Gillian Knows Best

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Gillian Knows Best guide: How to get to and from the airport in Venice

1 week ago | gillianlongworthmcguire.substack.com | Gillian Longworth McGuire

Everyday tasks in Venice are different than pretty much any other place in the world. I buy my vegetables from a boat and my walk home almost always requires a trip through Piazza San Marco.1 My life in Venice is also dramatically slower than my life in Rome. While you are here my advice for every part of your trip to Venice is slow down and take your time. Applying this advice is important to the beginning and end of your trip too.
Gillian Knows Best guide to coffee in Venice

2 weeks ago | gillianlongworthmcguire.substack.com | Gillian Longworth McGuire

I complain a lot about the coffee in Venice. My years in Rome shaped my tastes. I like the small glass of water that comes before. I like the speed and noise and chaos of most Roman bars. I like the dark, rich roast and the scant use of dairy (aside from the generous swirl of whipped cream in my monachella at Sant’Eustachio.) Here in Venice even a caffe macchiato has too much milk for me.
April 1 3 days in Rome

3 weeks ago | gillianlongworthmcguire.substack.com | Gillian Longworth McGuire

Last year a reader asked for some help with a Rome itinerary with a focus on markets. I do love an assignment. Paid subscribers to Gillian Knows Best have access to my comments section once a month to ask me questions like this. This post is an expansion of my answer to that readers question. It’s long and might get cut short in your email. Click "View entire message" to see the entire post. Here is my advice on one way to approach the how to spend 3 days in Rome question.
Fammi una domanda March 2025

1 month ago | gillianlongworthmcguire.substack.com | Gillian Longworth McGuire

The first months of my 2025 unfurled slowly. Until this month I did not travel further than across the lagoon over to the Lido for lunch and to Verona for a few hours. Just as advertised March came in like a lion. I spent the first weeks of the month in Tennessee visiting family, eating BBQ and pepperoni pizza and in spite of the freezing temperatures and leaden skies drinking gallons of ice water and sweet tea.
Gillian Knows Best guide to campi in Venice

1 month ago | gillianlongworthmcguire.substack.com | Gillian Longworth McGuire

One of the most marvelous things about Italian cities and towns is the Piazza. When I lived in Rome the Piazza della Madonna dei Monti was where I met pals for coffee in the morning and for a late afternoon spritz and potato chips. I spent many hours on the steps of the Fontana dei Catecumeni soaking in the warm winter sunshine or waiting for a whisper of a cool breeze on a steamy summer night. It is where neighborhood kids play soccer and tourists eat gelato. A true Third Place1.
Gillian Knows Best guide to Wisteria in Venice

1 month ago | gillianlongworthmcguire.substack.com | Gillian Longworth McGuire

Late spring in Venice means an explosion of flowers. Wisteria is the most romantic of blooms. The wisteria in Venice ranges in color from crisp white to deep violet. It falls from crumbling brick walls and climbs on iron fences filling the first warm afternoons with a SweeTART scent. I am extra lucky, my next door neighbors have a wisteria covered pergola that is underneath the window next to where I work. I get to enjoy all of the wisteria beauty and have none of the none of the wisteria work.
12 months in Venice a Gillian Knows Best guide for the seasons

1 month ago | gillianlongworthmcguire.substack.com | Gillian Longworth McGuire

In January I told you about different events that happen during the Venetian year. To mark the Venetian new year this is a different kind of calendar. In all of the discussions and articles and podcasts about overtourism there are two subjects that don’t get mentioned all that much. The much valorized and romanticized regionality and seasonality. Here’s the thing. They are all inexorably linked.
Fammi una domanda February 2025

2 months ago | gillianlongworthmcguire.substack.com | Gillian Longworth McGuire

For as long as January felt (and, I am January’s biggest fan!) February has seemed to fly. I have spent time with pals who were visiting from Rome eating pretty pastries and avoiding Carnevale crowds. It is full on Carnevale season in Venice now. Yes, the pictures you saw of the paralyzing crowds on the Rialto bridge last weekend were real. Everyone was trying to watch la Pantegana on the grand canal and crowd control was not well organized1.
Gillian knows Best guide to Anzio

2 months ago | gillianlongworthmcguire.substack.com | Gillian Longworth McGuire

Last year in the dark cold days of February I was roaming around sunny Sicily and telling you about my favorite places for a pre-dinner watch the sunset after all day at the beach drink on Lido. This year I am home in Venice enjoying the foggy days and my underfloor heating and I am going to tell you about one of my favorite beaches near Rome. Positano and Capri and Puglia and Sicily are the names and places that fill your Instagram feed and polished travel websites. Anzio is not that.
Gillian Knows Best fritelle guide

2 months ago | gillianlongworthmcguire.substack.com | Gillian Longworth McGuire

When the rest of the world is sticking to their new year’s promises of less wine and more vegetables here in Venice we are at peak weeks of eating sugar coated deep fried dough deliciousness. The first fritelle appear for Befana and then with every week as we move towards Carnevale they start to fill more and more bakery and cafe windows and glass cases. Venetian frittelle are different from the smaller and denser Roman castagnole.