Yeah--I think that's kind of where I am. It's been probably 20 years since I was in Venice, but my key takeaways were:
1) It's incredibly hot, humid, smelly, and crowded (none of which should be a real issue in January);
2) Even so, you don't have to go far from San Marco to find yourself completely lost and wondering down the most magical little alleys;
3) It's expensive AF.
4) But . . . you can hop from bacaro to bacaro eating cicchetti and have a fantastic "meal" for 15 Euro. You can buy a day pass on the Vaporetto for 25 Euro and ride the boat all around the Lagoon. You can walk through some of the most amazing churches in the world for nothing or next to nothing. In other words, you can fill a full day in Venice doing all the Venice stuff for less than 50 Euro.
Anyway--this'll be different. I figure a gondola ride will be nice when it's cold. I imagine the gondaliers have blankets underneath which I can get handsy with Mrs.LL--that's definitely something you can't do in the Summer.