Yeah a bit late but went to Venice with Catherine on a mad spontaneous trip idea to fill our time off work! I think it was around 29-31st of March that we went and it was good for a short break!
We managed to get relatively inexpensive accommodation and flights (think it was around £200 each whereas normally you would be looking at double that!) which was ideal but the actual place itself was pretty expensive. Prices for food for example were around 12-20 Euros for a basic meal unless you went for a pizza which would be around 6-12 Euros and was great value for money in comparison as they were huge and tasted good!
As far as activities and attractions went, they were expensive too and we found many were churches and art galleries both of which Catherine and I aren't overly bothered about so the range of free ones more than catered for us in that respect. We found we spent our time and money on food and a bit on the water buses haha|!
An interesting thing we found is that the locals get into all the churches etc... for free and so when we asked at the hotel for prices to get into the Basilica Di San Marco for example they didn't actually know and guessed at 12 Euros. It turned out to be free and despite the queues, it moves quickly as people keep walking around.
One other thing which made me laugh was the similarities to the Assassins Creed Venice (AC2). It was quite funny to see the walls you could climb, places to hide and the architecture. The developers definitely must have had a fun reccy for it! There was even a bird on the top of a tower which gave me flashbacks/desires to go and do a leap of faith into a conveniently placed haystack (though there was no haystacks).
We seemed to walk down almost every street of the maze, armed with a small pocket guide map we picked up at the airport it was definitely a good way to see it all and walk through all the different districts. It meant we had more money to stop and have a beer when we got to a nice 'campo' (squares amongst the streets).
There's lots to see any way, even if you don't go in much like us but definitely don't go to La Giudecca (island to the side of Venice). We thought we'd go there just for fun and it was boring, there was nothing there apart from houses and one ice cream shop. I wish we had used that water bus ticket to go to a different place instead!
Overall it was good fun and definitely worth going to see at some point in your life. The only thing i would say, is don't go for much longer than 2 full days unless you have infinite amounts of cash and love churches and art!
You can see a load of photos i took on my Flickr, here:
Venice Flickr Set
