LorenJuneG

With all due respect to the museums and churches in Venice can anyone give me other fun ideas of things to do we'll be there in September? Grazie.

janisj

Click on DESTINATIONS above. Lots of ideas . . . . .

cathies

We enjoyed strolling around Venice. Every so often we would unexpectedly come across a little square where we could sit and watch families enjoying the sunshine. The Rialto market is also good fun. Find a tragetto stop and catch it from one side of the Grand Canal to the other. While we had our 24 hour travel pass we decided to use it to the max and went to Burano, it's delightful!! Hope you love Venice, we did!

Mormor

What we enjoyed the most was just walking through each neighborhood and getting lost! Every turn we took enabled us to find little shops, trattoria's and local people. Also artists working in charcoal on the streets selling their pieces, locals painting masks, fruit and vegetable vendors. Our first two trips to Venice found us rushing around trying to "get it all in". What we learned on our last trip was not to plan, just get up and go where our feet led us. The best plan in Venice is not to have a plan!

Aramis

If you are looking for "target" destinations for sightseeing in Venice, it's probably not going to be your favourite place.

Venice is about Venice, not museums and galleries.

Venice is the museum.

Challiman

Eat lots of gelato! SHOP. Sit and people watch. Linger over lunch. Walk in the less touristy areas. Take a train ride to Verona to see the coliseum and Romeo and Juliet's "house." Eat more gelato! Go to Murano. Ride a vaporetto or take a gondola ride. Check out the mask shops, some let you watch them making masks. All of these are well known Venice activities, but they are entertaining and let you enjoy Venice even if you only spend a little time in the churches or museums. Enjoy!

suze

I love Venice and have been there twice, but personally I'm just not a "museums and churches" person myself.

Mostly I like to just stroll around and ride the vaporetto. Head to the area say around Rialto bridge one time, to San Marcos plaza another, out to the Guidecca canal, stroll that promonade. One trip a friend had a booklet with self-guided walking tours of various neighborhoods that pointed out historic buildings, which was interesting.

Depends how much time you have, you can always take boats out even to the Lido, and Murano, Burano, etc.

ira

Hi L,

Get up very early and go to the fish market near the Rialto.

Barbara_in_CT

Stand along the canal, anywhere, and photograph all the different types of boats--police, UPS, lumber, moving, postal, you name it. Whatever people do elsewhere with trucks, Venetians find a way to do it with boats.

afterall

I like that, Aramis, "Venice is the museum". Wherever you go there is something interesting around the corner. But it's a working living city too, so people watching and delivery-boat watching and fish market visiting (all already suggested) are "must dos".

A concert perhaps? And a trip to Torcello would be on my list too.

marty

If you want to take pictures of boats on the Grand Canal, a great place to sit is right on the canal, and I do mean right on it. Stand facing the Rialto Bridge with Campo San Bartolomeo behind you, and you will see tables on the left hand side of the bridge that are almost under the bridge. They belong to a bar, and a waiter will come and take your drink order. Just don't set your own water bottle on the tiny table; they obviously don't like that! To get to the table closest to the bridge, you have to step on steps that go into the Grand Canal, so move carefully. There will nothing between you and the Grand Canla, so it is one the best places to sit and watch the traffic and get good pictures.

Also at the foot of the Accademia Bridge on the Dorsoduro side is a small outdoor pizzaria that is on the Grand Canal.

suze

That pizza place is a great spot! I don't know the name but it's easy enough to find by location.

bobthenavigator

It is the Pizzeria Foscarini and hard to beat.

marty

You know, I eat there every time I go to Venice which is at least once a year, and I have never known its name! Thanks.

Lualpa

as I was told several years ago. "Get lost" and wander finding your way to wherever you fancy. Venice would still be Venice with no museums. The Doge's place is another story (a masterpice by itself). Stroll yourself numb. 20 million people a year can not be wrong.
Lp

happytrailstoyou

We bought a Chorus Pass for 9 Euros. It gave us admission to 16 churches located all over Venice. We used the churches included on the pass as destinations to take us into virtually every neighborhood in Venice. It was great.

The Chorus Pass is sold at every church included on the pass, and without the pass admission to each church is 3 Euros.

Here is more information: http://www.chorusvenezia.org/

julia1

I've spent so many days over the years lost in Venice, I decided to write a book about it. This is from the book jacket: Venice! Lose yourself in the echoing streets. Hop a vaporetto and explore the Lagoon islands. Wander beside peaceful canals lined with brightly colored houses. If the weather is fine, pay your respects to the Adriatic from a beach on Lido. And whatever else you do, make time to simply sit and watch the passing scene. Take tea by a canal. Then cross the Lagoon as the late afternoon sun sets the sky afire behind the domes and campanile of Venice.

And from the introduction: On a clear day there is nothing better than cruising around the Lagoon, hopping off here for a walk, there for a coffee, then back on the boat, a stop for lunch, boat some more, walk some more, gelato, and . . . well, you get the idea.

franco

I second Julia's advice to explore the inhabited lagoon islands that can be reached by vaporetto. The best destinations among them are Malamocco (on the Lido island, south of Lido village), S. Erasmo (that's where the famous vegetables of Venice come from, large & good for a hike between farms and fields) and Le Vignole (another vegetable island, but more deserted than S. Erasmo and a particularly nice spot - attention: there's a simple trattoria for very basic outdoor dining on Le Vignole; the food is ok, and it's great fun to eat there, for just the true Venice insiders find this hidden place; great view on Venice, too; bring LOTS of mosquito repellent!!!!).

Another most interesting island that's not inhabited but can be reached by vaporetto (the same line as S. Erasmo, I think it's no. 13) is Lazzaretto Nuovo, the late medieval quarantine facility of Venice, for those foreign sailors who were suspected to introduce diseases. Much of it is still there, other parts have been destroyed later on and excavated recently. Accessible Saturdays and Sundays only, and only with guided tours. Highly recommended.

But now for those islands NOT accessible by vaporetto. The best-known is S. Francesco del Deserto, a monastery island near Burano. Taxi boats do the tour for stratospheric prices, but the island is certainly nice - not a real sight, i.e. artistically absolutely unremarkable, but an extraordinarily peaceful and serene place with lots of cypresses shading the monastery. To explore other islands, you need a private boat driver, i.e. you'd need to know somebody local with a boat. In the not too unlikely case that this is logistically impossible for you, you could at least hire one of those overpriced taxi boats on Burano for a nature-lover's tour of the northern lagoon (which is in far better environmental condition and thus far more beautiful than the southern part). The disadvantage of the taxi boats is that they're too large (small as they in fact are!) and have thus too much draft to land on remote & deserted islands (where there is nobody digging canals through the shallow lagoon for the boats) - they're for really tiny fishing boats only. But you could at least get an impression of the lagoon's environment also by taxi boat. (Those on Burano are not the quick loud motortaxis that you may know from Venice city. They're of a more unhurried type.)

Jake1

An list from an old posting. It does include museums and churchs, but other things as well.

Some of the sights, sites, and activities in Venice:

Piazza San Marco, Basilica San Marco, Campanile, Palace of the Doges, Grand Canal on a vaporetto, Lagoon islands: (Murano, Burano, Torcello), San Michelle, Gondola yard. The Arsenal and the Naval Museum, Correr Museum, Accademia art museum, Peggy Guggenheim Gallery, numerous art shows and exhibits that are always running, The Ghetto. Another dozen or so specialty museums (Lace museum, Archaeological musuem, etc).

Too many churches to list with interesting and world-class art and architecture, but...Basilica Santa Mariadella Salute, Basilica dei Frari, Santa Maria dei Miracoli, San Sebastiano, San Pietro di Castello, Santo Giovanni E Paolo, Madonna dell'Orto. Venice's churches have some of Italy's greatest works of art--many free to view--by the likes of Tintoretto, Veronese, Titian, Bellini, Vivarini, and Carpaccio.

Scuola Grande di San Rocco, Scuola San Giorgio degli Schiavoni, Scuola San Nicolo, Scuola Grande Dei Carmini, Scuole Grande of San Rocco.

Campo Santa Maria Formosa, Ca’ Rezzonico museum, Querini-Stampalia palace/museum, San Giovanni Evangelista, Ponte di Rialto, Rialto market, Ca’ d’Oro, Ca' Pesaro museum, gondola tour of smaller, hidden canals. Opera and concerts at La Fenice and other venues. Walking away from the daytripping herds and discovering a quiet, secret city that most tourists have no clue exists--quiet campos with perhaps a restaurant or two and a couple of shops, and neighborhood children playing or couples strolling before dinner.

And don't forget the Lido of Venice beach resort.

jrecm

Follow the gondoliers to their favorite restaurant. The lunches are usually good and you may also be served with these unique soup spoons. These are the experiences that make Venice so memorable. Click here to see the gondoliers and our cutlery.
http://tinyurl.com/lunch22