I will be in Venice in April, but have not booked my hotel yet. What is a good location? Should I stay right in Venice, lido de venice, or Mestre?

Again, Thanks in advance for all your help!

My suggestion would be to stay in Venice proper. We personally like the San Polo area because it's close enough to the activity of San Marco, but far enough from the crowds when we want quiet.

You really can't go wrong staying anywhere in Venice proper, however, since it's so compact.

It's best to stay in Venice itself

The Lido is essentially a beach resort - and has not a lot to see or do - and requires a 20 minute boat trip every time you want to go to or from Venice proper - you will miss a good deal of the flavor of the city

Mestre is essentially an indistural type suburb - IMHO - very nasty and sprawling- with nothing for the tourist - can;t imagine why anyone would stay there - unless stuck by one of those downscale tour groups - that put you in one of the hotels built for italian Xerox paper salesmen

Agree with previous posts. Stay IN Venice. You particularly don't want to stay in Mestre.

I should have added, there are sestieri (neighborhood areas) of Venice. San Marco is where the main attractions are located so has the benefit of proximity as welll as the negative of crowds during the day. The Dorsoduro is a popular place to stay, near but not on top of the main attractions, it contains the Accademia Museum, the Guggenheim museum and many restaurants.

Definitely stay in Venice proper. The first time I went to Venice, while in college, I stayed on Lido and completely missed the ambience of Venice. It is so special that you should take full advantage.

we loved Novecento (www.novecento.biz)

You'd better get busy booking your hotel no matter where you plan to stay. You might well find that the place you want is already filled. April is a desirable time of year in Venice.

As to Venice versus Lido, there is no comparison. To stay on the Lido you have to love the beach and hate art, history, architecture, and just wandering around the old city. Good luck.

We stayed in the Canareggio district which is away from the crowds and has more of a "neighborhood" feel. The walk to San Marco's was about 15 minutes.

We stayed at the Hotel Giorgione which was wonderful, and I would highly recommend it.

Thanks to a ll that replied. I guess it's kind of obvious after all your replies, but I will definitely be staying in Venice proper.

Now for one more question. I am trying to determine if I should stay in the San Marco area or in one of the other neighborhoods. If I stay away from San Marco, I will be traveling there every day to see most of the sites. So how far away would this be? How large is Venice?

Thanks in advance for all your help.

Hi m,

It doesn't much matter where you stay as Venice is rather small and the sights are distributed around the city.

What's your budget?

Venice is very compact so it is easy to get around and honestly doesn't matter which area you stay in. Places are much closer together than they appear on most maps.

Everyone's preference varies, but I prefer to stay in a more residentail area such as San Polo or Dorsoduro. It is never far to get to San Marco and other districts in order to see the sites.

On our first Venice visit, we stayed near SL train station, which is about as far from P. San Marco as you can get in historic Venice. It was no big deal to get to P. San Marco.

Some days we walked and stopped at the various sights along the way. Other days we took the vaporetto down the Grand Canal.

<< If I stay away from San Marco, I will be traveling there every day to see most of the sites. >>

meamea, there are plenty of other sites that are in areas other than San Marco. We found ourselves in the San Palo, Dorsoduro, San Marco and Castello sestieres and our hotel was in the Cannaregio sesiere.

We picked our hotel based on amenities, walking distance to San Marco and how many bridges did we have to walk over to get to our hotel with our luggage. The hotel that won out had NO bridges and turned out to be lovely.

Meamea-after much emailing to various Venice innkeepers (all, by the way, responded very nicely, and particularly the Locanda Orseolo-unfortunately, they had no availability)I did secure what I think is a great deal: a Junior Suite that has a door to a small canal in the Castello district, a 5 min. walk to San Marco, for 90E/nt. But I'm going in March, which is low season, the rates go up a lot around Easter. I don't know how much you intend to spend for a hotel, but you should really try to get a hotel booking very soon, or most of the good places at reasonable rates will be full.

www.venere.com or veniceby.com have a lot of information on hotels in the area, and show which areas the hotels are located, you can then look up the hotels on tripadvisor.com to see reviews.