Rick Steves mentions this tour in his 2006 Venice book. You go around to a few bacari, enjoying a glass of wine and trying the cicchetti. It is an evening tour and looked like fun. Has anyone tried it?

(Also, am I posting too much? I don't want to be a pest.)

OO

Olive oil, that is so nice; but really, you aren't a pest. No one but Fodors controls posting here, and anyone with legitimate questions and enthusiasm for travel is certainly welcome, IMO, anyway. keep posting!

As to your question, I think if you search bacari here, you might find some good feedback. DH and I don't drink, but we did try a bacari for lunch in March, and we enjoyed it. The food was good, but not really inexpensive. The place was very very very local, but the ladies behind the bar spoke English and helped us pick a variety of cicchetti for our lunch. We had to sit on stools at a railing/counter. So not drinking, and not sitting, we weren't dying to do this again, but it was a good experience.

I might do it again, but it isn't on the top of my list. Hope this helps.

Dear Olive:

My sister and I did this bar tour in 2002. It was alot of fun and I highly recommend it. I emailed Alesandro to schedule a tour. He said he required a minmum of 6 people. So he took our hotel # and would call if he got 4 others while we were in Venice. I called him on our first full day(a Fri)and no luck. But on Sat, when we returned to our hotel about 5pm, we had a message to meet at the Rialto Bridge at 6 for a tour. We took off and met the group: a couple from Texas and a couple from Michigan.

Alesandro took us to several out of the way places, explaining the history of Venice & the food/drinks we had. We tried various foods and also purchased some extra, special dishes we wanted to try. We were done by about 8, but wanted to continue the party. Alesandro showed us to a local bar before he headed home.

What fun we had afterwards with the others!!! We stumbled to our hotel about 11pm and had to catch the train at 7(with hangovers)to Florence the next morning.

I hope I'm not scaring you. The after-party was on our own and hey, we were in Italy. I hope you can try this.

MY

Thanks for the reassurances, Tuscanlifeedit, I appreciate it. I have so many questions and there is such a wealth of information here...but I am trying to be more conscientious about doing a search before posting a question that the 'old hands' have probably addressed a thousand times.

MichelleY, I think you sold me on this tour, sounds like fun.

I emailed Alessandro, he said he would need six. I am afraid there may not be enough people interested, off-season and all. We will see but if any of you readers want to share this tour, probably on Wednesday the 8th of November, I'd be glad to have you in the party.

I'll let you all know how it works out; I haven't told sis about this part of the plan, yet.

oo

Dear Olive Oil:

We were there in mid-Oct. So the e-mailing and keeping in touch with Alesandro when you get there is important. Like I said, our tour was very last minute. Good luck. You will have fun!!