THE first hurdle for a hassle-free trip to Venice is getting there. A number of airlines offer inexpensive flights but we’ve all know the frazzle this entails: fiendish luggage rules, cramped seating, queues, delays… Travelling by train to Venice offers a carefree, city centre-to-city centre alternative.
A fast check-in at St Pancras International and a comfortable Eurostar e320 high-speed train ride (emitting 90 per cent less greenhouse gas than the equivalent short-haul flight) brings you to Gare du Nord station in Paris. Métro tickets can be purchased on board, streamlining the easy peasy transfer to Gare de Lyon station from where you board the night train to Venice.
The Thello train slips out of Paris at 19.15 and, with waiting time on hand in the station, Michelin-starred Thiery Marx’s outlet, L’Etoile du Nord, is only minutes from Eurostar’s check-in. Drop in for a croissant and drink or a well-executed Caesar salad from the brunch choices; when the evening menu kicks in, there are starters like l’assiette de charcuterie and sinful desserts like le chocolate Manjari.
The shower- and WC-equipped premium sleeper cabins on the night train to Venice are superb, the equivalent of business travel, while the standard cabins are premier economy . Both classes include a continental breakfast before you disembark in Venice at 09.35 the following morning. Step outside the station and – voila! – the Grand Canal and the 18th-century dome of San Simeone Piccolo shines forth before your eyes. No airport arrival comes anyway close to this.
Savvy travellers, bearing in mind Venice’s popularity with travellers, seek out Cima Rosa when choosing where to stay. A redesigned 15th-century building is now a boutique B&B offering refuge from the madding crowds. Well off the tourist’s radar but abutting the Grand Canal – four of the six bedrooms have canal views – and looking across the water to a 16th-century palazzo where Wagner spent his last days. You enter Cima Rosa through a beguiling courtyard that could be a stage set for a Venetian scene in a Henry James novel; inside, the décor is a tasteful blend of the antique and the contemporary. Everything about Cima Rosa is as faultlessly appealing as it is comfortable and private.
The courtyard at Cima Rosa
The gilded Gritti Palace, a luxury hotel also occupying a 15th-century palazzo t overlooking the Grand Canal, is located in a quiet square that is mercifully not a thoroughfare. The hotel’s interior transports you into a classical period of Venetian richness. Ornate furnishings, paintings, frescoes and objets d’art and silk wallpaper in bedrooms join velvet and embroidered damask as fabrics appearing in patterns throughout the hotel. Design work, like the Baccarat one evoking precious lampas in the Club del Doge restaurant, or the marquetry in the lifts, are tributes to the artisans that helped make Venice the envy of other European centres of art and culture.
Inside Gritti Palace
Even more private, Kempinski San Clemente Palace is an island unto itself. The high ceilinged bedrooms are a treat and Venetian terrazzo floors, Murano lights and Italian marble bathrooms create an easy-going sense of luxury. The elegant Acquerello restaurant has an intimate interior and outdoor tables on a terrace. This is a true escape from the congregating hordes of not-always-serene day trippers to La Serenissima: Piazza San Marco is only ten minutes away on the hotel’s shuttle boat, you can see it from the restaurant, but your island retreat never feels crowded.
La dolce vita on the terrace of Restaurant Acquerello at Kempinski San Clemente
Thomas Mann, visiting with Death in Venice on his mind, described the city as “half fairy tale and half tourist trap”. That was a century ago, so finding restaurants today that don’t entrap you is an imperative; the good news is that superb restaurants are there – if you know where to go.
The unassuming exterior of Corte Sconta, located where few tourists wander, fronts a traditional and utterly authentic fish-based restaurant where good food and regional wines are taken for granted. For an atmospheric setting, reserve well in advance a table in the inner courtyard under the tendrils of a 120-year-old grapevine.
Hostaria de Franz is like Corte Sconta in two respects – one: it takes seafood seriously without blowing its own trumpet and two: a smartphone helps in locating it. A journey worth making, you will lose track of the number of bridges you cross to find this laudably old-school restaurant and its mirror-filled, wood-panelled dining room. What you eat tends to depend on what’s available in the fish market but trust what is suggested as everything is locally sourced.
Options are limited if you want to be close to the Rialto and enjoy a fine-dining evening experience but Bistrot de Venise manages to fulfil both desires. Four- and six-course tasting menus, scampi taken to a new dimension and a novel interpretation of tiramisu are all compelling reasons for booking a candle-lit table at this delightful restaurant. Alle Corone is only minutes from the Rialto but, being in a quiet piazza overlooking a narrow canal, escapes the throng. A meal here, in a small square room with flowers on each of the ten or so tables, possesses a quality of the personal that can be difficult to source in Venice. The four-course tasting menu is a treat at lunch or for dinner. Paintings by Tiepolo and Piazzetta are to be found in the 18th-century church outside in the campo.
Spoil yourself at Bistrot de Venise
Still in the tourist epicentre, praise must go to AMO for serving impishly innovative food inside Fondaco dei Tedeschi. The building’s history dates back to the 13th century and was built for German traders in the city; views from its rooftop are unparalleled. Acquired by Benetton, the building is now filled with brand-name shops and AMO is in the atrium. The restaurant is ideal for an informal lunch, on stools at the bar counter or seated at the surrounding tables, while at night when the shops are closed, discreet lighting transform the ambience and highlights the architectural uniqueness of the building.
In a surprisingly short time, Venice’s watery world begins to seem normal but a short excursion with ItaliaRail takes you to the seaport city of Trieste and a return to terra firma. Close to the border with Slovenia, the relative absence of tourists in Trieste comes as a welcome break and it’s an easy place to get around on foot. A ten-minute walk from the train station leads to the landmark Piazza Unità d’Italia (Unity Square). Here, looking out to the Adriatic, is the tourist office and an audio walking guide to James Joyce-related locations; the writer lived here for over a decade and began Ulysses at one of his numerous addresses. Here too is Harry’s Piccolo restaurant and a gourmet experience – including an unbelievable dessert of cheeses, chocolates and sorbets – awaits at one of the four tables in one room under a spectacular chandelier.
Further testimony to Trieste’s culinary excellence is found at Pepenero Pepebianco restaurant . The chef here alchemises a soup of mussels, sea weed and cuttlefish which, after boiling slowly and then frozen, is ready to be sliced into thin shavings. An eight-course tasting menu, a four-course vegetarian one plus local and Slovenian wines make this a restaurant of distinction. Al Bagatto, hidden away in a quiet campo, also excels with seafood and delicacies like rose of Garizia, a type of chicory, grown only in one small area near Trieste, a deserved prize winner for its intense flavour.
A sweet place to stay in Trieste is L’Albero Nascosto. It’s homely, friendly and unpretentiously arty with an impressive library of books, original artwork around the place and period furniture in the bedrooms.
L’Albero Nascosto is the sweetest place to stay in Trieste
Back in Venice – Ruskin’s “ghost upon the sands of the sea” – Local would be my favourite place to eat if I lived in Venice and not just because it’s way off the daytripper’s beaten track. Arrive with panache in a water taxi and you step into a cellar with some 250 artisanal wines before settling down to exquisite, impeccably prepared food that justly takes pride in sourcing ingredients locally.
Cuttlefish layer, spring herbs, peas and broadbeans at Local
No one can leave Venice without seeing San Marco and a window seat upstairs at Quadri provides a niche position for any aspiring Doge wishing to gaze on the selfie-taking multitude that fills the square from morn till night. Quadri’s moody, Philip Stark interior is best not described and left as the surprise it is guaranteed to be. The selection of wines by the glass is probably the best anywhere in Venice, the food is heavenly and another surprise comes at the end of your meal.
Venice “a ghost upon the sands of the sea”
Winkling out Osteria Boccadoro’s undisturbed location requires a map on your phone but as an antidote to crowded San Marco this restaurant is hard to beat. The chef plays creatively with local produce – witness and the soigné arrangement of the seafood hors d’oeuvres or the use of pomegranate seeds and strawberries with sea bream from Sant’Erasmo, the largest of the islands in the Venetian lagoon.
And when your Venetian idyll draws to a close, head back to the station with a bottle of Vitovska for the Thello night train that departs early evening, delivering you in Paris the next morning in plenty of time for a Eurostar connection to London.
by Sean Sheehan