beware of parking in mestre!
 

after reading advice from myriads of people, we decided to park our car in mestre when spending the weekend in venice. huge mistake!!! altho some travelers advised leaving the car on the street near the train station we were hesitant to do so. someone had written that parking is available right across from the station for only 5 euros a day. if that is indeed the case, we sure could not find it anywhere. we parked from fri to sun (about noon to noon) in october and it cost us 42 euros. there were 2 lots across from the station and their fees were similar.

from here the troubles began! we wanted to leave our 2 big bags at the mestre station and take only our weekender along with us. the station (no lockers by the way, just one big open room) wanted 20 euros per bag for the weekend. so much for that idea- we decided we would just drag the luggage along with us.

unbeknownst to us, this past friday there was a one day strike in italy (or maybe just the venice area?) no buses, no local trains. we bought our tkts and ended up waiting for nearly 2 hrs for a train that never came! there were no info booths open either and the train officials who were there refused to be of any assistance. one man, when asked, told us that we should wait on platform #2 instead of #1 where the trains for venice usually come in. i was a bit wary of this advice, but in any event we carried our luggage up and down two long flts of stairs (no elevators here) all the way to platform #2 only to realize that we had just missed the one train of the day to venice that just departed from platform #1 as it was supposed to do! the savvy italians apparently knew enuf to wait at various other platforms for intercity trains that were stopping in mestre on their way to venice. we were too un-knowledgeable of the way things work to do that.

after wasting so much valuable time, we finally ended up taking a taxi to venice for the fee of 35 euro, due to the excessive amnt of traffic on the road leading into venice. in short, i would never recommend this method again unless you really know what you are doing. and certainly make sure there is no train strike that day! this was a classic case of penny wise and pound foolish!

Thanks for the good information. I believe everyone gets wiser after the fact at least once.

Where would you have parked the car other than Mestre (the lot in Venice?) and why did you choose Mestre? Did it appear to be cheaper for the weekend?

That's another reason not to stay in Mestre for cheaper hotels instead of Venice proper.

Perhaps you are posting this on the forums where the others recommended Mestre and parking?

What you have described is a risk/cost trade-off. In many instances involving uncertainties such as traveling, there are often choices of options whether one is aware of not -- some low cost with risks and others higher cost with less risks. Your situation was one of them. A cheap but tight air connection that would miss an event is another such example. Many take binary approach - brush away risks as if it will not happen to them, and if they are lucky, they will come back touting a smart move that saved them a lot. Others take other approach -- the things would always go wrong and take expensive steps even when the foul up chance is low and even if that happened, there are many alternatives. What about if the odd turns against them? Many would justify this as, well things happens, and also brushes it away. In many instances, one can think about the implications of the risks, odds of happening, whether risks are acceptable, what alternatives exist if things don't work out and choose an itinerary accordingly. For those traveling with big bags, not finding an acceptable storage is a big risk. But for young travelers with back packs alone, this is a risk worth taking. Many come here for one simple recommendations as if there is one solution for all, but in reality, everyone comes here with different risk profiles.

The train strike was all of Italy - I'm sure many travelers were feeling the pain! But it did sound like you had alot of aggrevation - we recently had to lug our bags up and down in the Mestre station. Would it be that difficult to install some ramps in stations that do not have escalators or elevators?

>>>The train strike was all of Italy<<<

Yes and they are scheduled well in advance so you know it's going to happen and make other plans such as taking a strike-proof train.

I think your parking was quite cheap as most major cities in Italy have fates for 30-40€ per night.

>>>the station (no lockers by the way, just one big open room) wanted 20 euros per bag for the weekend<<<

None of the Italian stations have luggage lockers so don't know why you would be expecting them. The luggage storage seems quite reasonable since they are supposed to charge more than that. According to the website they are supposed to charge 13.50€ per 24 hour period for each bag.

http://www.grandistazioni.it/cms/v/i...003f16f90aRCRD

That doesn't seem that expensive to me, 21 euro a day for parking. It's that expensive in many cities in Europe and the US, often much more.

I probably am one of the guilty ones recommending Mestre. When we parked the car in the garage structure, it was around 5€ to 7€ per day. That was a few years ago, and I have not mentioned the price recently although I still recommend parking in Mestre. I have simply assumed that the price would still be relatively lower than parking in Venice.

I did not anticipate a RR strike.

Please allow me to explain myself. i did not post this in order to complain or to blame anyone. i simply wanted people to be forewarned and to be educated consumers. this strike was not planned well in advance and as we had been up in the dolomites for the week before, far from the madding crowd as they say, there is no way we could have known about this in advance. not to mention of course that we do not speak a word of italian. all the other tourists at the station- from all over the world- were as unknowing as we were.

sometimes when you travel and you are on a budget, you learn what to do from others and then it works great for you too. without the strike, this probably would have been a good plan. sometimes others can learn from your mistakes what not to do, or at least how to avoid the pitfalls. the latter was my sole intention in posting this experience.

by the way, last year we traveled throughout spain and in every major train station there were fabulous lockers for holding luggage of varying sizes. the price in seville for example was a fraction of what it was in mestre.

michael, you are so kind. numerous people on numerous forums have suggested mestre. maybe the mestre parking lots have wisened up over the years and have jacked their prices up accordingly. kybourbon, you are correct. chances are that in venice it would have cost us at least 30 euro a day. it's just that when we added the price of the taxi and the trains to venice in both directions to the parking fee in mestre, we clearly came out the losers here.

yes, when you travel and are on unfamiliar turf, this is a price that you have to be prepared to pay. we do realize that. we just want to give other future travelers a heads up.

It didn't sound like you were complaining. You wanted people to be aware that Mestre may or may not be a good parking alternative.

This strike was planned weeks in advance, as shown in this Fodor's discussion about the strike.

http://www.fodors.com/community/euro...ion-strike.cfm

Having experienced a transportation strike on virtually every one of my more than two dozen trips to Italy, I always recommend that travelers to Italy check the websites noted in the above thread when they are planning their itineraries. Strikes are usually listed a month or more in advance.

<i><font color=#555555>"someone had written that parking is available right across from the station for only 5 euros a day"</font></i>

What year was the post? How often did you read that proclamation in recent blog posts? How reliable was your research?

There are quite a few inexpensive parking lots in Mestre. Most are a little further away from the train station but walkable, nonetheless. You can book some of these online in advance and get great deals. I don't know any that offer a 5€/24hr bargain. Just the sound of it sounds Stone Age to me.

If you purchase in advance, the car park at Piazzale Roma is 26€ for 24 hrs. My garage in my NYC building is $38 for 24 hrs. Venice comes out cheaper.

I realize some tourists need to conserve every penny wherever they can. The moral of this story is: if you don't know the lay of the land, if you're not sure how to secure the bargains that others have found, what are you willing to put up with to save a possible $50? How much risk and inconvenience are you willing to endure?

I think the bicycle park across the road is Euro5 / 24 hours

20 euros per bag for the weekend, doesn't seem so terrible to me. I would have done that.

Here's one rate for Mestre parking:

http://www.garageeuropamestre.com/sc...&idpadrerif=41

debbspero, I understand you were taken by surprise. I found this site to check for upcoming train strikes.

http://www.mit.gov.it/mit/site.php?p=scioperi

I used to have a link for such a site in English, but even if I could recollect it, I don't know if it would still be an active link. (Perhaps someone here knows of an English site.)

Or you can always try asking your hotel concierge, when checking out, if there are any strikes planned for your next destination during your sojourn at that destination.

I thought greg's post on risk tradeoffs was excellent and worth everyone's reading. Our own strategy is to have a 'risk budget' - a slush fund for when things go wrong, and one must ante up to save the holiday. It's a kind of self-insurance. As you found, a cab ride that is normally an indulgence, looks a lot less like one when one is faced with standing on a platform in a strange country for an indeterminate period of time.

>>>debbspero on Oct 24, 13 at 1:27pm
Please allow me to explain myself. i did not post this in order to complain or to blame anyone. i simply wanted people to be forewarned and to be educated consumers. this strike was not planned well in advance and as we had been up in the dolomites for the week before, far from the madding crowd as they say, there is no way we could have known about this in advance. not to mention of course that we do not speak a word of italian. all the other tourists at the station- from all over the world- were as unknowing as we were.<<<

While you were surprised by the strike, it's important for anyone reading this in the future to know that strikes are scheduled as Ellen pointed out. This particular strike has been discussed for the last couple of months (it was posted on the government website). It's rare for there to be a last minute strike and most seem to be posted about 2 months in advance. It's also posted in the train stations. There's often notices around town about upcoming strikes.

Trenitalia has strike-proof trains (mostly during rush hours) that are guaranteed to run. There's a link on their homepage (click the In Case of Strike in the middle of the page), but not all are listed on the English version. It's best to check the Italian version.

http://www.trenitalia.com/cms/v/?vgn...0080a3e90aRCRD

>>>by the way, last year we traveled throughout spain and in every major train station there were fabulous lockers for holding luggage of varying sizes. the price in seville for example was a fraction of what it was in mestre.<<<

As you discovered, Italy is not Spain. Different governments, different laws, different facilities. You can't expect all countries in Europe to have the same things just like you wouldn't expect Mexico or Canada to be exactly like the US.

>>>kybourbon, you are correct. chances are that in venice it would have cost us at least 30 euro a day. it's just that when we added the price of the taxi<<<

If you are referring to the luggage storage prices, it's the same price in all Trenitalia stations. Luggage storage is only available in larger stations or small stations that serve a lot of tourists (Pisa Centrale for example). Prices do not vary between them, but operating hours do.

thank you all for your advice and info. next time we travel we will be all the wiser for our experience and for your input. hopefully others who read this thread will be wiser as well as it is much better to learn from your own mistakes than to learn from someone else's

correction\\; it is much better to learn from someone else's mistakes than to learn from your own!

Good of you to post Michael.