Venice -who's been?

Aside from Ca' Pesaro International Art Gallery, and St. Marks Square... what HAS to be seen/experienced?

Thanks in advance,

-Kevin

I was there in '88. It is Italy's Wisconsin Dells, or the Gattlinburg Tennessee of Europe.

Please no, this is not the kind of response i want.

-K

I was there for one day. Here it is: bridges, canals, glass (repeat).

From what I understand, there are much nicer places in Northern Italy worth visiting.

capnreverb wrote:I was there in '88. It is Italy's Wisconsin Dells, or the Gattlinburg Tennessee of Europe.

i'll second this. St Mark's Basilica is pretty impressive (by that i mean totally awesome), and if you can get into a glass-blowing demonstration, that's worth seeing. also, on a side street is the shop that made the masks for Kubric's Eyes Wide Shut. otherwise, you know how Wisconsin Dells is t-shirt shop/wax museum/haunted house over and over? it's the same thing in Venice with glassware/carnival masks/and... oh yeah, t-shirts. the gondolas are the equivalents of the Dells Ducks.

i know this has been said already, but it bears repeating.

i do have one funny story from Venice: on the ride there, we stopped at this gas station to relieve ourselves. turns out, while it did in fact sell gas, the entire contents of the store in which the restrooms were housed was a porn shop. not only that, but they arranged the store as a labrynth so that you had to walk through every aisle of the store to get between the toilet and the exit. did i mention i was on said trip with, among other people, my high school band director?

Once I was in Venice and after a few days,the city was flooded,we had to walk on wooden ramps. I wish you'll experience that,it was quite surreal.



The best visit I did was visiting the secret paths and ways of the Palazzo Ducale. We walked through the cupboards, the guide also showed us some hidden torture rooms.It was an amazing visit.
I'm speaking about more than 10 years ago,so I don't know if they still do that visit.

Also,on the other side of Venice,there is Murano Island,where they produce glass.It's very touristic,but you're a tourist for fuck sake!!!!

And finally,you can visit the Guggenheim Museum.
http://www.guggenheim-venice.it/

diego wrote:...And finally,you can visit the Guggenheim Museum.
http://www.guggenheim-venice.it/

All of the above but the Guggenheim x 4.7. It one of the world's great galleries and never really super busy. It is an absolute must if you are even vaguely interested in modern art.

My Italian friends tell me:

Don't go between May and early September.

Just don't.

My Venice experience was one day in March, but I see what they mean.

As with many other places, I found it immensely rewarding to wander around Venice late at night. Off-season, late at night, places tend to be the way they are, not the way seasonal hordes make them.

The seasonal horde was something else the next morning. Wall-to-wall jet trash.

It's a beautifully odd city, at its core.

Are you around northern Italy for a while, scelops? Have you an auto? Train ticket?

diego wrote:
The best visit I did was visiting the secret paths and ways of the Palazzo Ducale. We walked through the cupboards, the guide also showed us some hidden torture rooms.It was an amazing visit.
I'm speaking about more than 10 years ago,so I don't know if they still do that visit.

And finally,you can visit the Guggenheim Museum.
http://www.guggenheim-venice.it/

They still do the tours of the Doge's Palace, and my experience of the Peggy guggenheim was very positive. It's also worth going to the Academia, Scuola Grande, and all the other obvious places if you like "old" art.

tmidgett, presumably your friends warned you off because of the smell? Or did they just mean b/c it would be full of tourists?

I also went in March, and the tourist level was fine, the stink was hardly there at all (especially compared to Barcelona in July! That's a stinky city!), and the weather was OK.

Given how cheap and great train travle is, I'd say that it's worth having a day trip to Verona, and perhaps one to Padova (I stayed in Padova, and there's some nice things to see, but the whole town dies at about 9pm, as in, no buses, nothing. Plenty of good pizza though).

Oh, and last thing about Venice: the food is largely awful and very expensive. Good food is hard to find! Please don't be disappointed. And don't take the vaporetti--they cost a fortune, and Venice is a very small city.

Mr. Binary wrote:tmidgett, presumably your friends warned you off because of the smell? Or did they just mean b/c it would be full of tourists?

The crush of humanity.

Perhaps this meant smell. But I think it meant mass.

Given how cheap and great train travle is, I'd say that it's worth having a day trip to Verona

I *loved* Verona. Verona at night is seared into my brain.

I am a Genoa fan, as well. Port city with a lot of character. The old part of town is fun to wander around.

Bologna, also. Bologna is an underrated city, it seems to me.

Oh, and last thing about Venice: the food is largely awful and very expensive. Good food is hard to find! Please don't be disappointed.

The least good food I have had in Italy was in Venice and Florence. I think the built-in clientele of foreigners tends to weaken the typical Italian push to quality somewhat.