Over the course of our travels we have met so many people who would love to travel with their pets but just don't know how to get started. The purpose of this blog is to create a forum to share and build on peoples' experiences with pet travel across the globe to provide a clearer picture of actual pet friendly locations and amenities. We would love for you to contribute your experiences as well!

Sunday, July 19, 2009

Venice, Italy


One of our biggest regrets is not taking our dog to Venice with us because it has a super dog-friendly atmosphere! Since the vast majority of Venice is made up of narrow walkways and stepped bridges, the streets are essentially only accessible to pedestrians. As such, we mostly saw dogs walking off-leash and often without any owners in sight. There are a number of stray dogs and cats in the city and some of the local people take care of them (below is a cat house built for the local strays).


Many shop and restaurant owners had their pets off-leash and interacting with customers as well, so we imagine most of the restaurants (especially those with patios, which make up the mjaority) are dog friendly. If not, there are many delicious pizza and panini take away restaurant options thorughout the city.

As with most cities, there are many Venetian attractions that we imagine dogs are banned from such as art galleries and museums. We however spent most of our weekend there walking along the canals and there was plenty to see and do outdoors.

Although Venice appears to be pet-friendly, accommodation with your pet is not guaranteed as some hotels/hostels or apartment landlords are nervous about accepting pets. Booked.net however currently lists just under 200 pet-friendly hotels in Venice! At the present moment, we have very little first hand information about pet-friendly accommodation so we would love to hear your experiences.

We stayed at the Locanda Acquavita which was a pleasant hotel but not pet-friendly (one of the reasons we did not bring our dog with us). It is located in the Cannaregio (East) region of Venice and accesible from the Fondamente Nuove port. In Venice you walk everywhere and nothing is ever more than a 1 hour walk away in Venice and we felt we were close enough to everythign we wanted to see. The room was fully equipped and clean and a simple breakfast was served in the room every day. There is a good non-touristy Italian restaurant 2 doors away from the hotel and a supermarket less than 2 minute walk from the front door.

1 comment:

  1. We're going to Venice tomorrow with our little 1,8 year old yorkie Audrey! She was already in Paris, Cannes, Monaco, San Remo and all over the US. Originally we're from LA. I'm gonna share our experience after Venice. Also after that we go straight to Toronto! Audrey travels in cabin with us and now needs a frequent flier number because of so many trips :)

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