Venice Travel Blog

An aerial photo of Venice and the Venetian Lagoon

2013-05-22T14:09:09-05:00

Cheryl took this aerial photo from a KLM passenger jet after the plane flew out over the Adriatic sea, turned, and crossed the Venetian Lagoon before heading north toward the Alps. We've added captions that describe what you're seeing. The little white specks in the water are vaporetti, water taxis, and other boats in the navigation channels between Venice's historic center and the islands nearby. For an even more detailed aerial map of the city's historic center, don't miss our Venice Orientation Map at Veniceforvisitors.com.

A new hotel on Murano: LaGare Hotel Venezia

2013-05-20T09:42:29-05:00

ABOVE: The LaGare Hotel Venezia (right) is directly across from the Murano Museo boat platform, which offers direct waterbus connections to Marco Polo Airport, Venice's historic center, and the Marittima cruise terminals. Murano is famous for its glass factories and shops, but the car-free island (which lies just off Venice in the Venetian Lagoon) has other attractions, too--including historic churches, a superb Glass Museum, and plenty of restaurants with canalside tables. Until recently, Murano had only a handful of tiny hotels, but now there's a brand-new hostelry in town: the four-star LaGare Hotel Venezia, which belongs to the Accor hotel...

The paving stones of Venice

2013-05-16T05:42:14-05:00

ABOVE: A rainy day in Venice, Italy. If you've every found yourself slipping and sliding on wet cobblestones, you'll appreciate one of Venice's least-heralded but most pedestrian-friendly urban features: the use of flat, lightly-textured paving stones that offer good traction underfoot on rainy days. The same stone is used on many of Venice's 400+ bridges. As a bonus, the city marks the edges of stone steps and canalside pavements with highly-visible strips of white Istrian stone, making it less likely that you'll miss a step or stride inadvertently into a canal. We don't know who came up with Venice's paving...