While it would be useful to know some basic Italian, you can easily get by in Venice just speaking English.

No cars! With the exception of a small area in the northwestern corner of the island near the train station, Venice has no roads. You’ll get around on foot or by boat.

Surprising as it may sound, the public transit system in Venice is very efficient. The water taxis (vaporetti) stop all along the Grand Canal and around the island just like subway stops. The Venezia Unica website has lots of useful information including options for multi-day passes.

The skeleton key for unlocking the vaporetto is the CheBateo? app. We cannot emphasize how useful this app is; it will give you up-to-the minute data on when boats are arriving where, how long the routes take, and so on.

In addition to the vaporetti, you can use a traghetto for short, quick passage across the canal. The traghetti are essentially gondolas that ferry you right across the canal for 4 euro. These can be very convenient when, say, you want to walk to a different neighborhood on the other side of the water, yet one of the main bridges is out of your way.

There are three main bridges along the canal: the Scalzi, near the train station; the famous Rialto, near the basilica of San Marco, and the Accademia, along the southernmost part of the Grand Canal.