How not to overpay in Venice: eight common mistakes

In Venice it is easy to part with money without noticing. A €7 coffee by San Marco, a gondola 'taxi', a restaurant with photos of the dishes in the window — the city collects the extra from tourists almost imperceptibly. The good news: nearly all of these costs can be avoided, losing nothing. Below are eight mistakes almost everyone makes, and what to do instead.

1. Coffee seated on the square

Sit down at a table on San Marco and you will pay up to €10 for an espresso plus a 'music charge'. The locals take their coffee standing at the bar (al banco) for €1–1.50. The rule is simple: a table here costs three times over.

2. A gondola alone

A gondola costs a fixed ~€90 for 30 minutes — for the boat, not per person. Alone, it is an expensive selfie. If you want the water for next to nothing, there is the traghetto: a gondola ferry across the Grand Canal for a couple of euros.

3. A restaurant with photographs of the food

A menu with pictures of the dishes and a tout at the door is all but a guarantee of tourist cooking and a bill with surprises. Look for a bacaro: tiny bars with cicchetti, where the Venetians eat.

The sign of a good place: no menu in five languages, and no one dragging you inside.

4. Bottled water

Buying water in the shops is extra money every day. Across the city stand drinking fountains with excellent water. Take a bottle with you and fill it — Venice has been made for this for centuries.

5. The vaporetto without a pass

A single vaporetto ticket is €9.50 and lasts only 75 minutes. If you are on the water even a couple of times a day, take a 1–3 day pass: it pays off at once.

6. Shopping on the Rialto bridge

The glass and masks in the shops by the Rialto are most often stamped out abroad at double the price. For real Murano glass, go to the island of Murano; for lace, to Burano — and the boat there is included in the same pass.

7. Arriving for a single day at peak

The crowd, the queues, the doubled prices — that is Venice at midday. Come early in the morning or stay for the evening: when the day-trippers leave, the city seems to exhale, and the prices in the bars turn human.

8. A paid toilet every time

Public toilets in the centre are €1.50 a visit, and over a day it adds up. Step into a bar: a coffee for a euro at the counter — and the toilet free, and the pause is pleasanter than a queue at a paid cubicle by the station.

Remember one thing

Venice is not dear for everyone — it is dear for those who do not know the rules. Drink standing, eat in the bacari, take a pass, fill your bottle from a fountain, walk in the morning and the evening — and the city turns from an expense into one of the most generous in Italy. What you save is better spent on an extra glass of wine with a view of the canal: for that, in Venice, it truly is worth paying.