I’ve come across quite a few people who’ve tried to warn me off of Venice by saying it isn’t real anymore and that it’s totally packed with tourists and hardly anything else.

Various travel pundits would have one believe that the spirit of Venice is hunkered down, quivering in a hole,

just about to be extinguished by the onslaught of visitors from all around the world who swarm over their beautiful city.  

After staying in Venice for four days I can say that is rubbish. There are plenty of places in Venice that are almost deserted of tourists and the Venetians seem to be pretty happy to bustle about with mobile phones permanently glued to their ears, able to make a living.

I would say that the people who say Venice is a dead tourist trap, haven’t stayed in Venice overnight for several days or never went beyond St Mark’s plazza and nearby areas.

Venice no longer has a virtual monopoly over trade with the east. Times have moved on and Venice has moved on with the times and its trade for the last couple of hundred years is now tourism.

If the only experience of Venice you have is to arrive by Vaporetto in the morning, as close as you can to St Mark’s square, you will run the gauntlet of hawkers and will feel like a lamb being led to slaughter. 

You will feel that way because you are behaving like a sheep that follows a well worn rut made by millions of others, instead of doing your own thing.

In my short experience of Venice, there were crowds only in a few relatively small areas and the rest of the city is surprisingly empty. All one has to do is avoid the area around St Mark’s and just get lost in the rest of the city.

If traveling for you is just a series of shopping excurisions and a way to tick things off some kind of  “bucket list”, then Venice can help you there, and please follow the sign posted route and leave the rest of the city for others who want to get a feel for the place away from the crowds.