Two Days in Venice, Done Right

You walk out of Venice's Santa Lucia station and the first thing in front of you is not a road. It is the Grand Canal, full of boats, glittering in the afternoon. There is no getting used to it, and after two days we had stopped trying. Venice is small enough to see the highlights in a weekend and strange enough that you will spend most of that weekend happily lost between them. Here is how we spent two days, and what we would tell you to do with yours.

Day one: the greatest hits, at the right hours

Piazza San Marco does the thing no photograph prepares you for: it opens. The campanile, the arcades running the full length of both sides, the domes of the Basilica di San Marco catching the last warm light as the square empties toward evening. Come late in the afternoon, when the day-trippers have caught their trains, and the most famous square in the world is almost yours.

St Mark's Basilica, and a short walk away the Bridge of Sighs, named for the last view of the city a prisoner got on the way to the cells.

From the waterfront, the island of San Giorgio Maggiore sits across the basin, a single campanile backlit against the dusk. Its bell tower has the best view in Venice, back across the water to the Doge's Palace, and almost no line compared to the one in the square. As the lights come on, walk to the Rialto Bridge. Floodlit and doubled in the black water, it is worth every one of the crowds pressed against its railings.

San Giorgio at dusk, and the Rialto after dark. Venice is a good city by day and an unfair one at night.

Getting lost in Venice is not a risk to manage. It is the single best thing you can do with an afternoon.

Day two: get properly lost

Give yourself one morning with no plan. Venice rewards the wrong turn better than any city we know: follow the canals until they dead-end at a water gate, cross a bridge just to see the other side, and let the famous sights be the things you find rather than the things you march toward. The Venice between the landmarks, quiet green canals and squares with a single flower stall glowing at the mouth, is most of the city and the best of it.

This is the Venice you came for, and you find it by not looking for it.

Point yourself, loosely, toward Libreria Acqua Alta. It is a genuine Venice institution, a bookshop that made its peace with the flooding by keeping its stock in bathtubs, rowboats, and a full-sized gondola parked in the main room. Out back is a staircase built entirely from water-damaged encyclopedias that you climb for a view over a canal. It should be a gimmick. It is one of the most charming rooms in the city.

Libreria Acqua Alta, which means High Water Bookshop, and means it literally.

What to eat: cicchetti and one proper dinner

Venetian eating is a moving target, and that is the fun of it. Cicchetti, the little bar snacks, are the local sport: a slab of bread piled with whipped salt cod, a fried sardine, a skewer of something, each washed down with a small glass of wine before you move to the next bacaro. Do a crawl of them for lunch. Cantina Do Mori, in business since 1462, and the bars around the Rialto market are the classics. Then sit down for one proper dinner, which on a cold night is exactly what the city asks for.

Gnocchi, a pizza, and the tiramisu we were still talking about a week later.

Yes, take the gondola

Everyone tells you it is a tourist trap. Everyone is wrong. Gliding out of a narrow side canal, the only sound the oar turning in its lock and water slapping stone, the buildings leaning in overhead with their front doors opening straight onto the water, we did not care one bit about the cliche. It is a cliche because it is astonishing. Do it in the morning, when the light is soft and the canals are quiet, and agree the price before you step in.

Out onto the Grand Canal, and a Suso gelato for the walk back. Get the pistachio.