Virtually in Venice

Exploring Venice, Italy through a YouTube video

By: Michelle Lee

The beautiful purple sky reflecting in the canal in Venice, Italy

Photo by Federico Beccari on Unsplash

Due to unavoidable circumstances, traveling has become difficult now. However, many tourist attractions all over the world have virtually opened up to help people gain access to their unique features while they’re stuck at home. Today, you will be going on a virtual trip to Venice, Italy and, hopefully, enjoy it as if you’re actually there.

Virtual Tour Background

With so many virtual tours of such a popular city, you have a lot of options. This is perfect because you can easily choose one or even all to watch. With the amount of time on your hands now, you could probably take more than one tour and see almost all of Venice. There are multiple ways to take a virtual tour such as through Google and through YouTube videos. The one that you’re going to take is a YouTube video from The Tour Guy’s channel. You can watch the video first before reading on.

In this 11-minute video, the guide, Sean, takes you on a one-day trip to and around Venice. His day starts off as early as 6:05 am, but since this isn’t a live tour, you can watch this video whenever you’d like. The first few minutes of the tour set the background of Venice, from its famous nicknames to the number of residents to its distance from other cities in Italy.

As Sean mentions, Venice is a popular travel destination that has about 30 million visitors per year. Due to the city’s small size, everything is pretty much in walking distance from each other, making it more convenient to see tourist attractions in one day.

One thing to remember about traveling in Italy is the online ticketing system. While there are trains that can take you all around Italy, it’s recommended that you book your tickets online so that you don’t have to print your tickets or wait in a long line. Sean brings up the online ticketing system again later on in the tour when he talks about booking guided tours in well-known tourist attractions.

Venice is known for its canals, so right when you get off at the Venice Santa Lucia train station, you’d need to cross the water. There are two ways you can cross the water: by a water taxi and by a vaporetto, which is like a public waterbus. Sean rides the vaporetto, which is cheaper, and he recommends going all the way to the back of the bus to see the best views.

Although this tour only briefly lets you to see what it’s like to take a boat ride across the canal, this virtual tour by Sharron Livingston not only gives you a 360-degree tour of Venice on a gondola, but it also shows you live, rolling cameras around the city. You can experience what it’s like to ride a gondola around Venice through Livingston’s virtual tour.

A gondola driver riding along the canal

Photo by Chantal Lim on Unsplash

Places to Visit

After getting off the vaporetto ride, the first place Sean visits is St. Mark’s Square. This is where a bit of history comes in. According to Sean’s conversation with another tour guide, “St. Mark’s Square used to be an orchard,” and it started becoming what it is today in the 9thcentury. This is where St. Mark’s Basilica stands. In order to get inside, you’d need a ticket. As mentioned earlier, you should purchase your ticket online to skip the long wait in the line. But because you can’t physically go inside right now, you can take a $10 virtual tour. All you need to do is select a time and day.

The second attraction that Sean takes you to is the Doge’s Palace (the Duke’s Palace), where he talks about the Giant’s Staircase inside, Casanova’s cell, and the 9thand 10thcolumns. For those who love a good view, he describes St. Mark’s Campanile (the Bell Tower) and how you can climb up to the top and see all of Venice.

Tourist attractions aren’t just huge historical and architectural buildings. For example, the Libreria Acqua Alta (the Library of High Water) is a relatively small bookstore where the books are placed in gondolas and protected in case of a flooding canal. The overall theme is vintage, so you can temporarily escape from modern society when you step into this bookstore.

From left to right: St. Mark's Square (Photo by Charl Durand on Unsplash), Doge's Palace (Photo by Denys Barabanov on Unsplash), St. Mark's Campanile (Photo by JAYAKODY ANTHANAS on Unsplash), the Libreria Acqua Alta (Photo by Cristina Gottardi on Unsplash)

Even though you won’t be able to taste the delicious food in Venice, you can still be educated on their cultural cuisine. For a snack, Sean grabs cicchetti at Osteria Al Portego. Cicchetti can be anything, from fish to fried food, that act as a mixed side dish.

For dessert, you can take a quick trip to Nino & Friends and try different samples of chocolate and cookies. If you want to experience the local culture of Venice, you can explore the fish market in Rialto. For a deeper look at this market, click here.

From left to right: cicchetti dish (Photo by Andrea Wyner for the New York Times), Venecian chocolate (Photo from Nino & Friends), Rialto Fish Market (Photo by Rossi)

Evaluating the Virtual Tour

The Tour Guy’s video tour had many positive aspects. Sean provided plenty of information on tips and different places you can visit while you’re in Venice for a day. Although it’s not the same exact experience, this virtual tour helped to open up the city while it’s still adjusting in these rough situations.

Another great part of virtual tours is that you’re able to watch them while you’re comfortably sitting or even laying down at home. Therefore, you don’t have to dress as if you’re going outside to do some sightseeing, and you don’t have to walk. You can even save your time and money since you don’t have to purchase a plane or train ticket and make hotel reservations.

Traveling can be extremely difficult most of the times because of the itinerary that you have to plan out beforehand. However, virtual tours like the one you took today can easily take you to a travel destination without much effort.

Just like a virtual tour has its pros, it also has its cons. For example, the entire tour covered a lot of information in a little over 11 minutes because the goal was to visit Venice in one day. It may have seemed rushed, which isn’t the best, especially when it comes to traveling with leisure. That’s why you can always try out different virtual tours of the same place.

If you’d like to take a closer look around Venice, here is a 360-degree virtual tour. This one will let you choose your path around an empty Venice as if you’re actually there.

Take this time to experiment with the art of virtual reality. It can be surprisingly better than you expect it to be.