To answer your language question, some basic Italian will be useful to initiate your conversations, but Venetians are used to tourists and English is the lingua franca, so to speak.

OK now I get it (thanks Tarquin.) The guidebook you end up getting should have some useful phrases in Italian. If you are fluent in Spanish you are going to get by just fine.

I hesitate to say this on a Fodor's forum post but I like the Rick Steves guidebooks as they give very specific information that is easy to follow. I have his Italy guidebook and walks on Kindle plus pocket guides in print for Venice and Rome. I also read guidebooks by Fodors and Frommers and like to look at the pictures in the DK guides. My favorite maps are Streetwise as they have all of the streets, fold easily, and are laminated.

Enjoyed reading the comments as we will also be in Venice for 4 days in May.

Thoughts...
--My first reaction to your short time span and itinerary was only to see Burano if you think you have time. I totally agree with Peter: if you do see Burano (it IS cute)don't combine it with the other islands. It's a long stretch as it is, and the ride back just seems to go on forever.

--I agree with drchris; it seems we are punished here if we recommend old Rick. I basically collect guidebooks, and until I started sending stuff to my Kindle and my husband's iPad, I used to box cut relevant chapters out of bunches of guidebooks and then bind them into our master trip notebook. To do that, I bought a lot of guidebooks for each destination.

It just so happens that the Rick Steves guide for Venice is particularly good on its own. We downloaded his free maps and mp3 tours (scroll down to the bottom of this page http://www.ricksteves.com/watch-read...io-tours/italy) to our smartphones, and they worked well for us.

We had a great time doing some of the walks in the book too. I think our favorite part was finding the band-aid vending machine (!) in the street that he mentions at the precise time my blisters were kicking in.

Anyway, he always has Italian phrases in the book, so that should be enough for you since you know Spanish, too.

--We use Streetwise maps everywhere, but we never discount the value of a free hotel map. Our Venice hotel's was great! I also have a couple map apps that work well offline (I tested one in Ljubljana last year, and I'm going to test out some offline Venice city guides, too, when we go in July)

--We saw St Marks as soon as it opened to beat the hoards. If we had not done that, we would have waited until late afternoon when the line lessens.

--But we went to the Piazza San Marco every night anyway. It's MAGIC! Fabulous people watching, especially when the cafe bands seem to go into "dualing band" mode.

--The vaporetto pass is great. We sometimes just rode the vaporetto over and over again at night until we finally got "our" front seats :)

Sorry about the confusion about the budget. It is 150 Euros for food and we have allowed another 150 Euros for tickets, transportation within the city and miscellaneous expenses.
I was asking about a book travel guide in English to carry in my purse with a good map of Venice.

LOVED Burano. It's a must in my book.

Specifically about the Basilica: we tried to avoid the long lines by booking a guided tour, but it was rubbish despite being quite expensive. After waiting for late people & mucking around with non-working headphones to hear the guide, we found that we would have entered the Basilica faster if we had waited in line.
Also, on your own you can explore the higher levels, but our tour only allowed for the ground floor.

Maybe there are good and bad guided tours - we booked ours from the little tourist office at the south-western corner of St Mark's Square but we won't be making that mistake again.

Use the wait in line to read up about what you are about to see.

My favourite memory of Venice is just walking. You just never know what is around the corner.

bookmarking

What about the attire in the summer. Are capris and Bermuda shorts with a nice top appropriate? How about for guys, my husband is a shorts and polo shirt kind of guy ( and sperry's ).
Are nice jeans okay for dinner?
We are trying to pack as light as we can. Since there is a lot of walking we are thinking of nice walking sandals.
Thanks for the input

150 euros per day for food should work as long as you are careful. Eat breakfast at home, sandwiches for lunch (a real bargain if you eat them standing up at a bar) and pizza for dinner. Or a nice sit down lunch then cheese and snacks at home.

You will have a great time.

I think that for gentlemen, long trousers are a better look ...

"I agree that it's better to go to the restaurants that have been recommended than to experiment with a random place."

I totally disagree Wandering. Here's why. What someone thinks of a given restaurant and the food is totally dependent on their experience and taste.

I have had many people tell me, 'oh, this restaurant was great', only to discover that the food was at best mediocre. It's like people who talk about a '5 star all-inclusive' resort. There are very few 'all-inclusive' anythings that are 5 star. Try finding a Ritz Carlton that offers an 'all-inclusive' week.

If what you are used to is beans on toast (UK) or Kraft Dinner (USA) then you will not be hard to impress. But if you are into Michelin starred restaurants, that's a whole different story.

It doesn't mean there isn't some nice little restaurant on a back street in Venice that you wouldn't like, but taking some strangers word for it when you have no idea what that stranger is used to comparing to, is a waste of time. My wife can do a better job of picking restaurants simply by looking at them from the outside. She rarely gets it wrong.

Regarding attire, be aware that some places in Europe, including Venice, will not serve anyone wearing shorts. Old fashioned I know but their place, their rules.

Regarding packing light, what does that mean to you? What will your bag weigh specifically? If it's 15 lbs., you're packing light. If it's 25 lbs. your a medium weight packer. It it's over 25 lbs. you are in no way packing light.

Allessandra, Rick Steves guidebooks are great for people who want to be told just where to go and what to see/do. A step by step, hold your hand, route to follow. I prefer thinking for myself.

I consider Rick Steves responsible for single handedly having ruinded the Cinque Terre. It used to be a nice little place to visit for a few days of relaxation during a trip. Now it is a nightmare. They even have to limit the number of people walking per day in the summer. If you had gone even 25 years ago, you might have seen a handful of other people walking from village to village in a day.

dulciusexasperis--I think your statement is a rather unfair blanket statement.

As I CAREFULLY explained, like so many other posters here, I have bookcases full of guidebooks. Like so many other posters here, I collect internet articles, copying and pasting pertinent passages into a master doc that I used to print out into a master binder but now send to a Cloud to be downloaded to Kindle, ipad and phone. I cross reference restaurant reservations between guidebooks and with chowhound, etc. I now have phone apps galore for on-the-site reference.

So the fact that I have used a Rick Steves guidebook from time to time does not mean I'm some darn lemming.

I assure you that Rick never held my hand.

This person has LIMITED time and has requested ONE guidebook to carry with him. The Rick Steves book for Venice actually happens to do a good job.

I'm sorry about Cinque Terre. Heck, I'm sorry about what I think Rick may have done to the 7th in Paris. But that is no reason to automatically put down other posters' opinions of a SPECIFIC guidebook.

dulciusexasperis--I think your statement is a rather unfair blanket statement.

As I CAREFULLY explained, like so many other posters here, I have bookcases full of guidebooks. Like so many other posters here, I collect internet articles, copying and pasting pertinent passages into a master doc that I used to print out into a master binder but now send to a Cloud to be downloaded to Kindle, ipad and phone. I cross reference restaurant reservations between guidebooks and with chowhound, etc. I now have phone apps galore for on-the-site reference.

So the fact that I have used a Rick Steves guidebook from time to time does not mean I'm some darn lemming.

I assure you that Rick never held my hand.

This person has LIMITED time and has requested ONE guidebook to carry with him. The Rick Steves book for Venice actually happens to do a good job.

I'm sorry about Cinque Terre. Heck, I'm sorry about what I think Rick may have done to the 7th in Paris. But that is no reason to automatically put down other posters' opinions of a SPECIFIC guidebook.

Wandering, if you do go to Burano, then get off the vaporetto at the Mazzorbo vap stop. Mazzorbo is connected to Burano by footbridge, and it is a 10 minute walk through a vinyard to the footbridge. Turn left when you alight at Mazzorbo.

If you go to Burano, then do go to Torcello. There is a shuttle vaporetto that services the Burano - Torcello route, running every half hour, I think. It is a five minute vap ride from Burano to Torcello. Torcello was the first settlement in the lagoon, and had a population of about 20,000 at one time. Malaria and silting of the canals forced the Torcello people to Venice, and they demolished their houses and took the brick and stone to Venice, settling around the Rialto.

The Torcello churches are the oldest in the lagoon.

No need to repeat yourself Alessandra. ;-)

Yes, I was probably a bit harsh. Rick Steves just annoys me, not you. He markets to the lowest common denominator in terms of travellers. ie. those who can't think for themselves.

I'm glad to hear you didn't let him hold your hand.

Sometimes in Italy men in shorts are not allowed into churches. Ditto women in shorts, sleeveless and/or low cut tops. Your men should bring at least one pair of lightweight, easy to wash and dry long pants. Jeans are not recommended; they're hot to wear, heavy and bulky to carry, and take forever to dry in European dryers.

Thank you all for your information. It is exciting planning the trip.
dulciusexasperis the question about the guide is to have an idea of what is in Venice to visit. I'm with you, I don't want anybody to hold my hand. If that was the case, we would have gone on a tour and I would have not been in this forum getting information.
When people recommend restaurants it gives me an idea of places I should be considering, specially if other people say that they have also been there and have enjoyed it. I understand that we all like different things, but it does not hurt to know what other people like. I take the information and do more research on the restaurant, check menus and so forth and then I'll decide if that is a place my family would like.
Regarding "traveling light" I just want to pack what we're going to wear and not carry a bunch of stuff that we wont wear. We're going for 18 days, (Athens, Santorini, Venice & Barcelona) so I want to know what are the more appropriate pieces of clothing to bring. Each of us will carry one piece of luggage not to exceed 20 kg. My daughters are saying they will just bring a carry on.

dulciusexasperis - Your attitude is overly harsh IMHO. I would dare say that anyone who takes the time and effort to consult these forums is fully capable of thinking for him/herself but values information of all kinds from varied sources. Some people lead such busy lives that they don't have the endless hours it takes to plan a trip completely on their own, or may not be able to travel frequently, or have only limited time in a particular place and don't want to waste time getting lost, or for any number of reasons appreciate getting help wherever and from whomever they can. Just because one reads a guidebook does mean that person follows it step-by-step.

As AlessandraZoe explained, many of us do broad-ranging research (which is a major part of the fun of travel) and then create our own travel plan. I am in the process of creating a spreadsheet for each location with information culled from a variety of sources so that it will all be in one handy document that I can both print and access online.

With travel as in all things in life, "Judge not that you be not judged."

I'm with you drchris. Well said.