Excellent tour and glad we were able to skip the line as we were there during Carnival and it was very crowded. Not sure this is necessary if the crowds are down but having an English speaking tour guide that knows so much about the art work and history was invaluable.

The tour was very interesting and good value, thus the four stars. However, the joining instructions could have been clearer as we turned up the meeting point well in advance but only realised just minutes the tour was about to start and no-one had appeared to check us in (as had been the case for our waling tour the day before) that the queue at one of the souvenir stalls was actually a line of people checking in for ours and a number of other tours. We could easily have missed out on the tour if we had not noticed. The joining instructions just said to meet at the meeting point and no mention of having to check in and obtain other tickets. As it was, our guide was expecting 24 people in the group but there ended up being only 12 of us and so I suspect some or all of the others who had booked missed out due to the above.

Amazing tour ! Very informative and mind-baffling to see how the huge hall was built. Especially the underground prisons are an interesting sight to behold. The guide was very friendly too. You can easily skip the hour-long line for both the Doge’s Palace and the Saint Mark’s Basilisk, which is a big plus.