Venice and the Royal Clipper
St Mark’s Square in the evening is a must – 3 competing classical music groups playing at different cafes provided a last-night-at-the-proms style atmosphere and we spent a few very pleasant hours there during our stay listening to the music and people watching.
Getting lost in Venice is easy – but enjoyable. We wandered up back alleys getting frustrated when we came to a dead end (ie another canal) and had to turn back. But we weren’t in a hurry – we just enjoyed the scenery and the frequent surprise of coming across a pretty little courtyard with an inviting bar/restaurant where we could take a break and a drink.
We thought we would have a drink in the legendary Harry’s Bar, having had one of our best meals ever in Harry’s Bar in Rome, but beware of the dress code of long trousers for men even for just a drink during the day – we weren’t made to feel welcome and were seated in a very unatmospheric area upstairs so we decided not to stay. Far better were the random bars/cafes that we found – all good and much more reasonable prices.
Venice has a reputation of being really expensive, but there are many places which are reasonable –soft drink were on average around 4 Euros, glass of wine/ beer about 8 Euros, and pizza around 12 Euros, which for a touristy city is not too bad. 80 Euros for a 30 minute gondola ride, but worth it!
Water taxis, however, are VERY expensive – minimum charge 50 Euros, and 110 Euros to the airport. Water buses (vaparettos) are much more reasonable and you can buy 12 hour, day, or multi-day passes without breaking the budget. You cannot really avoid using some form of water transport in Venice and although a pleasant way to get around, the vaparettos can get extremely busy during high season, and with so much water traffic around it’s not always a smooth journey!
We then made our way to the San Basilio port to embark the beautiful Royal Clipper. Such a beautiful 5 masted sailing ship, with elegant dark wooden furnishings. Sailaway each evening is not to be missed and sailing from Venice was magical, up the Giudecca Canal and along the lagoon, watching people take photos of us, flashbulbs going off several times a second in the setting sun. On the last evening we had a wonderful experience seeing the ship with all the sails up from tender boats. Food was good and plentiful, although perhaps not excellent, and the crew were friendly enough, but the experience is mainly about the ship and meeting fellow passengers. There is no entertainment as such, as on “normal” cruise ships, although they did have an hour each evening at 10pm where they tried to get us to join in things like a fashion show, a pirate’s evening and a talent night – not to our taste, but after 11pm it reverted back to either taped music (oldies and goodies) or a singer who was very good – at first I thought it was taped music of cover versions and then I noticed him in the corner singing live.
On our short 3 night cruise we visited Rovinj in Croatia, which is really pretty, and then the next day Piran in Slovenia – also pretty but Rovinj was the gem. Then back to Venice and the Hilton Molino Stucky which is located opposite the San Basilio port. A nice enough hotel with a very rare (for Venice) swimming pool on the roof, but it’s large and more impersonal, with very limited outside seating to have a drink and enjoy the views. The Venice Film Festival was taking place during our stay and we weren’t able to have an evening drink at the rooftop bar due to a private party which was very disappointing – even more disappointing was that I didn’t bump into George Clooney!!
All in all another wonderful holiday!
