Our decision to rent Lucia's apartment in the Dorsoduro sestiere of Venice was more or less a semi-educated guess for us. It proves once again that it's better to be lucky than smart.
The apt is utterly first class in materials and workmanship; the recent renovation must have been very expensive, indeed. The building itself is of wonderful old-world Venice, but the unit is completely modern in every respect. We do a lot of cooking when we travel, so the fully equipped kitchen was most helpful and often used during our stay, and the garden is lovely.
Lucia could not have been more helpful, even running over (in the rain) to provide an umbrella that we had asked to borrow just a few minutes earlier.
But the true benefit of this rental is its location in the middle of an area where many Venetian families actually still live -- not the case in many parts of the city. Seeing life being lived day to day is, for us at least, a much superior experience to staying somewhere around St Mark's square or any other tourist-centric location.
The apt is a five-minute walk from Santa Margarita square, one of the largest and busiest "campos" in all of Venice. Good restaurants are plentiful within a 10-minute walk, as are two Vaporetta shuttle-boat stops -- crucial for getting anywhere more than a walk distant.
All this comes at a reasonable price as a bonus -- well, we were about as happy as a couple of experienced travelers could be.