Without a doubt, the best way to spend your time in Venice is to go off the beaten track.
If you leave the standard itineraries, you will discover the true side of the city, with its merits and its great problems, the silence and odour, but also the walls that are falling down and the canals that reveal their smelly beds at low tide. Obviously, not everything is perfect; Venice isn't only palaces, churches, museums and works of art but also highwater, rats, magnificent pieces of architecture that are in a state of decay and the continuous exodus of the inhabitants to the mainland due to the high cost of living and the exorbitant prices of houses.
In any case, everyone is free to visit the city in the way they like: walking in the fog, lazing about in the sun at the Zattere and enjoying an icecream, spending the days in museums or churches, looking for characteristic corners to paint or photograph, zigzagging from osterias ("inn") to "bacaros" (tavern), studying in the libraries, shopping in exclusive shops or at stalls, going for a ride in a gondola; but no matter what you do, you are going to have to walk. |