I'm new to Cruise Critic and the search feature returns so MANY threads, if this isn't the right place for my post, feel free to point me in the right direction.
I've always thought that I was a pretty good travel planner for my wife and I until I encountered Venice! We will be on Viking's Empires of the Mediterranean in late September (Venice>Athens). We have never been to Venice and I know better than to fly in the day the cruise departs so I figured, "let's do the 2-night extension in Venice at the beginning, surely that will give us enough time to get in some Venice sightseeing". Well, reality just set in....
Day 1, our flight doesn't land in Venice until 1:50PM. I figure to clear Immigration & Customs, meet the Viking rep, and make it to the San Clemente Palace Kempinski (of course, on an island), that we will be lucky to be in our room by 4:30PM (hungry and jet lagged). Goodnight to Night #1.
Day 2 will be jam packed trying to see as much of Venice as we can cram into one day and then back to the island hotel. Goodnight to Night #2.
Day 3 will be checkout and transfer to Viking Saturn with stateroom availability at 1PM.
Sorry for the long lead in but the questions that this raises are:
1. Has anyone stayed at the San Clemente Palace Kempinski and do they have their own water shuttle, where does it drop you off (St. Mark's?), regularly scheduled or do you call them to pick you up to take you back to the hotel? If there isn't one, are they a stop on one of the Vaporetto routes?
2. Does the port in Chioggia have a scheduled boat to Venice? We will have some time from early afternoon to Viking Saturn's departure at 11PM on Day 3 and I'm trying to figure out the logistics of getting back to Venice for a few hours, if that is even worth it?
3. Is there much to see in Chioggia if we just decided to get off the Saturn for the afternoon and walk around town?
Thanks for any info or suggestions.
