I find the tourist snobbery amusing. If you’re a tourist, what are you going to dress like apart from like a tourist? As to your smart phone, are you saying that the locals don’t have their nose buried in a smart phone, like everyone else? Are the different quarters of Venice sufficiently different from each other (and from other european cities) to be worth visiting? As to gondolas—if you don’t ride one, what’s the point of going to Venice? You can get great Italian food and ride a ferry through filthy water in New York—if you’re taking the trouble to go to Venice, you’re there for the gondolas.