Sailing With Uniworld in Venice Should Be on Everyone’s Bucket List

My favorite aspects of this trip were first and foremost, the incredible access that Uniworld arranged and the best tour guide on the planet to visit St. Mark's Basilica and Doge's Palace. Those two aspects alone made the entire trip worth it and are experiences I'll never forget.

Uniworld also docks at lesser-visited parts of Venice like Chioggia, Murano, Burano, and Torcello, which further adds to the exclusive nature of the trip and feeling like you’re getting ‘insider’ access.

Finally, to be able to see all these things without the crowds and over-tourism that Venice is sadly known for, added so much value to the trip because we were able to see these world-class architectural landmarks after-hours in private viewings, and visit places like Rialto Market and Bridge early morning, by private water taxi, and get there with the locals before any tourists showed up. Fantastic!

My personalized recommendations include using this week-long sailing as an add-on to bigger Italy visit either in the Veneto region (and/or paired with Verona, Trieste, Bologna, or Milan) or even as a jumping off point for heading into Slovenia or Croatia to the east... or grabbing the Frecciarossa (fast train) down to Rome, Florence, and beyond!

One more thing—we did this sailing in April at the beginning of the season, which meant cooler temperatures and some light rain here and there, but I would recommend that time (or very early May) for even fewer crowds and tourists than in the summer.

Food & drink in port

Tips and recommendations for Venice include wandering the small alleyways/streets near the Port of San Basilio (where the SS La Venezia is docked), which is filled with charming restaurants and cafes that are frequented more by locals than tourists. The ship overnighted a couple times in Venice’s main port during our sailing, and both times we headed out to a local restaurant for dinner instead of eating on the ship that night.

Another day, we walked over to the Dorsoduro neighborhood for an Apertivo/Cicchetti crawl, which was so much fun (not to mention delicious!).

Food & drink on board

One tip for enjoying the ship itself is all the wines and cocktails they pour are very local to the region, so we enjoyed sampling those every night while listening to the evening port talk before dinner.

Meal times are fixed on Uniworld but we didn’t find that an issue since there was always free-flowing coffee, tea, cookies, fruit, and other nibbles provided throughout the day—plus, we spent so much time in port on this itinerary and got to enjoy local specialties every day while walking around.

For more inspiration and insider recommendations, visit our Venice page.