Venice Transportation
by Philip Greenspun; revised December 2007
"Any excursion, even when it was only to pay calls or to go shopping, was threefold and unique in this Venice where the simplest social coming and going assumed at the same time the form and the charm of a visit to a museum and a trip on the sea..."
-- Marcel Proust (1871-1922), in Remembrance of Things Past
If you are in a hurry, fly into Marco Polo Airport (VCE), 13 km north
of the city built on landfill that was once part of the tidal buffer
for the lagoon (see history). There are
frequent flights from most European capitals, including London. The
public water shuttle from the airport to San Marco takes just over an
hour and costs 15 euro. A taxi will cost close to 100 Euro. There is
also a bus to Piazzale Roma.
Train is the traditional way to arrive in Venice. The 31-hour Venice Simplon-Orient Express will get you there in style from London via Paris, Zurich, Innsbruck, and Verona. If the $2500 Orient Express is a little too much for you, there are about eight inter-city or better trains making the 4.5-hour run from Rome every day. The fastest trains from Paris are a 10.5-hour ride. Visit www.trenitalia.com/en/ to book in English
The most authentic way to arrive in Venice is by sea. I noticed a huge Minoan Lines ferry arriving from Corfu. It takes 30 hours to sail from this former possession of the Venetian Republic. I ran into a Greek family of four who took this ferry. With a car and a cabin, they'd paid about $1000 round-trip (in 1995).
These diesel-powered water
buses have been the ruin of Venice according to early 20th-century writers.
They've certainly displaced gondolas for everyday transportation, with the 5 euro
versus 65 euro price difference not lost on the average person. If you can't
figure out the pricing and ticket cancellation system, buy a 24-hour
ticket for 10.50 euro and stamp it once on the platform.
The lines of most interest to tourists are the 1, which makes a huge round trip through the Grand Canal and over to the Lido, taking about an hour, and the 82, which is more or less direct from the station or Piazzale Roma to San Marco.
"We reached Venice at eight in the evening, and entered a hearse belonging to the Grand Hotel d'Europe. At any rate, it was more like a hearse than anything else, though, to speak by the card, it was a gondola. And this was the storied gondola of Venice! -- the fairy boat in which the princely cavaliers of the olden time were wont to cleave the waters of the moonlit canals and look the eloquence of loe into the soft eyes of patrician eauties, while the gay gondolier in silken doublet touched his guitar and sang as only goldoliers can sing! This was the famed gondola and this the gorgeous gondolier! -- the one an inky, rusty old canoe with a sable hearse-body clapped on to the middle of it, and the other a mangy, barefooted gutter-snipe with a portion of his raiment on exhibition which should have been sacred from public scrutiny. Presently, as he turned a corner and shot his hearse into a dismal ditch between two long rows of towering, untenanted buildings, the gay gondolier began to sing, true to the traditions of his race. I stood it a little while. Then I said:
'Now here, Roderigo Gonzales Michael Angelo, I'm a pilgrim, and a I'm a stranger, but I am not going to have my feelings lacerated by any such caterwauling as that. If that goes on, one of us has got to take water."
-- Mark Twain, Innocents Abroad
The best value in gondola rides are the traghetti that cross the Grand Canal. Only 0.50 euro and brief, but maybe long enough to snap a photo.
Most of the folks who are willing to pay close to 100 euro for a gondola ride and, possibly, serenade, are Asian tourists.
Text and pictures copyright 1995 or 2007 Philip Greenspun