Travel & Holidays in later life

Spring or autumn are the best seasons for visiting Venice. By October the overcrowded conditions around St. Mark's Square have eased off. Even into November, the weather is reasonably good for comfortable sightseeing. But avoid the winter months, when Piazza San Marco is often flooded.

Quite apart from all the culture-vulture sightseeing - magnificent palaces, art galleries, churches, historic buildings - part of the delight is seeing first-hand how a city can function without wheels.

There's magic about your arrival. From the airport or by train or road, you travel by causeway across the Venetian lagoon. Then say goodbye to wheeled transport for the duration. Instead, there's only a chaotic-sounding clamour of water transport to your hotel, by water-bus, taxi-launch or gondola. 

The logistics of transport into Venice seem wildly confusing to the first-time visitor. The simplest is to arrive by train, with a water-bus landing-stage outside the station on the Grand Canal.

Also quite simple is to arrive by bus or coach which bring you across the Lagoon to the terminal at Piazzale Roma, opposite the railway station.

By self-drive car, signs point to giant multi-storey garages or open-air parkings which charge high tariffs. Better strategy is to park on the mainland at Mestre, for instance and do the last sector by coach or train.

High Street is the Grand Canal - two miles long, 80 yards wide, and shaped like a backward 'S'. Every bend offers a view of palaces, churches and monuments that looks like a 17th-century oil painting, quite unchanged.

The four-star monuments stand side by side on St. Mark's Square, where you can do sightseeing sitting down at one of the famous but very expensive open-air cafes. 

Dominating the Square is St. Mark's Cathedral; next door, the Doges' Palace; towering above is the Campanile; facing it, the Clock Tower where two bronze Moors have hammered out the hours since 1497.

Having taken the standard guided tour, it's time to make your own discoveries. There's great pleasure in drifting through medieval archways, along narrow alleys into unexpected piazzas, and beside canals and over the hump-backed bridges.

Step carelessly off the pavement in any other Italian city, and you risk being mown down by passing traffic. It's quite different in Venice, where you can wander and gossip in the middle of the street, just like a thousand years ago when the original paving stones were laid.

Don't worry about getting lost. Distances are quite small, like in Hampton Court Maze. Sooner or later you'll come to a broader canal, where a water-bus can return you to somewhere near your hotel. You'll carry home a lifetime's memory of a stroll through the Middle Ages.

Read up some potted history - the fantastic story of how a group of mud-flats became the richest trading centre of medieval Europe - and the Venetian experience will come alive.

From St Mark's Square, duck through the Clock Tower archway and follow a narrow, winding shopping street through to Rialto Bridge.

For other viewpoints of Italy, read these articles: 

ITALY CUISINE - Finding your way around the menu

ROME - doing as the Romans do

TRENTINO - on sunny side of the Alps

TUSCANY - Tasting the flavour

The "Time Out" Guide to Venice - Show you how to enjoy the riches of Venice without pain to your credit card. It even includes a map showing the location of public toilets.

DK Eyewitness Travel Guides: Venice and Veneto - A useful publication for travellers who also want to experience the sightseeing highlights of the Veneto region, comprising most of north-eastern Italy. Illustrated with 800 colour photos.

A Great Weekend In: Venice  - by Denis Montagnon - A handy pocket guide to the principal highlights for those staying only a few days. 

Venice Insight Fleximap - Features eight maps of the Venice and other islands of the Lagoon, with details of the top ten sightseeing highlights.

Venice for Pleasure  by J.G. Links - a delightful guide for deriving the maximum pleasure from the Venetian experience.