Hi
Here is a copy of a post I did on the European port of call board that explains what we did about luggage and a hotel. It also has some sites to check for information on Venice. It is an extremely interesting city to visit that we felt was one of the hilights of our Med cruise on the Golden. We did buy the cruise company transportation from the airport to the ship and the post below will explain why.
Have a great cruise.
Hi
Below is a copy of an earlier post I made on Venice hotels. If your ship is docked in the commercial dock area and you are staying in Venice your options of getting to the ship from the hotel are limited. The public waterbuses do not go to the commercial docks. There are watertaxies that would take you there for 50 euros or so if your hotel has a dock on a canal that a water taxi can get to. Some hotels can also arrange for a porter with a cart to assist you with your luggage but again I heard this can run into many euros. You definitely don't want to be trying to drag your luggage around in Venice much because almost all the bridges have stairs that make wheeled suitcases usless. The streets themselves are not very smooth in places. You can see from my post below what we did when we were in Venice and see if it would work for you. If you don't want to take the cruise line transportation there are land taxis that could get you close to the ship but you would still end up having to haul your luggage from the taxi to the ship.
Good luck and have a great cruise.
My wife and I were in Venice this summer at the end of our Golden Princess Med cruise. We stayed an extra three days after the cruise and enjoyed the extra time in a very special city. We elected to stay in a small family run hotel the Alloggi Barbaria. A link to the hotel is below.
http://www.alloggibarbaria.it
It only has 4 or 5 rooms and is run by a nephew and his uncle and aunt. The rooms are clean and modern with good A/C, large bathrooms, a safe, an icebox in the room stocked with wine, soda, bottled water and beer and a comfortable bed. The uncle and aunt don't speak a lot of English but understand a lot more English than I do Italian. The nephew speaks good English and was usually there in the afternoon after he got off his regular job. The hotel is in the Castello district of Venice and is about a 15 minutes walk to St Marks square. The room rate included a continental breakfast of juice, coffee or tea, breads and jelly. It was just the right amount to start off the day and was served on an outdoor deck overlooking the street. The hotel is close to one of the waterbus stops. The really attractive part to me being a little cost oriented was the price for both of us was 100 euros a night. That left us more money to spend for dinners and other things while we stayed in Venice.
But let me make a suggestion on luggage. If you arrange with HAL for transportation to the ship the day you are sailing, you can leave your bigger heavier luggage at the "Held luggage" office at the airport (You can lock it before you leave it) for a few euros per day and then go to your hotel in Venice by the special airport waterbus service (it costs about 10 euros a person) and avoid trying to lug all your luggage around in Venice where there are many many bridges that almost all have steps so wheeled luggage still has to be carried. You just take your carry on luggage with enough for the 3 day stay and then when it is time to catch the cruise ship take the airport waterbus back to the airport, pick up your other luggage and board the bus that HAL will use to take you directly to the ship.
Here is a great website for information on Venice. It has information about the special airport waterbus service as well as the ACTV waterbuses that you will be using to get around the city. If you are going to be there for three days you will probably want to get a 3 day pass that will let you use the waterbuses as much as you want. Be sure to do waterbus routes 1 and 82 which are the two up and down the Grand Canal and do it at different times of day. The opportunities for pictures are limitless.
Here's the link:
http://europeforvisitors.com/venice/
We had a great time on our cruise and I'm sure you will also. We also had a fantastic time in Venice and definitely plan on returning there for another visit in the future.
If you have other questions about Venice that I can help answer I would be more than willing to help. I did a lot of research on the web as well as getting a good guidebook, AAA's Spiral Guide to Venice, which included some excellent maps. But even with good maps expect to get lost at least once a day as you wander around Venice. It is part of the charm of the city and supposingly even residents can lost in the districts they don't live in. My wife had visited Venice with a tour group before were married (we have been married 30 years) so her visit was a long time ago but the major difference she noticed was the additional crowds. But if you get out of the St Mark's and Rialto bridge areas there are quiet residental streets and canals as well as great small local places to eat and drink. One of the pieces of advice that we had read before we left was to avoid any restaurants that advertise a "tourist menu" out front. The one of the only negatives was the bad exchange rate (1.15 to 1.18 dollars per one euro_ which made everything a little more expensive. But it's hard to imagine sitting down in Venice for dinner and not ordering a bottle of wine so our evening meals tended to be a little more expensive. We ate our breakfast at the hotel and usually picked up sandwiches or pizza on the go for lunch. There is a "seating charge", I think it is called a "bread and service charge" if you sit down in a restaurant and order from the waiter or waitress so we picked up our lunches and found a shady place overlooking a canal to eat them.
HAL Noordam, Zaandam, Veendam, Westerdam
Golden Princess
Costa Atlantica
RCCL Enchantment of the Seas
