Venice | Viator Travel Blog

My Venice Walking Tour

14. August 2009

What’s the secret to Venice? Comfortable shoes. But please, this does not mean you should throw style out the window. Venice is a stylish city. Paved in marble. Actually, more correctly I think it’s Istrian stone from across the Adriatic Sea in Croatia. Whatever it is, it’s hard. Very tiring on the legs and feet. After a few days of negotiating the labyrinthine streets, you’ll just want a Bellini, a seat and a foot rub.

Suggested Itineraries & Top Attractions in Venice

4. August 2009

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Suggested Itineraries & Top Attractions in Venice

Venice is a conundrum, it is gorgeous but over-run with admirers. It can be flashy and cliche and yet around a corner can reveal a hidden and unexpected beauty. It draws you in so that you forget to notice all the cracks on the surface, the continuous face lifts, the flooding, the smell. In spite of the number of claims of other cities being "Venice of the north/south/east/west", there really is no where else like it. So the only sensible thing to do is to jump right in and enjoy.

Venice: Boating through Lagoon City

25. June 2009

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When you travel to Venice, it’s easy to tramp around the narrow streets of the historic centre, getting lost at every turn and not caring because everything you see is beautiful, magical and wonderfully old. And at the end of the day, if your feet are aching and your eyes are popping out with an overload of looking, you can sit in an outdoor café sipping on a Spritz or a Bellini and gaze out over the water of the lagoon to relax. But the lagoon deserves a bit more attention than just that. It’s because of the lagoon and its many tiny islands that Venice is even here. Take time to hop on a boat and see a little more than just the Piazza San Marco.

Festival of the Senses: Venice’s Biennale & Manifesta7

10. December 2008

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Festival of the Senses: Venice’s Biennale & Manifesta7

Sometimes when you travel, you find yourself in the pursuit of a redeeming moment – a transformation of perspective that renders it all anew. Sometimes it's just the promise of more. Even hedonism implies pleasure 'for the sake of it'. This is about 'more' because you have to – like driving in quicksand, you go in deeper, because you must. The motor that moved our wheels? The Architecture Biennale in Venice back in September.

The Venice Biennale

27. July 2007

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Venice brings to mind a glorious past of glamorous parties in Palazzo lining the Grand Canal: champagne flowing, voices chattering, rich fabrics rustling. This year, I was lucky enough to be in Venice during the opening of the 52nd Venice Biennale. There were parties, there was champagne (fabrics, sadly, do not rustle much these days). I was privy to the glamour of it all from a lumbering vaparetto on the Grand Canal. But even getting a glimpse of people mingling on the rooftop of the Peggy Guggenheim Gallery, gossiping in the party-dressed Rialto Market and networking at the Palazzo Giustinian Lolin made me feel I was in Venice at a special time.

Magical, Marvelous Venice

2. July 2007

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If you can, arrive in Venice by boat. I caught the ferry from Croatia. And watching the flat coastline fade into sandy beaches that appear out of the sea, passing through the entrance to the lagoon and slipping past island after island before finally seeing the churches of central Venice rise up -- it's like a beautiful dream.