Venice: Ship to Hotel?

[digby]

What's the procedure when your cruise ends in Venice and you have not bought the cruise line's transfer to a hotel? I'll be staying a couple of days in Venice after the cruise and need to get from the ship (with too much luggage!) to the hotel on the Grand Canal. What is the best (easiest) way to accomplish this? I expect it will be expensive.

[wwinfl91]

Here's what we did when we were on the Golden last year. We were going to stay an extra 3 days in Venice after the cruise but we purchased the ship to airport transfer and had them get our bigger pieces of luggage and us to the airport. Then we went to the held luggage office at the airport, it is on the lower level all the way to one end, and stored our bigger pieces of luggage there. It costs 2 or 3 euros a piece a day but was a secure place and you could lock the luggage. Then we took the airport waterbus service back to Venice with our carry-on luggage where we had repacked what we needed for the 3 day stay. When our time was up in Venice we again took the special airport waterbus to the airport and picked up our stored luggage and did a little repacking on a bench near the held luggage office before we took it upstairs to turn it over to the airline for the flight home. If you elect to go this route be sure to save some 1 and 2 euro coins to use to rent a cart to haul your luggage around the airport.

It avoided the extra expenses of getting all our luggage to the hotel, probably a water-taxi (60 to 80 euros). It also avoided trying to get large luggage over the bridges in Venice which are mostly steps (no ramps) so wheels on the luggage only helps between the bridges and there are a lot of bridges in Venice.

If cost is no object and your hotel has a water taxi access, which a lot of the more expensive hotels in Venice have, you can have the hotel arrange a water taxi to meet you at the port and transport all your luggage to the hotel and then when you are ready to leave you can have them have another water taxi pick you up and take you to the airport.

Have a GREAT next cruise.

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