One Great Way to Enjoy Venice

[gene101]

Our family took the Star Princess last year and enjoyed Venice thoroughly!

 

Venice is surprising easy to navigate if you recognize the main island looks like a fish with a mouth and tail!

 

All cruise ships most likely dock at the big terminal at the mouth of the fish. The Grand Canal starts at the mouth and goes through the middle of the fish ending at St. Mark's Square.

 

When you disembarked, walk toward the base of the Cruise Terminal (pass all the passengers waiting for the Cruise shuttle boats to St. Mark's Square). Walk toward the right corner of the base is a small gate (short cut) to a bridge over the train rails. On the other side of the bridge you pass through a parking lot of some restaurant and you are at the Piazzale Roma which is a major bus station and the Vaporetto station (bus-boats). The walk is about 10 to 15 minutes.

 

Purchase the water-bus tickets and may be also purchase a nice map with all the bus routes from the indoor counter. Go to the #1 water-bus dock for the trip through the Grand Canal! Since you are almost at the beginning of the route, you are more than likely be able to seat at the front of the boat and have a great view of the Grand Canal. The water-bus takes about 45 minutes to go from Piazzale Roma to the stop at St. Mark's square. The ticket is about 5 Euro. One last thing, make sure you are taking #1 water-bus to "San Marco via Rialto". Some of the boats only stop at the Rialto Bridge.

 

I heard some passengers complained that there are only three bridges to pass over the Grand Canal but they did not realize that there are Traghetto crossing points to let local people go from one side to the other. They are gondolas shuttling locals back and forth and only 0.4 Euro! Those are the gondolas with people standing.

 

Hope this help!

 

gene

[seacrystal]

Thank you so much for the valuable information on Venice. My DH and I are planning a Greek Isles/Mediterranean cruise in September 2006 and I am compiling information already. I have pasted your post into a Word doc for my notebook.

 

This is what is so great about CC. Everyone helps each other!:D

[CgyTravelJunkies]

GREAT INFO!!! We are leaving tomorrow and will be taking the Venice cruise aboard the Costa Victoria. We get in at 10am and plan on taking the cruise shuttle to the port, dropping our bags and exploring for a couple of hours prior to embarkation on the first day. Seeing that it is about a 45 minute ride each way, do you think we will have time?

 

 

I would love to hear your thoughts!!!

[ClaudiaF]

Just an added thought.. one water bus does the Grand Canal "TOUR"..that means it only does the whole grand canal.. other water buses will just take you from point A to say St. Marks' square.. If you don't want to do the whole long tour and just want to get to the square.. make sure you buy the right ticket ( and hop on the right ( water) bus ( look for numbers in front of the boat)...

[wwinfl91]

For trips down the Grand Canal, which is one of the main traffic routes that one uses to get around in Venice, there are several waterbus routes that cover this canal but the two main ones are the Number One and the Number 82. These both go all the way up and down the Grand Canal with the main difference being that one stops at every waterbus stop on the Grand Canal and the other is the “express” version on only hits the main stops.

 

Number one is the one that stops everywhere and the Number eighty-two is the “express” waterbus.

 

I dug this information out of my write up on our trip on the Golden Princess Barcelona to Venice. So if you want the one with the fewest stops, take waterbus number eighty two (82).

 

Have a great next cruise.

[gene101]

We used #1 boat to go through the Grand Canal and another route (forgot the #) to go back to the ship during lunch time.

 

We then took another boat to Murano island.

 

gene