Safety Tips in Venice

Dubious Characters You will come across some people playing gambling games on various bridges, like, guessing under which container the object lies, and being invited to take part and play by touching the said container of your choice seemingly as a friendly gesture. Under no circumstances should you do this - the minute you touch the container, you have shown that you agree to play for financial gain and must therefore make an initial payment. These touters operate as a group and it would be wise to decline from such offers.

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The call of nature. Venice is NOT a good city to be a human. Dogs are allowed to poo all over the place, but not you. The local government website lists 10 public toilets in the city. This serves 280,000 residents and 22,000,000 TOURISTS!!!! - 10 PLACES ! And of course you have to pay! Restaurants do not want you to use their toilets and hotels? Forget about it. Unless you find the Burger King, you have to pretend you are eating in a restaurant or carry a lot of money. Oh, and the dogs? The owners don’t clean that up so you can just walk through it.

Not very nice.

I think that the Venetian authorities really are taking the P**S on this one. Public toilets appear to charge a whopping one euro 50c for the use thereoff. For that money I would want a newspaper, a clean towel and a pretty attendant to wipe my a**e.

I find nipping into a hotel when I am in need of a leek, pretending that you are interested in booking a room next week and then nipping off to the bog whilst they look up prices to be a foolproof method.

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Venice is such a beautiful city, it's really hard to take your eyes off its colourful buildings and charming canals as you're walking around the streets. However, there are lots of dogs in Venice, and between the canals and the buildings our four-legged friends have very little room to do their, hem, business. I saw many owners pick up after their pets, but some obviously don't because many sidewalks almost looked like minefields. Sylvain and I got into the habit of saying "Candy!" anytime one of us spotted something dubious on the sidewalk so the other wouldn't step on it - it worked everytime but once!

When we first arrived at Piazza San Marco we immediately noticed 2 huge queue's. One in front of the Basilica di San Marco and one in front of Campanile di San Marco. We had a desire to visit the bell tower of St. Mark, but didn't want to wait in line for over 1 hour!

We guess that this is one of the advantages of sleeping in the city itself, because we returend the next day just before 09:30u and we were inside within 10 minutes!

I got a tad carried away on my visit in 95 and went down on one knee on the Rialto Bridge, she said yes (to marriage, divorce & my money).

Sorry being a bit bitter there.

The bridge is full of shops selling model gondalas and all manner of souvenirs that you really don't need and your relatives won't appreciate either.

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Up until recently, there were three main bridges across the Grand Canal. The Academy Bridge down by the Piazza San Marcos end, the Rialto Bridge in the middle (which is a tourist destination all on its own), and the Scalzi Bridge, which replaced an older iron bridge in 1934 and connects the sections of Santa Croce and Cannaregio near the Santa Lucia railroad station. So the first warning is - figure out what side of the Grand Canal you want to be on and figure out how to get there, because you can't just walk across the street in Venice. It can be quite a distance to the next bridge (see photo 5), although there are 50 cent gondola ferries that also cross the canal.

When we were in Venice in the spring of 2008, they were building another Grand Canal Bridge up by the Piazzle de Roma. This is the Constitution Bridge, designed by the Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, which opened on September 11, 2009. The bridge links Venice's railway station with the car, bus and ferry terminal on the opposite side of the Grand Canal. The Constitution bridge is the fourth over the Grand Canal and the city's first new bridge in 70 years.

This bridge is very dangerous to tourist who keep spraining their ankles because of the bridge's irregularly spaced steps, and the disorienting optical effect of the sectioned stone and glass flooring. People are gawking at the sights instead of watching where they are putting their feet.

When we were there the primary problem was that construction blocked us from walking along the canal up to the Piazzle Roma

We just travelled on the overnight sleeper train from Venice to Paris-Bercy. We are Police officers and are very safety conscious but our experience was alarming.
At 2.30am whilst everyone slept, five italian/romainian men opened our locked sleeper cabin door with either a stolen key or plyers. After we chased them, they locked the main doors to each carriage and tied doors closed with torn sheets. We were unable to escape or find any staff as the train conductor had conveniently left his post whilst the robberies were taking place.
After we pulled the emergency alarm as the robbers rifled through stolen bags in a locked carriage, the train conductor did everything he could to avoid helping us and prevented us from identifying or locating the robbers who were still in the last carriage. When the Police arrived to check passports he did not mention any incident and laughed when we tried. When we informed the French Police they were not interested.
WARNING: Do not trust locked cabin doors. Tie it from the inside or sleep with your valuables or take turn sleeping. We believe the train staff had been bribed by the robbers or were involved. He told us he was afraid.