Get a few travel writers, art historians and guides together and they can't help spilling the beans about their favorite places and experiences. We mined some of their favorite Venice restaurants, tours and musical events at the Experience Italy Travel Expo recently, and share them with you below.
Venice Restaurants and Food Tips
Eating in Venice is often described as a hit or miss experience--more miss than hit. Here are some recommendations from travel writers, local guides, and serious art historians.
Cantina do Mori - Recommended by Veneto guide Sandro Berra
Cantina do Mori - Sandwiches and cicchetti bar food since 1462. Frommers Review
Canto do Mori
San Polo 429 (entrances on Calle Galiazza and Calle Do Mori, In San Polo)
Vaporetto:Rialto (cross Rialto Bridge to San Polo side, walk to end of market stalls, turn left, then immediately right, and look for small wooden cantina sign on left)
Osteria Bancogiro - recommended by Janet Fullwood, travel writer for the Sacramento Bee
You'll find Osteria Bancogiro in the maze of street-level shops and warehouses that surround the first market square at the west end of the Rialto bridge on the Grand Canal (hard to find). Reasonable. Ms. Fullwood writes of the Osteria Bancogiro in Romancing the Gondolas.
Osteria Bancogiro
Campo San Giacometto, San Polo, 122; +39 041-523-2061
L'Osteria di Santa Marina - recommended by Sandro Berra, a guide to the Veneto region of Italy
Calm and sophisticated atmosphere. Wide choice of fish and meat dishes, as well as house specialities.
L'Osteria di Santa Marina
5911 Campo Santa Marina (Castello district, vaporetto 82 or 1 to Rialto; or vaporetto 52 to San Zaccaria), +39 041 528 5239. Open Tue-Sat lunch and dinner.
Sandro recommends taking a day trip to Treviso, "you'll eat better at half the price!"
Sandro also recommends you "follow the gondoliers!" But novelist Novelist David Hewson, author of Lucifer's Shadow, a novel set in Venice, recommends following the vaporetto drivers instead:
One of my favourite places is much more modest though. I found Trattoria Cea (closed Sunday evening and Monday) through a simple ruse. I was starving, wanted a quick cheap lunch and was at the big vaporetto station, the Fondamente Nove. So I did the obvious thing--I followed the vaporetto drivers to see where they--Cea. This is real Venetian home cooking, simple to the point of plainness but as honest and fresh as they come.
From David Hewson's Venice for Visitors
L'Anice Stellato- Our own recommendation
Asian inspired seafood and chicchetti in the Cannaregio on the Fondamente de la Sensa.
L'Anice Stellato
Fondamenta de la Sensa, Cannaregio, 3272, tel. 041720744
Doges Palace Secret Itinerary Tour
Quick, which tour of the popular Doges Palace might not have long lines and is more interesting to boot? Why, that would be the Secret Itinerary, of course. Just about everyone recommended the new Secret Itinerary Tour. It costs 12.5 Euros. Read an IgoUgo review of the tour. You can get tickets online, but only two months in advance, from Select Italy. So far, nobody has indicated a need for buying tickets in advance, but who knows?
Vivaldi in Venice
Vivaldi was a fixture in Venice, he was born there on 4th March 1678. You can hear his music at the Palazzo Papafava. See Concerti Palazzo ca' Papafava. Although the 2005 schedule hasn't been posted, you can call the Box Office: 041.5208767 (add 001 39 when dialing from America)
For more on Venice, the world's greatest open air museum, see our Venice Italy Guide.
