How to make a budget trip to Venice- some more useful advice

How to make a budget trip to Venice- some more useful advice

Venice Gondolas

After the publishing of my previous article Top 7 things you can save money on when visiting Venice I’ve suddenly realized, there there are things left out of it, things I have never experienced elsewhere so far only in Italy. I have gotten so used to these things, that I’ve never even considered them when writing my previous piece, so here I am to talk about these in a little more detail.

I have also decided to give you guys a brief information on the good prices when it comes to buying stuff in and around Venice.

So, let’s see the fun stuff I have only experienced in Italy so far. Knowing this can save you plenty of money. And plenty more at times.

When at a Café do as Italians do

If you spend time in Italy and you are a fan of coffee you will soon realize one thing: most Italians drink their coffee standing at the counters at Cafés. No, the reason for this is not that they are in a hurry, at least not always. The reason for this is, that coffee often costs the double ( if not more ) when you decide to sit down at a table. Italian cafés often do this and you never know it if you are a tourist. All you see is a sum to pay and that’s that. So, if you want to have a good coffee and don’t want to pay a lot for it ask for it and say it that you will not be sitting down.

For your information, the current coffee prices at places counting a reasonable price:

Espresso and macchiato – 1.00-1.50 EUR

Cappuccino – Latte Macchiato – 1.50 – 2.50 EUR

The table price ( coperto ) may add up to 2-5 EUR to the total sum of your consumption. 

In Venice of course there are places who ask much more than that, but once you drink them at the counter they cannot count the table price so by all means you can save a few EUR on keeping to this. Apart from touristic places Venice houses plenty of cafés which don’t ask sky high tourist prices for their coffees, so check the prices out at more places before deciding to stick to one.

take care with the cafés and  restaurants

The mysterious coperto

Coperto is a table fee similar to what’s mentioned above, but what I mean now is in connection with restaurants and almost all of them have it and as such it must be featured in every single menu-card. But tourists don’t know the word, therefore they don’t look for it. There are places that may go up to counting over ten EUR for a coperto. It happened with us  once, that we got to pay a massive 10-15 EUR more at a pizzeria which seemingly had very friendly prices, but yes coperto made the total sum to come out pretty high. So when at a restaurant, before ordering, always check for the coperto on their menu card.

Venice little stores may go up with prices when it comes to all sorts of drinks and food.

So let me tell you the good prices of the most general stuff you can get to buy when in Venice:

Water:          Supermarket price: EUR 0,60-EUR 1

                    Small streetshop price: EUR 1.50 – EUR 2.50

Soft drinks: Supermarket price EUR 1.50-1.80

                    Small streetshop price: EUR 2.00-EUR 3.00

Tramezzini or normal pre-packed sandwich ( sandwitch made out of white bread filled with everything you can imagine)

                   Supermarket price: EUR 1.80-EUR 2.50

                   Small streetshop price: EUR 3.50-EUR 4.50

I would suggest all of those getting to Venice from Mestre to make a stopover in the centre where there is a nice big supermarket called PAM where they can buy most of the upper mentioned things for half the price they would otherwise cost in downtown Venice.

But there is one small detail I must also add:  

The problem of warm minetal water

If you like to drink water you will soon encounter a very weird issue in Italy. Most supermarkets just don’t keep cold water. They are not in the fridge. This happens everywhere ( they also don’t keep cold beers). After a while I got used to always putting one or two bottles of ½ Liter water in the fridge behind ice creams when getting in a shop and take them out when I m before paying, so that they turn reasonably cold, because where they sell cooled water you can be sure you have to pay at least double their normal price for them.

So, these are those things, that suddenly came to my mind that I thought to share with you guys, I hope it will serve you well. 

Should you have any comments, questions please don't hesitate to write to me, follow my blog for further useful information which I will post regularly.