With all of my trips to Europe, and the year we have now spent here on this trip, I had never yet been to Venice until the trip we took a few weeks back.  It had become a bucket list item and needed to be attended to before too much more time had expired.  It was worth the wait and the effort to go.

I sometimes wonder at the ease with which we are able to take these trips.  Visiting Venice from our current location is not much more difficult or expensive than visiting say Spokane or Portland from Seattle.  If we don’t take advantage of the proximity of all that our current location has to offer, I would never forgive myself.

This trip was with just the two of us wandering through grand streets and small alleyways of a magnificent city.  Couldn’t resist this great picture of my best travel buddy.

When I see the thousands of tourists from all over the world and everyone of them is using a camera or a smart phone to snap pictures of everything in sight, I can sometimes wonder why I even bother.  Venice has to be one of the most photographed cities on earth, and for good reason.  It is remarkably beautiful from every angle.  But I, like everyone else, believe in the uniqueness of my own eye and that I will bring new perspective to the table.  Later in this post I will add some pictures of the most common sights if only to prove we were actually in Venice, but first something a little different.

Venice is made up of several islands that are part of an archipelago of over 30 inhabited islands in the middle of a lagoon off the Adriatic Sea.  Although there is a causeway leading to Venice, it ends immediately in a parking lot (upper left in the NASA photo below).

There are no cars, bicycles, scooters or horses.  Everything that moves within the city goes by boat, foot or hand cart.  That means that the tons of food, domestic supplies, worthless trinkets, high fashion clothing and jewelry, and even construction material needed by the residents and tourists are delivered by one of those methods.  Boats are designed to carry all of that and still fit under the seemingly endless variety of bridges they need to navigate.  Hand carts must be hauled over those same bridges and some are designed with large pneumatic tires to aid in that task.  Even the mountains of garbage and recyclables generated by all those people are first emptied into hand carts and loaded onto boats and barges to be taken off the various islands.  The logistical task is enormous, but it all seems to be taken in stride.  After all, they have been at this for centuries.

Fruit and vegetables delivered to the stand

Garbage collection

Recyclables

Various goods

Various goods

Big load

Low bridge

The ever-present gondolas are a bit pricey and seem similar to the horse carriages in some cities,  maybe romantic but a little too steep for what you get.  They are beautiful crafts and I love watching others being moved around the city in them

They are lined up at many places around the city

They even take on strollers

Some come with their own music

In addition to the “S”-shaped Grand Canal there are smaller waterways everywhere.  You need to plan your walks carefully or you can do a lot of backtracking to find the right bridge to get you where you are going.  On all of the waterways you see smaller personal boats tied in front of houses and water taxis depositing their passengers all over the city.

For my theater friends, I could not resist a few pictures of this oddity.  They took an old theater right in the heart of Venice and converted it into a supermarket.  It seemed very fancy and had a great selection.

The entrance

Like I said, I had to add a few shots of the major sites.  From the Rialto Bridge, aerial shots of the Grand Canal taken from a terrace located above the Rialto, San Marco (sorry we did not make it inside, but the outside was breath-taking) , the inside of the Doge’s Palace,  to the inside of the opera house, Teatro la Fenice, the whole place takes on a magic of its own.  Since there are no cars it is easy to imagine yourself wandering the streets of a renaissance city still ruled by the Doge.

The ever present and photographed Rialto Bridge

The Grand Canal

The Grand Canal

San Marco is even more beautiful than I imagined

San Marco

The Bridge of Sighs

High class street musicians (well they were at a restaurant)

Inside of the Doge’s Palace

Doge’s Palace

One of the old boys himself

Doge’s Palace

Doge’s Palace

The King’s box at Fenice

The stage at Fenice

We needed to get out of the city for at least one day and took a boat to visit the islands of Murano (famous for its Murano glass) and Burano (famous for its colored houses).

The cemetary

Murano

Murano glass

Burano

On our last day we stopped to have lunch at a restaurant on the Grand Canal near the Rialto Bridge with a great view.  The proprietor of the place, Stefano, noticed me taking pictures and as he is also a photographer, we spend the next 20 minutes chatting about the city, photography and the state of the world.  It was a lovely way to end the visit.

The view from our table

Stefano