Novotel Venezia Mestre

Parking was free. By bus was about 30 minutes to Venice. Hotel seems new, very nice decor, very clean. Wireless internet was out of order, but the hotel has 2, 24 inch apple machines in the lobby that you can use for free, for 30 minutes. I had to wait until after 11pm to get access. To get to Venice required buying a bus ticket at the nearest Tabbachi, about a 10 minute walk. The cost is Euro 16 for a 12 hour ticket that includes water taxis in Venice. Be careful to check your receipt as we purchased 2 tickets for Euro 32 for my wife and I. But when we tried to use my ticket for a water taxi once in Venice, I was told that my ticket was only for bus and was worth Euro 1.10. I had to buy a water taxi ticket for Euro 6.50. Only then did I check our receipt and discovered that the receipts were dated for the previous day and although we paid Euro 32, we had been given receipts for 16 and 1.10 Euros respectively. When we got back to Mestre, we went to the Tabbachi (convenience store) and pointed this out. We wanted a refund, but the storekeeper would only agree to give us a new ticket, which did not help us as we were about to leave for Milan. If we could do things over we would have tried to get to Venice without the rental car and rather stayed in the center of Venice. Price of the hotel through Hotels.com saved us over 100 dollars for 1 night! We called the hotel to check room availability and they gave me the best rate. I then called my son in the USA and had him check the price on Hotels.com. The price was over $100 cheaper.

Euroshock contributed greatly to our general disatisfaction...transportation was extremely overpriced ...would have done much better with a "Venice" innercity location...definitely not worth the price and the beds were very uncomfortable