24 Hours in Venice: What To Eat, Drink and Explore in the Floating City

“Oh, we’ve just done a circle,” I overhear a fellow tourist say. These labyrinthine laneways are getting the better of her, too. I’ve had to keep retracing my steps, hitting dead ends where the footpath stops and another canal begins, its water lapping against the island’s sinking pavements and doorsteps. It’s half the fun of exploring this winding, watery city – which is even more enchanting than I could have imagined. It’s also surprisingly walkable thanks to its small square footage. So I’ve ditched Google Maps and I’m following my nose, which leads me to pastries and coffee.

I’m about to begin Intrepid’s Italy Real Food Adventure – eating my way across the north of the country and down to Rome – but I’m getting a head start with crunchy sfogliatella (a custard-filled pastry from the Campania region); chewy and dense almond cake; fresh mortadella panino; and a lot of gelato. I make a mental note to get some veggies in soon.

After solo time strolling through the city, I meet the tour group I’ll be spending the next eight days with. There are 10 of us – including two Canadian couples; solo travellers from the United States, Canada and Melbourne; Broadsheet photographer Kate Shanasy; and our knowledgeable Intrepid leader, Matteo.

Our group is small, so we easily weave through the crowded, narrow alleyways. (Venice recently banned tour groups of more than 25 people to try to quell the impacts of overtourism; thankfully Intrepid groups average between 10 and 16.) Matteo feels passionately about small-group travel that doesn’t overwhelm local residents, infrastructure and venues – and, in Venice’s case, the city’s literally sinking foundations – with surges of visitors.

Fortunately, when we visit in late May, it’s remarkably easy to lose the crowds by stepping just a block or two out of the fray. Here’s how we soaked up a short stay in this watery wonderland.

8am: Start with sweets

“Meet me tomorrow at 8am at the lobby. We will begin the day with SUGAR.” That’s the late-night message our group receives from Matteo following a satisfying first evening of gnocchi al ragu, tiramisu (made the Venetian way: without chocolate, booze or egg whites) and gelato. And he’s not kidding.

The next morning, our leader guides us to Dal Mas Pasticceria, taking our coffee orders before bringing back our drinks and a selection of pastries: plain and filled croissants, flaky foldovers and danishes with lemon cream. “This is how they start the day in Venice,” he says, as we observe locals knocking back a coffee and sweet treat before work. Who are we to argue with tradition? We instinctively glance in the direction of the Canadian dietitian in our group as she gives a knowing nod of approval before we polish off the two trays.

9am: Visit the ancient fish market

Activated by the sugar and caffeine, we traipse through the city streets, past historic churches and statues, through famous piazzas and over tiny bridges and picturesque canals, towards the oldest part of Venice. Matteo ushers us onto a gondola traghetto, in true Venetian style, to cross the Grand Canal (Venice’s watery high street) for the Rialto Market, where locals have been coming since 1097 or 400 AD, depending on who you ask.

A neo-gothic-style undercover area built in 1907 and lined with stately arches and stone columns with carvings of fish heads houses seafood from the surrounding Adriatic waters. I spot scallops, scampi, swordfish, octopus, sea snails and live blue crayfish. Next to the fish market are fruit and veg stalls with pyramids of local produce like baby artichokes, bitter radicchio and thick white asparagus. Matteo gives us some free time to browse the displays alongside the locals filling their baskets before we regroup to continue through the city.

12pm: Order seafood pasta for lunch

We do more sightseeing and take an exhilarating vaporetto (water taxi) ride through the canals, under low-hanging bridges and past baroque marble palaces. The clouds turn grey and a few of us decide to escape the storm at an old-school trattoria Matteo’s recommended in our WhatsApp group. After our morning visit to the fish market I dive into a generous portion of toothsome spaghetti with scampi, mussels, clams and octopus. Photographer Kate splits a risotto-for-two (with tiny prawns and fresh zucchini) with our fellow Melburnian.

3pm: Drink wine in Cannaregio

We have an afternoon of free time, so a few of us explore the backstreets of Cannaregio, the best neighbourhood to immerse yourself in if you want to feel like a local. It’s remarkably serene here despite being just a couple of blocks away from the main strip of Strada Nova. The throngs of tourists have dropped away, leaving us to the tranquil canals and sleepy streets. We park up at a new natural wine bar called Bea Vita, a much more contemporary bacaro than most you’ll find in this city. It serves modern cocktails, experimental wines and bite-sized snacks like boiled egg with a coil of anchovy, crumbed meatballs and fried sardines. Kate drops our pin in the Whatsapp group so the others can find us, and we get to know each other over a few glasses of vino as the sun reemerges from behind the clouds.

A couple nights earlier Kate and I visited Vino Vero, a standing-room-only wine bar that draws a crowd of locals plus winemakers, sommeliers and drinkers from around the world. When it opened in 2014, it was apparently the first bar in town dedicated to natural wine. “They don’t make spritz, so you won’t have those loud tourists around,” a local told me when he recommended the place. We gather the group and make the short walk over for a second visit. It’s easy to feel like a regular there: our friendly waiter generously offers a splash of each wine-by-the-glass before we settle on one, and, upon discovering we’re from Australia, queues up The Cat Empire, presumably to help us feel at home. It’s working, and as we perch with our pignoletto I realise I’m falling a little bit in love with this city.

7pm: Go on a cicchetti crawl

You’re unlikely to drink wine in Venice without chasing it with cicchetti. The small snacks – eaten before, after or for dinner, like we’re doing now – are like the Venetian version of tapas and are offered in every bar we visit. They usually appear in the form of sliced baguette ferrying cheese, cold meats or fish, like the classic baccala mantecato (whipped salted cod) and sarde in saor (sardines in a sweet-sour marinade with onions, pine nuts and raisins) that you’ll find on most menus here.

Matteo takes us to a bar in Dorsoduro – Venice’s university district, filled with low-key eateries and vintage boutiques – for “cicchetti and ombra” (“ombra” means “shadows”, the name given to the glass of wine that follows the snacks). Over a selection of cicchetti, a few bottles of wine, some ill-advised grappa shots and a lot of laughs, our leader discusses Italian food culture and a few strict no-nos (like putting parmesan on seafood) before teaching us how to speak Italian – using a series of hand gestures that become increasingly intense. “Please, use it responsibly,” he advises after one of them.

We walk back to our hotel now fluent in nonverbal Italian communication, but not before Matteo reveals something to us. “Guys, I have to tell you something,” he starts. “I was in Australia and I tried pineapple on pizza – and I liked it.” There’s a look of shame on his face but our group – made up entirely of Australians and North Americans – is feeling pretty smug. It won’t last long, though: tomorrow we will take the train to Bologna, Italy’s culinary capital, famous for ragu alla bolognese, tagliatelle, mortadella and Parmigiano Reggiano.

*This article is produced by Broadsheet in partnership with Intrepid Travel. Intrepid’s Italy Real Food Adventure tour is a fully guided eight-day trip that includes all transport and accommodation. Starting in Venice and finishing in Rome, it includes a stay in a traditional Tuscan farmhouse, a cooking class in Bologna and a visit to a Parmigiano Reggiano cheese factory. Find out more here.