Enjoy this stunningly beautiful city (and some fabulous pizza) on a budget! (Venice)

Member Name: SapphireSunflowr

Product:	Venice
Date:	03/02/09 (48 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: The sights, the streets, the friendly nuns, the street food, the atmosphere...

Disadvantages: It is expensive and packed, but this didn't spoil my visit one bit.

My partner and I did Venice in July 2007 on a very tight budget, so I'm hoping my review will provide a few tips for how to do such an expensive tourist destination with a credit-crunch budget!
First of all - stay in a hostel. We stayed in the lovely Locanda SS.Giovanni e Paolo, which, while much more expensive than other hostels we'd stayed in in Italy, was far cheaper than a hotel. We picked a hostel that included breakfast, which really sets you up for the day when you're doing a lot walking around the sites.

Secondly, as boring as it is when you're surrounded by restaurants serving beautiful Italian cooking, ask your hostel/hotel staff where your nearest supermarket is. There was one very close to our hostel, and we used it to stock up on drinks, cheap snacks to keep us going and chilled salads for lunch. You do, of course, have to have a pizza when you're in Venice, but the nicest one we had wasn't the overpriced restaurant version we had on our first night, but the huge, cooked-in-front-of-us takeaway one from one of the many pizza stalls around the city. We had a wonderful, family size speck and gorgonzola pizza for a mere 7-8 euros, and snook it back to our hotel to munch on, without having to pay for cover, tips and stale bread! The takeaway stalls also did great ice cream and sorbet - another must have - and it's well worth keeping an eye on prices and not just buying from the first one, as prices varied wildly, often with 1-2 euros difference for the same product on different stalls.

Another bargain find was a wine shop in the Jewish quarter. There are, I believe, many of these around the city, and they allow purchase of delicious wine by measure, siphoned directly into our empty water bottles. Much cheaper than buying a bottle, and something different too!

Now, onto the sights! I actually don't want to repeat too much about the sights themselves, as I do feel they have been extensively covered, however I should note that you can buy multi-sight passes that allow cheaper entry into certain places of note when visiting them all. And please, please don't feed the pigeons - not only is it a waste of money buying the food, they are actually a real pest to the locals and, crucially, the architecture, and you'll see when you visit that Venice, particularly in the main squares, is over run with them!

Last of all, I would advise enjoying your holiday by just walking. With no cars, the winding narrow streets throw up surprising and beautiful sights as you meander over tiny bridges and get lost in cool and deserted courtyards between buildings. Despite the heaving crowds of tourists in the main streets, take one "wrong" turn and you'll find yourself in a shady square between residential buildings, looking at a fountain and being patted on the head by an elderly Italian nun...

In conclusion, despite not taking a boat trip or sipping wine at a canal side restaurant, I thoroughly enjoyed my budget trip to this beautiful city and would return in a flash.

Summary: Wonderful, even on the cheap!