In any case, the advantage was that you don't have to worry about it on site, you can start right away and don't have to queue at the cathedral and palace. Our tour guide, a Venetian, was great and absolutely recommendable. She did it really well and it was fun listening. The glassblower tour can be saved. The gondola tour could also have been booked on site. The six of us sat on a gondola crammed together.

Very competent woman with a lot of experience in mass tourism from Venice. Interesting details and basics charmingly told in conversational tone. Even a charming guide, however charming, cannot hide the immense crowds of people in Venice with time constraints and space constraints. Impressive Venice to be seen once - but not recommended at the moment !!!!!!! Unless you need to be seen at the place-to-be. Venice is a prototype, like tourism a city, whose history and valuable treasures can ruin it. Less is surely more beautiful - and above all not more than one cruise ship a day far outside the lagoon.

The tours through the Doge's Palace and St. Mark's Basilica were excellent! Our guide - a very good German-speaking Venetian - knew extremely much and gave us a great impression of the history of the buildings and Venice. I can highly recommend it. Part of this tour included a visit to the Glassblowing Museum. You can safely leave that out: it was all about buying Murano glass. The gondola ride was nice, but you can just as well book separately.