Contrary to almost every other travel enthusiast, I like returning to places more than once.

Partially to field-test my initial impressions, partially because a fun trip is immediately transmuted into heavy nostalgia once I’m home.

I rarely repeat the same activity unless it’s very basic, but returning with some accumulated knowledge usually lets me extend my enjoyment of a place the next time I go.

Besides, visiting the entire globe on one-off visits seems a shame.

Venice, because it’s easy to get to, affordable (we’ll get to that), and unintimidating, is a city I love revisiting.

I have done so several times and never regretted how I spent my time or money.

So I feel qualified to address some common Venice myths.

Venice is too crowded

There are crowds, but where the crowds are is entirely predictable. You will find them:

• Outside the main railway and coach stations
• Along the northern and eastern side of the Grand Canal
• The Constitution Bridge (Ponte della Costituzione)
• The Bridge of the Barefoot Monks (Ponte degli Scalzi)
• St Mark’s Square (Piazza San Marco)
• The Rialto Bridge (Ponte di Rialto)
• The Bridge of Sighs (Ponte dei Sospiri)

Essentially, Venice has one point of entry and exit for its ten million or so annual visitors.

When these visitors arrive on their trains, coaches, and water taxis from Marco Polo Airport, they’re immediately hemmed in by what is basically a moat (the Grand Canal) with only a few crossing points.

So everybody walks left or right (mainly left, because there’s more to see that way), creating a huge column of visitors.

Undoubtedly this is everyone’s first impression, and perhaps their lasting one, sadly.

Walk 90° to the crowd at the soonest possible point and you’ll be away from it in minutes.

If you want to visit the places in Venice that top the world’s guidebooks, then crowds are unavoidable because visitors often rely on them. But this would be true anywhere, and one might as well criticise a football match for being crowded.

Venice is only for couples

Venice is perfect for a romantic couple’s getaway, but not perfect only for it.

If I proposed to my girlfriend in Venice, I don’t think she would mind. If she proposed to me on a leap year, I wouldn’t mind, either.

But the city is just as popular with groups of friends, families, solo wanderers, tour groups (yes), and photographers.

After several long people‑watching and wine‑drinking expeditions down the side streets, the most common “type” of visitor I’ve observed is actually the introvert.

Venice attracts young, high‑feeling intellectuals and students of the arts: musicians and painters, architects and photographers.

Mixed‑gender groups posing for selfies by the main sights are also really common—and very sweet.

And there are plenty of backpackers, identifiable by the frankly astonishing amount of portable luggage strapped to their bodies. They rarely pull up a chair and order a glass of something, always seeming to be in motion.

Groups of lads in Venice are almost unheard of.

I suppose the city has an essential femininity to it that’s hard to put your finger on. In the same way as a vase might be described as “feminine” and a cinder block “masculine.”

Venice is outrageously expensive

This view is more difficult to address.

If you travel to Venice from (say) Australia on a three-week bucket list tour of European destinations, that trip will probably run into the thousands, or even tens of thousands, of dollars/euros simply because of how many expensive one-off activities one is inclined to enjoy.

Flying on a low-cost airline to Venice from a city within Europe can, however, be very cheap off-season. I’ve paid between £40– £100 for a return flight from East Midlands Airport to Treviso.

Getting around

Walking is free and, in my opinion, the best way to explore Venice. It's also a great way to people–watch.

You can’t walk between the outlying islands such as Murano, Giudecca, Burano, or San Giorgio Maggiore, but you can walk almost everywhere within the historic centre.

Taking a gondola tour is certainly expensive, at around €70–€100 per person per hour.

But whether a gondola tour is an essential component of visiting Venice is debatable. I would love to take one, but not at those prices.

Venice’s water buses—the vaporetto—will take you to other locations and even other islands for a much cheaper price (€9.50 for a 75‑minute ride or €25 for a 24‑hour pass in 2026).

Food and drink

Food and drink are the things a traveller cannot do without, and they’re usually the most reliable metrics for judging how expensive a city is.

All I can do here is provide data from my Revolut account. All prices are for 2025:

A pint of beer at Bar El Borrachero – €6 (£5.22)

A Caesar salad, crostini, and two glasses of white wine at Bar Ciak – €31 (£26.97)

By European standards, Venice isn’t a high‑cost city. It’s nowhere near the level of Zurich or Copenhagen, and it sits comfortably below London.

Accommodation

Accommodation is where Venice does fall down.

Whatever currency you pay in, prices are likely to run into the hundreds per night for a double room.

Sometimes you get lucky and can bag a cheap deal if a hotel has a single room going spare, but these are rare exceptions.

Part of this is simple geography.

Venice has a finite number of beds and millions of visitors.

The city authorities cannot sprawl, build upwards, or add more hotels without compromising the very thing people come to see.

Another part is economics.

With so many visitors, hotels can charge whatever people are willing to pay—their market value, in free-market, Milton Friedman terms.

Here I am torn. On one hand, these prices are not traps. They are easily researched online ahead of any planned trip to Venice.

On the other hand, I have had a hotel booking in Venice cancelled at extremely late notice. Ostensibly because the hotel was closed, but I suspect it was cancelled because the proprietors could rebook the room at a higher price than I paid.

But there are alternatives.

Staying in Mestre, for example, is significantly cheaper if a little unglamorous. Trains run to Santa Lucia, Venice's main railway station, every few minutes, and this strategy can literally save hundreds of dollars or euros.

And if Venice fails to win you over, there are regular trains from both stations to the stunning port city of Trieste.

Venice smells bad

I have never noticed any malodour during any of my trips to Venice.

The canals contain saltwater that drains quite easily into the Gulf of Venice, and are quite unlike many inland European canals, which are full of fresh water, gated with locks, polluted, and shallow.

Venice’s canals are more like sea‑gaps between islands. Little straits, if you will.

Perhaps the smaller canals could become stagnant in summer. That would require a build‑up of organic matter, however, which is difficult in brackish, circulating saltwater.

On my visits, the canals have always appeared clean and free of the detritus that might cause them to smell.

Probably, reports of bad smells come from the trash barges that perform municipal waste collections, as is required in any conurbation, “floating” or otherwise.

Venice is a theme park with no locals

This is undoubtedly the truest assertion in this article.

Visitors overwhelmingly outnumber local residents, and Venice’s permanent population has been shrinking for decades.

Overtourism is part of that story, and I contribute to it every time I visit. There is no way to moralise out of that fact.

But, like the accommodation prices, it’s no secret that Venice is not a representative slice of domestic Italy, and I wouldn’t visit expecting to see that.

Tourism taxes in Venice

To help reduce pressure on fragile infrastructure, balance tourism with daily residential life, and support sustainable planning, the Municipality of Venice has introduced a Venice Access Fee from 2026.

It applies only on certain dates between 8am and 4pm, and it is not charged on top of the long‑standing City Tax, which has been added to overnight hotel stays since 2011.

Managing tourism is ultimately a matter for local and national politics.

As a visitor, the honest thing to do is be aware of the pressures, tread lightly, and enjoy the city without pretending to be part of the solution or developing a saviour complex.

Venice is sinking

This issue is larger than a street-level despatch, and I simply don’t know to what extent individual paving slabs have subsided year‑on‑year.

But here’s how I consider the matter:

This question is a complicated one because “sinking” and “flooding” are not the same.

Venice has subsided. That is, settled into the soft sediment of the lagoon. It has done so because the sediment on which it is built is soft, not because of cruise ships.

But subsidence in Venice has dramatically slowed since the 20th century because problematic industrial groundwater extraction has been halted.

The more pressing issue is sea‑level rise and episodic flooding.

The global projected sea‑level rise is 21–52 cm by 2100.

This is a global issue, not a Venetian one.

But Venice’s low elevation and situation on a lagoon make it particularly vulnerable.

The flooding most visitors hear about is caused by acqua alta.

This is a seasonal “high water” level that’s unique to the northern Adriatic Sea, driven primarily by the Sirocco—a warm southerly wind that pushes seawater northwards into the lagoon.

When acqua alta coincides with a storm, the flooding is worse.

Everything in Venice is tourist food

This is one of those sweeping statements that is faux-authoritative.

Venice has hundreds, perhaps thousands, of restaurants, bars, bakeries, cafés, cicchetterie, and osterie.

Every one of them can’t serve “tourist food.”

Doubtless, many cooks and chefs who live and train in Venice take pride in their work.

Highly rated establishments in Venice include:

• Osteria Fanal del Codega
• Enoteca Al Volto
• Ristorante la Piazza

And here is a list of 25 great restaurants in Venice published by a respected travel and food blog.

Venice is hard to navigate

Sure, it looks complicated on a map. It’s dense and tangled, and its streets aren’t numbered like Manhattan.

But that is its charm.

There is excellent signage, and Venice is small, meaning distances between attractions are always short.

You’re not going to take a wrong turn at the foot of a bridge and end up halfway up Jebel Shams.

The worst thing that can happen is that you end up somewhere fun.

Accessibility in Venice

Jokes aside, easy navigation and accessibility mean different things to different people.

I can walk the bridges and steps without thinking about them. Not everyone can.

Enjoying Venice’s beauty comes with physical constraints.

The steep bridges, narrow alleys, and uneven paving can make the city genuinely difficult for travellers with assisted mobility needs.

I’m scarcely qualified to comment, but the official tourist site for Venice publishes a guide on accessible routes for tourists who require assisted travel in Venice.

Venice is fun

There’s no moral obligation to like Venice.

It isn’t to every traveller’s taste, and it doesn’t need to be.

But the common misconceptions flatten the city into something it isn’t and put people off ever visiting.

I go to Greece to snorkel in clear seas and bask under relentless sunshine.

I go to Scotland for fireside whiskies while it’s blowing a hoolie.

And I go to Venice because I like cities where the public spaces belong to people, not cars.