Venice - Tips, please, on gondola rides
 

Can anyone tell me the cost of a gondola ride in Venice and if the cost varies according to when in the day you enjoy the ride. Can you arrange this yourself (where?) or do you have to get a tour escort? Is there a standard ride or do you pay by the time you desire to be on the water? Any tips? There will be 3 of us. Thank you!
SG

Cost varies by length of trip, by route, and by where you pick up the gondola and by how well you negotiate. Do NOT do a tour - it will always cost more And the gonolier does expect one - a tip that is.

If you put "venice gondola" in the search bar just above your message, you will find quite a bit of information . . . Good luck!

Our family took a gondola ride in May 2010. We asked around and were told the rate is standard. There were only four of us riding in the gondola and maybe we spent around 80 euro.(I am not sure.) One tip I have to share with you is that make sure to choose a gondola that has at least two rows of two side-by-side seats. We rode in a gondola that has only one row of seats for side by side passengers and one single seat in mid section on both sides of the gondola. I and my son rode on each side of the single seat and we were miserable. There were a lot of arched bridges and most of the time, we were tilted to one direction. My son and I did not enjoy our ride at all. Therefore, even though there are only three of you, please choose one with 2 rows of 2-passengers seats. The backing of the seats give support and definitely much more comfortable.

Here are the fares.
http://livingveniceblog.com/venice-i...gondola-fares/

Hi MrsGo,

>...Tips, please, on gondola rides <

Don't bother.

If you absolutely have to spend some time in a boat, ask your hotel to direct you to the nearest traghetto stop.

You will be shuttled across the Grand Canal in a gondola, along with several other travelers, for about 1E. You will have to stand.

Enjoy your visit.

((I))

I concur with Ira's tip. We are six months out from a visit to Venice - we used a traghetto several times, and the vaparettos - I do not regret for a minute NOT taking a Gondola ride.

ira, docdan - did you ever take a gondola ride? Most tourists want to do a gondola ride for less than rational reasons ... it is romantic, it is in all the pictures, people will ask them when they get home if they did a gondola ride, it is the "thing" to do when in Venice.

I've done the gondola ride and I'm glad I did. Would I do it again - probably not. Was it expensive? Yes. Was it worth it? Probably. As long as mrsgo (and all the others who might do the gondola ride) realize it is what it is, I would encourage them to jump in the boat and have 50 minutes of memory making, picture taking and fun.

tC

An alternative is something called a Gondola Caravan. One buys a ticket for a seat in a gondola that is shared with others. Four or five shared gondolas form a caravan, one of which will have a singer and often another musician. The TI building near St.Marks can direct you to where the tickets can be bought.

normally the standard rate is around 80E for a tour of some back/side canals and a swing through the Grand Canal...

We enjoyed our gondola ride very much--went through all sorts of smaller canals into areas we wouldn't have seen otherwise. It was interesting seeing the buildings from water level when the tide was out just a bit.

In addition to the helpful information already provided, here's more. I think we paid 80E on our gondola ride in September 2009. I'd been once before, and once was enough for me, but we were taking our 10yo DD, and she really wanted to ride a gondola (as did DH). I don't recall any issues about the seating; we sat three across on, I believe, a cushioned seat that ran the width of the gondola.

We prefer traveling along the side canals, so we chose a gondola "stop" on a side canals and specified that we wanted to stay on side canals; that stop was on the edge Campo Santa Maria Formosa. We did not go on the Grand Canal at all. On our other gondola ride, we picked up the gondola from next to the vaporetto stop at Ca' d'Oro.

I feel like teacherCanada, I took the ride, enjoyed it very much, would probably not be likely to do it again. Loved going down the side canals.

I've been to Venice twice and have not ridden a gondola nor do I feel like I missed something. I've seen many posts here at Fodors over the years when people post about how special the gondola was and I guess if it's important to you, you should do it. Now, I've only traveled to Venice in the low season but anyone I've ever observed sitting in a gondola looked miserable :) Maybe it was because November/December weather is raw or maybe they were thinking about that EUR80 that the ride was costing (that's about USD106 at today's conversion rate).