Walking Tours in Venice

[citoman]

Trying to decide between two companies that offer Walking Tours in Venice: Venice Events and the other one is Aventure Bellissime.

Has anyone tried their tours- How do they compare? They have more or less the same itineraries and prices.

[missyal]

Hi Citoman--do you have the websites for those? They sound interesting and I too would love to know what others think or suggest. Thanks in advance for sharing.:D

 

Missyal

[citoman]

Hi missyal, these are the sites for the Venice walking tours:

 

For Venice Events: http://www.tours-venice-italy.com

For Aventure Bellissime: http://www.tours-italy.com

 

They both have a very good tour that combines a 2 hour Original Venice Walk tour and a 1:10minutes Grand Canal Boat Tour

[missyal]

Citoman--Thanks SO much! When are you going? We did the Med. in Sept. 2004 and we are going back 6/07. This time we can cover some of the things we didn't see last time and revisit some favorite spots too.

 

Missyal

[Trevoli]

I don't have any experience with either one of these companies, but after looking at their website, it looks like Venice Events focuses totally on Venice, while the other company does all of Italy. Maybe that means that Venice Events might offer more customized and in-depth tours?

 

Just speculating here...

 

Whatever you choose, have a wonderful time. My Med cruise in 1998 is still my "trip of a lifetime". So far... : D

 

T

[LARDJR]

We used Adventure Bellissime in Venice. We did the combo Grand Canal Boat tour and walking tour. Since we were on Carnival, and there overnight, the company was nice enough to let us split up the tours in reverse. We did the boat tour the first evening, then, the walking tour the next morning. The Grand Canal boat tour was great. They only put a max of 6 - 8 people in each boat, and our guide was actually an American student. She did a fantastic job. The walking tour was not so great for us. They split us up into groups of about 30 people. The microphone/speaker that the guide was using didn't work very well. It kept shorting out. They gave a lot of history of the area of St Marks and, 45 minutes into the tour, we still hadn't left the square. We were supposed to have a private access to the Ducal palace, but, due to the high tide that had risen in the square, that access was blocked by water and we would have to enter via the general Queue. Long queue lines ate up 20 more minutes of the tour, and my husband and I finally got a little frustrated with the pace and not being able to hear, and we cut out on the remainder of the tour. I would definatley reccommend the boat tour portion of the tour company. We might have hit the walking tour on a bad day for them. In our opinion, we would not do a walking tour again in Venice. Our guide book had the same info in it, and we were able to do the whole tour on our pace (which was quicker than the group).

[Carol4158]

Would agree with the previous poster. We did a similar thing and split the tours - canal boat first evening, walking the next morning. The canal boat tour was great but the walking tour had long stops and overly long explanations. However we did see things we wouldn't have seen if we had been on our own. I suppose a good guidebook might be the answer.

[treboratl]

You might try the guidebook Venice In Context which comes with 2 audio CDs that you can use on a CD walkman or download to your ipod. It offers 12 different self-guided audio tours to Venice but without the crowds. They are well-crafted and the narration is fascinating.

check it out on www.europeincontext.com they are available on Amazon.com and BN.com

 

treb