How far from Treviso Airport to Venice?
 

We found a good air fare, but the hitch is flight arrives at Treviso Airport. Flight gets in around 8PM. How far is it to Venice (we're staying in San Marco area)? Is it safe to arrive at this airport at this time in the evening (I presume it should still be light)? What recommendations would you have for arranging transport to Venice for family of 5?

It is about 30 km (19 miles). It should be very safe. The main concern would be whether your hotel has 24-hour reception or can make some other arrangement for you to get in. I'm sure you could arrange for a driver to pick you up and take you to Piazzale Roma in Venice, or you could just take this bus:
http://tinyurl.com/hanjv

Or I'm sure you could just take a taxi also, but I don't know the fare.

In any event, whichever of these three methods you use, you'll arrive in Venice, and then you can take a vaporetto to your hotel, if it's not in walking distance. My other concern about arriving at this time is that it might be hard to navigate Venice to find your hotel, particularly if it's hidden in some alleyway. Where are you staying?

Thank you WillTravel for your response! We are staying either at Ca 'Furlan or at Locanda Ca' Formosa. Do you know either of these places and if so, can you give me any idea which of these might be preferable. We are a family of 5. Ca' Furlan is in Castello, from what I can see, very close to St. Marks, and Locanda Ca' Formosa between Campo Santa Maria Formosa and Campo SS. Giovanni e Paolo in Calle Trevisana. Here's the thing, if we utilize this flight, the cost is hundreds of dollars less, maybe even as much as a thousand dollars less, than other flights I have seen as we are arriving from Paris. How would I go about arranging for a driver to pick us up at Treviso airport? Any suggestions? Thanks for your help!

3mkids, I don't know exactly, but maybe someone else can post about how to get a driver in advance. I do see this information about getting a taxi on the Treviso Airport web site:
http://tinyurl.com/reyr3

The other thing to keep in mind with Ryanair is that they are strict about both check-in times and about luggage (I presume you're taking Ryanair). Try to get to your departure airport two hours in advance, and make sure you read the luggage information carefully. The charge for excess luggage is a hefty 8 Euros per kilogram!

I don't know either of those B&Bs. But again my main concern is whether there is someone who will let you into the building, should your flight be delayed. Ryanair has very good stats generally about on-time arrival, but still delays happen, and you don't want to be wandering around at 11 PM with your family unable to get into your B&B!

I'm probably a bit paranoid about this, because once near my home (far from Venice, but the same principle applies) as I was walking late at night, I met a woman who was trying to figure out where to find the key to enter the residential B&B where she was staying. She was a native French speaker and asked me to call the B&B owners. I did, but they weren't very friendly!

One other thing. MyAir.com flies Paris to Venice, but from more convenient airports in both cities, and often for a very reasonable fare. So if you haven't already, do check them out.

Thanks, I will check, but I'm pretty sure that one or both have 24 hour reception. But you have a valid point, and I will check on this. Also, I'm really glad I just read your other post about MyAir.com. I'll certainly check this out too. Maybe it is my lucky day, since I was about to book our flight on Ryanair, but I couldn't figure out what to do about the baggage. I'm not really good about predicting how many bags each person will have,though obviously we will stick to the baggage limits. Do you happen to know if you specify for example that person 1 has x number of bags, and that number changes within the weigth limitation?

When you book your Ryanair flights, you can select how many checked bags you will have per person (zero, one, or two). Each checked bag costs 3.50 Euros each. If you get to the airport, and you need to check additional bags above what you already paid for, then the fee is double - so it's 7 Euros per bag.

I would guess that in your case with five people, you could spread things around so that each person has one carry-on item, one checked item, and one personal item (e.g. a purse)?

The carry-on allowance is 10 kg, and the checked luggage allowance is 20 kg.

Hope I have this right, so double-check - the Ryanair policy has changed recently from what I experienced previously. But I think you should be fine with a little luggage management, particularly given there are five of you.

I guess I'm pretty talkative tonight :). Be sure to look into the cost of getting to Beauvais Airport from Paris. I think it's about 13 Euros per person, although children might be half-price.

I just checked MyAir.com, and found a flight from Orly to VCE (I presume is Marco Polo Airport) leaving Paris around 8PM.(I can't recall the exact time) and getting into VCE a little after 10PM. You're right, these airports are more convenient, so it would seem I'm better off doing MyAir. Have you had experience with this airline and is it reputable? Does it have the same baggage restrictions as Ryanair? Is it OK to get into VCE around 10 PM (i.e. safe)? I think the fare is competitive with Ryanair.

This is so much more fun than sleeping.

From VCE (which is Marco Polo), you could get a water taxi. I haven't done that, preferring to take the #5 ACTV bus (public bus) from the airport to Piazzale Roma, followed by the vaporetto. I purchased a 72-hour ACTV pass at the airport which was good for the buses and for the vaporettos. But lots of people here have posted about water taxis, so you should be able to get some info.

The luggage rules are a little different on My Air, but still strict.
http://www.myair.com/docs/cust/en/faq.shtml

I don't recall hearing anything bad about My Air, but that might not mean anything.

WillTravel: We took a water taxi in 2001 and it was amazing,but pretty expensive. Where is Piazalle Roma? Last time we stayed at the Londra Palace which is right on the Grand Canal, very close to Doge's Palace. I checked and I see that MyAir is about 100 Euros more than Ryanair, but maybe this is worth it, if I will just spend same or more money, arranging transport between Beauvais and Paris, and Treviso and Venice. Your thoughts? Also, can you comment on whether it would be safe for us to arrive at 10:10 PM at Marco Polo? I forget, but how long is the trip from Marco Polo to Venice? I really appreciate your suggestions since I did not know about MyAir. Anyway, thanks for all your help!

Definitely it would be safe to arrive then. I'm not sure if the ACTV-pass-sellers will still be at their desk at that time.

Piazzale Roma is the spot at the edge of Venice where all the buses and coaches stop. You can get the vaporetto right there.

You can check the ACTV schedule here (the #5 bus and the vaporetto schedules):
http://www.actv.it

There's also an ATVO bus, which costs a bit more, but is sort of an express bus from the airport to Piazzale Roma.
http://www.atvo.it/

The ACTV bus took less than 30 minutes from the airport to Piazzale Roma, if I recall correctly.

Given you've been to Venice before, I'm less worried about the prospect of you getting hopelessly lost late at night :).

I'd much rather go to Orly airport than Beauvais anytime. It's easy and quick to get to Orly, and there are multiple transport options.

WillTravel: Thanks for all your info. Are you on regularly - I'm sure I have other questions, but my brain will be mush if I don't get to sleep. I'll probably be on tomorrow. Also, I keep forgetting, after getting almost hopelessly lost getting to Bellagio last time we were in Italy, my husband decided he was going to teach himself Italian, and now he is fairly fluent. So hopefully if we get lost, at least he can get directions. Thanks, again for all your help!

Hi, we flew MYAIR in April from Venice to Paris. As we booked early we scored 1 euro cent fares! plus taxes of courses. Had considered Ryanair but they use Trevisio (Venice) and Beauvais (Paris), the latter is horribly inconvenient to get to/from. All low cost carriers have restrictive luggage policies so do read the fine print. We were travelling as a family and dispite the restrictions saying luggage was not allowed to be combined, they were happy to do so. As we were on a six week european holiday (from Australia) we had to pay some excess, 10 Eu for kilo, but again the check in staff reduced our excess by 50% so it worked out OK. I would get there 2 hours beforehand if you can as again typically low cost carriers oversell seats to cover for no shows. The downside to this is that if you are late to check in and evryone does show up you are likely to get bumped. Take the water taxi from the airport to San Marco, it will be so pretty at night and we managed fine with 2 kids (12 & 10), 2 adults and all our junk. It is not cheap but worth it. When in Venice get a 3 day pass. Happy to offer any other advice. We had 5 nights in Venice at an apartment walking distance from the San Marco vaporetto station and Piazza San Marco.

Cheers

Thanks Redcrab. I wish I had been swift enough to book the MyAir. At one point it was a little cheaper than Ryanair, and within an hour the fare had more than doubled so now it was several hundred dollars more than Ryanair. We decided that it would be much cheaper to do the Ryanair bit, even with the respective transfers to the airports, and we will just have to live with the inconvenience for this leg of our trip. We love Venice, and did the water taxi thing the last time we were there. It was beautiful. We are tickled because even though our kids have seen many, many pictures of one of our very favorite cities, we don't think they can possibly conceptualize what it's like to have a city surrounded by so much water!