Well, we have plane tickets to go to Venice, but it looks as though we're going to sleep on the streets. Who knew that one of the high tourist season periods was the Christmas-New Year's week? Prices for hotels rocket by 300%, and they're already overpriced. The average price for the week is looking like $1000 or more. Yikes! So it looks like I'll be sleeping on the streets (or sleeping in a hotel 50 miles from Venice).

So with your network of world-traveling friends, you don't have any friends-of-friends who live in Venice and will put you up a couple of nights. Imposing? Nah!!! I'll put the word out, if you want...

Sorry. The first sentence in my other comment should have had a question mark at the end, not a period. Changes the meaning a bit...

have you tried: http://www.easyhotel.com ? I found it via kottke.org Not sure of your exact dates or prices you were finding elsewhere, but it's worth checking out...

Wow. We'll see if easyhotel let's us book, but the prices were cheap - 50% less than the place we were just about to book into. We'll see what happens.