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Hotel San Moisè Review
When my son and I stayed at the Hotel San Moisè, we booked a canal-view room at a favorable off-season rate and spent a night at the San Moisè after a river cruise from Venice. The fact that we enjoyed our stay at the three-star Hotel San Moisè after a week of luxury cruising speaks well for the hotel's standards of decor, comfort, and housekeeping. Our stay at the Hotel San Moisè:
My son and I walked to the
Hotel San Moisè from the Zaccaria
vaporetto stop
above the Piazza San Marco, arriving just before 11 a.m. Our
room wasn't yet ready, so we left our bags at the hotel and headed for the Lido.
When we returned at 2 p.m., we were given the key to room 107, which turned out
to be in a separate building around the corner from the hotel entrance.
The
receptionist opened a wooden gate, and we stepped into an attractive
courtyard-garden with tables and chairs for lounging.
We entered a door, climbed
a stone staircase, and arrived in a lounge that was pure Venetian: a large space
with beamed ceilings, a Murano glass chandelier, and antique wooden furniture.
(One of the tables was covered with magazines in several languages.)
Our room
was on the same floor as the lounge, but a wooden staircase led up to a gallery
with more guest rooms.
Room
107 turned out to be large by Venetian hotel standards, with a slightly
trapezoidal shape, terrazzo floors, a beamed ceiling, and multicolored
light fixtures of Murano glass.
A sleeping niche contained single beds arranged
as a queen. The non-sleeping half of the room was furnished with armchairs, a
small writing desk, a built-in armoire, and a large dresser with a minibar.
To our pleasant surprise, the minibar's prices were far more reasonable than
most, so that we didn't hesitate to take bottles of mineral water for the plane
on our departure.
The large tiled bathroom had modern
fixtures, including a bidet and full-size bathroom with shower.
The shutters were closed, so I
opened them and discovered the room's best feature: a view of a canal junction
from three large windows (two in the bedroom, one in the bath).
From an earlier
stay at the nearby
Hotel
Kette, I remembered that the canal was popular with musical gondola tours,
and--sure enough--a flotilla of gondolas with musicians and a singer came into
view as I leaned out to take a picture.
Gondolas continued to pass our windows
into the late evening, lingering for a moment or two as the gondoliers turned
their boats in the canal basin. (Noise wasn't a problem, however; we simply shut
the windows when we'd had our fill of tenors, baritones, accordions, and
guitars. And at night, the room was almost eerily silent, since air conditioning
wasn't needed during our visit.)
The next morning, we went down to
the breakfast room, which is located in the main building's former water
entrance. The San Moisè's breakfast was generous by Italian three-star hotel
standards: A waitress brought the traditional basket of rolls and cornetti
(apricot jam-filled croissants), and there was a large buffet with juices,
coffee and tea, chilled mineral water, toast, cereals, and other items.
Our verdict:
The
Hotel San Moisè isn't cheap, but its rates
aren't out of line for a three-star hotel within a five-minute walk of the
Piazza San Marco and the Alilaguna airport boat.
If you can afford it, splurge
on a canal view: Your memories of passing gondolas, musicians, and singers will
be with you for a long time.
Click here for user reviews, rates, and reservations from Europe's leading
secure hotel site (and our hotel partner), Booking.com.
The Hotel San Moisè is on the Calle
del Cristo in San Marco, about a five-minute walk from the Piazza San Marco. Here's how to
reach it: By water taxi: Just tell the boatman "Hotel San Moisè." The water taxi will drop you off at the hotel entrance. From the vaporetto and airport-boat stop at San Marco Giardinetti: See our step-by-step directions to the Hotel San Moisè. (You'll also use these directions if you're coming from a cruise ship.) More photos:
The entrance of the Hotel San Moisè is next to a canal (see tourist with camera). In the upper left-hand corner of the picture, you can see a balcony overlooking the canal from the hotel's main building.
The main lobby has a reception desk and a seating area.
To reach room 107, we entered this private courtyard from the Calle del Cristo, which is around the corner from the main entrance. If it hadn't been raining, we would have been tempted to have a picnic at one of the tables. Note the Venetian Gothic windows in the upper left section of the photo: The glowing lights inside are from a Murano glass chandelier in the upstairs lounge near our room.
A wrought-iron and glass door with its own electronic lock separates the converted palazzo from the courtyard.
This photo doesn't do justice to the upstairs lounge, which looks like an aristocratic palace from the Venetian Republic's heyday.
A wooden staircase leads up to a gallery with rooms on the second floor (or the third floor, if you're from the United States).
Room 107 is huge. (This yellowish cast is the fault of the camera and the photographer, not the decorator.)
The bed in room 107 is tucked into a niche with a structural column at one corner.
The large tiled bathroom has modern fixtures (including a bidet and full-size bathtub with shower).
From the bathroom window, I looked down and snapped this picture of a Gondola Serenade tour.
This final picture was taken from one of the two large windows in the main room. As you can see, the canal by the Hotel San Moisè widens into a basin where gondolas turn (and occasionally are passed by water taxis) before heading down a side canal. To check rates or book at room at the Hotel San Moisè, click the button below. (You'll be taken to the Hotel San Moisè pages at Booking.com, our hotel partner, which is Europe's leading secure reservations service.) About the author:
Durant Imboden has
written about Venice, Italy since 1996.
He covered Venice and European travel at About.com for 4-1/2 years before launching
Europe for Visitors (including
Venice for Visitors) with Cheryl
Imboden in 2001. |
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