit at Piazza San Marco before the crowd comes in, and light up a cigar. Even if you don't smoke it at all. :)

45. Listen to some crazy, short Italian guy whistle at women much bigger than them and wonder "Hey, what's up with that"!

Sgorppino tasting................