This full day Venice shore trip includes a private cruise along Venice's Grand Canal followed by a two hour walking tour to see the city's top sights. After a lunch break you explore the ancient market area around the Rialto Bridge, then end your day with a private gondola ride.
Your licensed guide meets you at the Venice cruise terminal and leads you to your private water taxi waiting nearby. You cruise the full length of the Grand Canal, past palaces built from the 12th to 17th centuries, before arriving at St. Mark's Square, where you visit the interior of St. Mark's Basilica, built in 829 AD, and the Doge's Palace, the seat of Venetian government since 1173, including the Bridge of Sighs.
After free time for lunch, your guide meets you again for a walking tour of the Rialto district. The name Rialto comes from Rivo Alto, meaning high bank, and this was the first area of Venice settled, dating to the 5th century, long before St. Mark's became the city's civic center. The Rialto Bridge you see today, a single stone arch completed in 1588 by architect Antonio da Ponte, replaced a wooden drawbridge that had collapsed under crowds decades earlier. Rialto was also Venice's original banking district, and some historians trace the word bank itself to the wooden benches, or banchi, used by the district's money changers. William Shakespeare set much of The Merchant of Venice among these streets and market stalls.
To close the day, you experience Venice by gondola. Your gondolier will single-handedly power the boat as you glide through smaller canals and under footbridges, a tradition largely unchanged since the Renaissance.
Review Location- Venice 
