I’ve noticed people planning trips to Venice fretting in travel forums about trips to Venice and wanting to avoid the film festival; I’m here to tell them that I don’t think it’s necessary. In fact, it seems like a great time to go.
I’ve been to Venice when it was so crowded that I really started to hate Venice, but it wasn’t like that this time and maybe for a couple of reasons; a ) the film festival starts when August ends and Europeans are ending their August vacations, and b ) the festival is pretty well run and Venice is ready for it.
I imagined the worst, just as the fretful tourists who want to avoid it do. I imagined long lines at the Vaporetti and massive crowds in the street. It was crowded, but I’ve seen worse, and I really didn’t feel stressed out at all, unless you want to count the personal stress I was feeling when I was trying to figure out what to do with my press pass.
With increased Vaporetti services between Lido and Venice and shuttle buses around Lido, both affordable (I paid 11 euro for a 72 hour tourist pass that I could use for all Venice transportation) I found getting around the very least of my worries.
If you like movies, a trip to Venice during the festival seems like a smart idea. If anything, the crowds seemed lighter in Venice than during the heart of the summer months, so you can go, enjoy Venice, and hop over to Lido to get a look at movie stars like George Clooney and Madonna (although we’d rather see the Italians; right?)
And you don’t have set foot on Lido to screen some of the movies. Every evening in Campo San Polo, a piazza not too far from the Rialto, there were outdoor screenings of some of the bigger films – I saw Terraferma and Quando La Nottethere.
Lido is beautiful and I’d like to stay there when I go next year; I’d love to find a reasonably priced hotel and rent a bike. An 11 km long sandbar, it has a gorgeous beach and lots of hotels, restaurants and shops – it’s so much more than I’d pictured. The only criticism I have would be of the area that the locals call their “Ground Zero”, a huge hole right next to the red carpet area that they paid 50 million dollars to dig (only to find layer upon layer of asbestos) three years ago. I guess they’re out of money and nobody knows when the project will continue. Festival organizers seem to like to say that it doesn’t detract from the glamour of the red carpet area – but it sure does.
This year I stayed at a tiny and very economical little hotel in Venice that I’ve stayed at many times called Palazzo Odoni, and I’m very comfortable there, but it would be a big luxury not to have to make the half hour Vaporetto trip over to Lido.
I Love Italian Everything 