Lonely Planet Pocket Venice: Top Experiences - Local Life (Pocket Guide)

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The Liberty Boston is a luxurious boutique hotel located in the heart of downtown Boston. It is a Marriott property, so you can book a standard room for as few as 56,000 Marriott points per night. Its streets are canals. Its cars are vaporettos and gondolas. And that, mixed with the stunning buildings left behind by more than a millennium of history, might make it hard to think of Venice as a city with green spaces to enjoy.

Until the Second World War, Ferrara had a renowned Jewish community; this was the setting for The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, by Giorgio Bassani, and you can still wander the narrow streets of what used to be the Jewish quarter. Learn the history of the community – both here and more widely in Italy – at the exceptional MEIS, or National Museum of Italian Judaism and the Shoah. Over Christmas the area around the Rialto Bridge glimmers with lights and markets, but it is in January for the Regata delle Befane – the boat race where participants dress as witches – that visitors will want to find a viewing spot on the infamous Ponte di Rialto.Ksar Char-Bagh is part of Hyatt’s Small Luxury Hotels of the World portfolio. A free night in a standard Ksar Siute Terrace averages 35,000-45,000 points per night.

These days, Treviso is best known for its airport, home to budget airlines galore, but there’s nothing low-end about the town itself. Elegant, petite and pretty, Treviso is still a place for residents rather than tourists, and a walk around its calm centro storico is like one big exhale if you’ve come from crowded Venice. Once part of the Stato da Tera, Venice’s historic inland empire, it’s curiously similar to La Serenissima – all porticoes, art-filled churches and elegant palazzos – only without canals taking center stage (though there are a few – the Canale dei Buranelli, sweeping through the center, is the prettiest). And while climate change is sparking drought in Italy, the canals of Venice are usually full. Even last summer, when Italy’s lakes and rivers were visibly drying up, Venice looked the same as ever. Can I still take a gondola ride?

Another great Venetian celebration that's also free to enjoy is the Festa del Redentore. Each third Sunday of July the city gets together to commemorate the end of the terrible 16th-century plague epidemic with spectacular fireworks that light up the canals – especially around the area of the island of Giudecca. This is one of Italy’s chi-chiest ski resorts, but there’s plenty to do year round, from hiking to eating (try the Michelin-starred SanBrite, whose owners source all their ingredients locally). This is part of the Ladin community, an ancient population of the mountains that have their own language and traditions. Learn about the Ladins, and the Regole – essentially a collection of centuries-standing families who "govern" the town – at the Ethnographic Museum, housed in an old sawmill.