Getting Around Venice Italy is Easy

As soon as you walk out of the train station, you have canals right in front of you and you have this incredible Venetian architecture. But you're probably wondering how exactly you get around this city, and I'm going to show you how to do that just now. As a whole, Venice is made up of 118 islands scattered throughout a lagoon, and the Venice of our travel dreams is the main fish-shaped island. Most visitors don't explore outside of this island, but Murano and Burano are two of the most popular islands and make for a really great day trip. I don't have time to cover that on this episode, but check out our tours of Murano and Burano and stay tuned for an upcoming separate video. The main airport for Venice is Marco Polo International Airport. It's actually on the mainland, so you have to take a water bus or a taxi to reach Venice's main island. Islay Laguna operates frequent ferries from the airport to Venice, with connections to St. Mark's Square or the Rialto Bridge. The journey time is typically about an hour to an hour and ten minutes. Tickets can easily be booked online, which I definitely recommend, or you can get them at the dock. If you're flying from the United States, the Marco Polo Airport is usually more expensive to fly directly into than other airport hubs in Italy. You may also want to consider searching for Milan Malpensa, Linate, and Bergamo. The easiest way to get to Venice is by train. It's on the main high-speed train line that connects Milan, Venice, and Rome. From Rome, it's about a four-hour train ride. Tickets can easily be purchased online via the Tenitalia or Italo apps. If you're taking the train to Venice, you need to be aware that there are two main train stations. The first is called Venezia Mestre. It's on the mainland, but do not get off here. Venezia Santa Lucia is the last stop for Venice and where you should get off the train. If you are arriving to Venice from the train station, you're going to want to know how to manage the different water taxis, vaporettos, tragetti, gondolas. It can all be sort of confusing. So first of all, a vaporetto is a water bus, and those are the biggest sort of boats that you see going up and down the canal. The smaller boats are called tragetti, and they typically dart across the canals. And those stops are a little harder to find. And the most expensive option is going to be taking a water taxi. So from the train station, a water taxi to St. Mark's Square will typically cost you around 100 euro. So this is the ticket office right behind me. It's on the left-hand side as soon as you exit the train station. And if you're using public transportation, this will be your first stop. So a single ticket is 7 euro 50, and you have to validate that ticket before you get on. My advice is if you're here for a day, is to get a day pass. It costs 21 euros. If you're here for two days, that's 30 euros. So you can see that there's some really great savings in buying the actual pass, because then you're pretty much footloose and fancy free and have your run of the city hopping on and off the boats by simply tapping your card as soon as you walk in. So if you're taking the Vaporetto or the water buses to your hotel, there's a couple of different main lines that you should be aware of. Basically, number one and number two go up and down the Grand Canal. And number two is sort of the express line. The Vaporetto stops or the water bus stops are marked in yellow. They'll have the name of the stop and a letter corresponding to the direction that that water bus is traveling in. During the busy summer months, Vaporetto lines number one and number two can become super crowded. From the station, lines 5.1 and 5.2 go the long way around the island's perimeter in opposite directions. Line 5.1 is a great option because it takes you from the train station to San Marco, San Zaccaria. Remember, Venice is an island and a great place to explore on foot because you can't go too far and it's fun to get lost. To make getting around easy, there are handy signs to help visitors head in the right direction. So my phone is about to die, so I'm going to go old school and follow the famous Venetian yellow signs back to the San Marco Castello neighborhood. It's been a memorable and magical time here in Venice. Definitely a once in a lifetime experience. I'm Angel Castellanos for the Tour Guide. Don't forget to comment, like and subscribe and ring that bell so you can find our next video. Happy travels.