Arriving in Venice for Your Italian Adventure
Start your Italian adventure in Venice…
Follow Caterina in the Conversational Italian for Travelers series of books!
The Conversational Italian for Travelers textbook begins each chapter with a dialogue from a story about the character Caterina, an American girl who travels to Italy to visit her relatives. As the story continues from one chapter to the next, we learn Italian, and about Italy, in an engaging way through Caterina’s experiences.
Arriving in Venice
One of the first things Caterina must do after her plane lands in Italy at Milan’s Malpensa Airport is find her way to the city of Milan. You can learn about how to do this at learntravelitalian.com/interactive.html from one of the many free, interactive dialogues on this site.
But what if we want to begin our Italian adventure in Venice and land instead at the Marco Polo Airport on mainland Italy just outside that magical city of islands? Read on and find out all about transportation to and along the waterways of Venice!
If you would like more images of how to navigate the waterways of Venice, visit our Pinterest site at Stella Lucente Italian.
—Kathryn Occhipinti
Cultural Note: Arriving in Venice
The Marco Polo Airport serves the city of Venice and is located on the mainland, near the town of Mestre, just across the lagoon. The major island of Venice (Venezia) is connected by a bridge to the mainland and is served by a local train station and a large bus station. A city bus or taxi can be taken over this bridge directly into Venice from the airport. You can also take a taxi ride to the train station in the nearby town of Mestre on the mainland. The trains in Mestre connect with towns on the mainland and to the Santa Lucia station in Venice.
Unique to Venice are the water ferry and water taxi. Take the yellow Alilaguna water ferry to Saint Mark’s Square in the main island of Venice or to the beaches of the island of Lido from the Marco Polo Airport by following the covered walkway from the arrivals desk to the nearby dock. The walk takes about 10 minutes, so it may be necessary to hire a taxi if you have a lot of baggage or have difficulty walking. Tickets can be purchased at the arrivals desk in the airport or at the dock once you arrive and are about 15€ one way. The trip takes 1–1½ hours, depending on the number of stops made along the route. Also along the same dock are smaller, private water taxi boats that can take travelers directly to their destination.
Once in Venice proper, purchase an imob.venezia card for the length of your stay (4 days, 7 days, or longer) for the public ACTV water bus system to get to all of the major sites on the islands. This card can also be used on the local bus system on the Lido Island. Private water taxis are also available at most docks on all the islands of Venice. And of course, for a leisurely ride through the smaller canals, try the classic sleek black gondola piloted by one oar by one of the trained gondolieri in their black-and-white striped uniforms!
—Adapted from Conversational Italian for Travelers, Chapter 3, “Cultural Note,” © 2012 by Stella Lucente, LLC, by Kathryn Occhipinti
Available on amazon.com and Learn Travel Italian.com
Kathryn Occhipinti, MD, is the author of the
Conversational Italian for Travelers series of books and a teacher of Italian for travelers to Italy in the Peoria and Chicago area.
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Visit learntravelitalian.com/download.html to purchase/download Conversational Italian for Travelers and find more interesting facts and helpful hints about getting around Italy! Learn how to buy train tickets online, how to make international and local telephone calls, and how to decipher Italian coffee names and restaurant menus, all while gaining the basic understanding of Italian that you will need to know to communicate easily and effectively while in Italy. —From the staff at Stella Lucente, LLC
Venice: Arriving in Venice for Your Italian Adventure