Venice Highlights and Gondola Ride from Trieste Port

Group tour
Duration: 7 h
By car

Overview

If your cruise ends at Trieste, this excursion turns the transfer day into a full day in Venice. You are collected with your luggage at the ship, the bags are stored while you walk, and a licensed guide gives you four and a half hours in the city, ending with a gondola ride.

The tour covers:

Transfer from the ship in Trieste, about two hours
Luggage storage in Venice for the whole tour
A guided walk with audio sets, San Rocco, the Frari and the Rialto
St Mark’s Square, the basilica and the Doge’s Palace
A thirty-minute gondola ride, up to six people per boat
A boat transfer back to your luggage

Good to know:

The tour needs at least 20 passengers to run; if it does not fill, it is cancelled ten days ahead and refunded in full.
Venice is difficult for anyone with limited mobility, and the tour is not suitable for wheelchairs or mobility scooters.
Bring euros for toilet stops, drinks and lunch; US dollars are not accepted in Italy, and your guide can arrange a stop at a cash machine.
Your driver may not speak English; for anything urgent call +49 176 322 67 204.
The coach cannot wait for latecomers who do not call us, and no refund is given in that case.
Docking times, traffic and city events can shorten the time in Venice, and no refund is given if they do.

Please note that the tour order and the time spent at each venue may vary.

What you will see

Pick-up with your luggage at the ship in Trieste
Four and a half hours in Venice with a licensed guide
A thirty-minute gondola ride, six to a boat
St Mark's Square, the basilica, the campanile and the Doge's Palace
Tintoretto at San Rocco, Titian at the Frari, and the Rialto market

Itinerary

Meeting by the ship

Meeting in front of your ship in Trieste, where our hosts take you and your luggage to an air-conditioned coach with room for the bags.
Transfer to Venice

The drive west around the head of the Adriatic, about two hours. Your guide joins the group in Venice.
Luggage storage

Luggage is stored securely for the whole tour, and your guide walks you from the coach park into the city.
Piazzale Roma

Piazzale Roma, the closest a car can get to Venice. From the first bridge on there are no cars at all, which is the thing no photograph prepares you for.
San Rocco

The Scuola Grande di San Rocco and the church beside it. Tintoretto spent more than twenty years, from 1564, covering its walls and ceilings with over fifty paintings, and the building is often called the Sistine Chapel of Venice.
The Frari

The Frari, the great brick Franciscan church of the 14th century, plain outside and holding Titian's Assumption of 1518 above its altar. Titian himself is buried inside, and the steps outside are one of the best-known places in the city for a wedding photograph.
Campo San Polo

Campo San Polo, the largest square in Venice after St Mark's, where bull-baiting and masked balls were held at carnival and where children now play football.
Rialto market

The Rialto market, trading on this spot since 1097 and still the place Venetians buy fish and vegetables. The stone bridge above it was finished in 1591 by Antonio da Ponte, who beat Michelangelo and Palladio to the commission and was told his single span would fall down. There is time here for a snack, a drink and souvenir shopping.
St Mark's Square

Over the Rialto Bridge to St Mark's Square, which Napoleon is supposed to have called the drawing room of Europe. The basilica was begun in 1094 to hold the body of St Mark, smuggled out of Alexandria under salt pork, and its domes are lined with some eight thousand square metres of gold mosaic. The campanile beside it is ninety-nine metres tall; it collapsed in a heap in 1902 and was rebuilt exactly as it was. The clock tower shows the hours, the moon and the zodiac.
Doge's Palace

The Doge's Palace, seat of the Venetian republic for a thousand years, where the council met, the ambassadors were received and the prisoners crossed the Bridge of Sighs. Its pink and white walls sit on a lace of stone arcades, heavy above and light below, which should not work and does.
Gondola ride

Thirty minutes on the water in gondolas taken for our group alone, six to a boat. A gondola is about eleven metres long, built asymmetrically so that one oar on one side drives it straight, and by a law of the 16th century they are all painted black.
Back to your luggage

A boat transfer takes you back to the luggage store, about half an hour, and on to your onward journey.

Price includes

Modern, air-conditioned bus with luggage storage
Luggage storage in Venice for the duration of the tour
Transfer from the bus parking at the outskirts of Venice into the city
The assistance of a professional experienced English speaking tour guide for your entire time in Venice: approximately 4.5 hours
30-minute gondola ride. Each gondola holds up to 6 people and will be rented exclusively for our tour
Boat transportation transfer back to your luggage
Audio-sets to hear the guide better

Not included

Meals and drinks
Entrance fees (none will be required during this tour)
Guide assistance on the way from Trieste (the guide is only joining the bus in Venice)
Gratuities are welcomed if you enjoyed the tour. Recommended: 10EUR per person for the guide, 5EUR per person for the driver