Venice

Venice is a small, car-free city built on islands, and the way it works is unlike anywhere else you’ll fly to from the UK. There are no roads, only canals and a dense web of lanes that no map quite captures, so you walk almost everywhere and take a water bus when you can’t. The headline sights — St Mark’s Basilica, the Doge’s Palace, the Rialto — are clustered in a tight core that fills with day-trippers and cruise passengers by mid-morning and empties by early evening. The trick to a good first trip is to sleep on the islands rather than in mainland Mestre, book the two sights that genuinely need booking, and base yourself a few lanes off San Marco so you can be out before the crowds and still there once they’ve gone.

Two full days is the practical minimum: one for San Marco, the Doge’s Palace and the Rialto market, and one split between Dorsoduro’s galleries and a half-day boat trip to Burano and Murano. A third night is what turns Venice from a tick-list into a place, because the city is at its quietest and most dreamlike at night and at dawn, exactly when the day visitors aren’t there.

Two practical things shape the trip in ways they don’t elsewhere. From mid-April to late July 2026 Venice charges a day-tripper access fee on selected busy days — but staying overnight inside the city exempts you entirely, which is one more reason not to commute in from the mainland. And from October to January the lagoon occasionally floods at high tide (acqua alta), usually for a couple of hours; most visits see none, but it’s worth knowing if you come in autumn. Below, the structured planning — where to stay, what to book, how to get in from Marco Polo, and a realistic budget in pounds — picks up from here.