We do not consider ourselves as purely low cost travelers, but we always try to make the most of our trips at the best price. Less money spent in a trip means more money for the next one, and we are two travel lovers, so this is enough reason to save as much as possible. We have already written a bit about our winter trip to Venice on January this year. Venice is not a cheap destination, quite the opposite, but there are still some ways to save a little money during your trip. Accommodation, transport, museums, so many churches, food… Here you have some tips to visit Venice on a budget.

1. Accommodation

The Venice travel guide that we bought for our trip already prevented about the high price to be paid for a hotel room in the city. The truth was that (nice) hotels were beyond our usual budget for other European cities. At first we thought about looking for accommodation far from the city centre, in the island of Giudecca, to obtain a better value for our money. But suddenly I remembered Secret Escapes, that website that sent me mail spam sometimes since I had joined the website months ago. What a discovery!

We booked an offer for two nights in a classical hotel, placed 5 minutes walking from Piazza San Marco, with breakfast included. This first experience has opened us to a world of luxury hotels and trips at a good value. So, if you are planning a trip to Venice, keep looking online for good offers, cause they surely exist!

2. Transport

When looking for transport options around Venice, we were happy to find out that we are still a bit young :). In fact, if you are between 6 and 29 years old, you can buy the Rolling Venice Card for €6. When doing so, you obtain discounts for the Museum Pass and the Chorus Pass (see below) and also for the 72-hour ACTV ticket. A 72-hour ticket to use all vaporettos in the city and transfers by bus from and to the Marco Polo airport costed €34 instead of €52. Taking into account the price for a single ticket (€7.50), buying a combined ticket is highly recommendable.

3. Museums

If you are planning to visit several museums during your trip to Venice, buying the Venice Museum Pass is a good idea. The Venice Museum Pass will give you access to all the museums belonging to the association Musei Civici Venezia. We used the pass to enter all the museums in Piazza San Marco: Doge’s Palace, Museo Correr, Archaeological Museum and Monumental Rooms of the Biblioteca Marciana. A non-stop morning that begun quite early!

We also took profit of our pass to visit some other museums in Venice and its surroundings: Cà Rezzonico, the Glass Museum of Murano and the Lace Museum of Burano. As you can see, the Venice Museum Pass covers the main hotspots of the city, so it is a good acquisition! The Venice Museum Pass is available at all participating sights for €18 instead of €24 if you have bought your Rolling Venice Card.

4. Churches

Good news for Venice visitors: entrance to the San Marco Cathedral is free! So is the entrance to the Basilica de Santa Maria della Salute. However, Venice, as any Italian city, has beautiful churches in every corner. We would have got married in any of them 🙂 If you don’t want to miss some of the main churches of Venice, you should buy the Chorus Pass. The Chorus Pass can be acquired for €8 instead of €12 if you have previously acquired the Rolling Venice Card.

Thanks to our Chorus Pass, we could enter almost every church we found in our trip, including the amazing Basilica de Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari or the cosier Church of Santa Maria dei Miracoli.

5. Food

Venice might be one of the touristiest cities in the world. Thus, restaurants can be quite expensive. We decided to moderate a bit our food expenses and we searched for cheaper alternatives for some of our meals. We arrived to our hotel room after a day walking around Venice and we had a look to Tripadvisor and our travel guide to choose where we would have dinner that night. To save some money eating in Venice, don’t hesitate to try Italian fast food or the typical trattorias and osterias.

Moreover, before travelling to Venice we had read a lot about the pasta pots of Dal Moro’s, just some minutes walking from San Marco Square. We noticed that we were arriving to Dal Moro’s when we started to see people lost in the city streets while eating their pasta. Tasty food at good prices. As per osterias, these are kind of bars where you can drink some cups of wine and taste some cicchetti, small snacks that will help you create a good idea of the Venetian gastronomy.