Venezia!

Venice

In my Rome post, I talked about the differences between Travel and Tourism, and introduced the term "Tournami". Rome filled one with images and thoughts, as the modern and the ancient coalesced everywhere you looked. After three days in Rome (way too short!), we were off to Venice, for two days of "Tourism" and to meet some friends for a one week cruise. I have never been to Venice, as I did not make it during my 'post college' tour 24 years ago, and for some reason, maybe because it is fixed in the 15^th century, I've never had a reason to go there on business. Up until a few years ago, it had a rep as a beautiful city that was dirty, crowded, and expensive. Having spend time there now, I can say from experience that it is not dirty. And the reason it is sinking is not due to global warming but due to the shear weight of the tourists that have descended on the city over hundreds of years.

Seriously, as to the sinking part, it's amazing to me that the city exists at all. It was built on mainly wooden pylons hundreds of years ago, barely above sea level, and has been slowly descending ever since. Not sure China's coal fired power plants have much to do with it. Whatever the case, my family and I feel very grateful to visit Venice before it sinks for good. I've always been a fan of Caneletto's paintings of Venice (the San Diego Museum of Art has a few), and Caneletto's paintings always have seemed like a window to the past for me. The city was a blast to visit, especially with our friends and their kid (my kids were VERY happy to have another kid to play with after nine weeks!). Venice is an amazing warren of streets, canals, and souvenir shops. There were great Churches to visit, and it has become a bit of joke with my family that I'm not happy unless I visit a old buildings and wats and/or other religious buildings every day. Like most of our trip so far, the weather was picture perfect, as you can see as you scroll through the blog. The only lousy weather (so far) was in Angkor, when I had food poisoning and some mild form of dengue. But since then the weather has been great!

Not much to do in Venice besides wander, the more aimlessly the better. You stop into cool churches (no photo's allowed), get the kids gelato, go out for overpriced meals in tourist restaurants, and wander some more. Every site, every sound is relatively unchanged for the last four hundred plus years. There are no cars. No modern buildings. A minimum of satellite dishes. It is a very cool place. Ok, enough text, Venice is about imagery. Google Canelleto, not much has changed!

Island across from the main part of Venice. I'm sure it has a name, but I don't know it ;- )

Roof line while standing in St. Mark's Square.

No clue on this one.

For some reason, St. Mark's square has always been identified with Pigeons, otherwise known as "Rats of the Sky". There are THOUSANDS of them. There are guys selling pigeon food for a Euro a bag, just to make sure that the pigeons stay fat and aggressive. But the kids love them. Above, my kids and my friend's kid playing "feed the pigeon". Yuck!

This one got me excited, as we really like Blue God things. Not Buddhist in this case though.

Unchanged since the time of Canaletto. I'm a bit out of sequence here, as this shot was taken from the deck of the cruise ship as we cruised past St. Marks on the way out of town. The next one I shot over the heads of the tourists, so I would fool you folks into thinking that Venice was empty! Except for all the black dots, which are pigeons.

Night shot below:

St. Mark's Square from the balcony of St. Mark's Cathedral (a very cool one). There are probably an equal number of pigeons and people.

All of us, and yes, we still seem to like one another after almost ten weeks of travel:

And, contrary to folks that say that the Venice is sinking thing is myth, we have proof! This was St. Mark's at about 10:30 on our last night. It was a relatively high tide, and the square started off with a bit of water as we walked our friends back to their hotel. Thirty to forty-five minutes later the square looked like this, with water actively bubbling up through all of the drainage in the square.

There was a BUNCH of water. Not as flooded as it may look, but getting back to our hotel without flippers meant we had to follow other tourists that knew the route where the water was the shallowest. Would have been fine, except for the thought of the pigeon poop that was floating in all this water!

A few arty shots to end this Venice piece, yes the tower IS tilted!

And lastly, we had to take a Venice Gondola ride. In Thailand, we had a "long tail boat" (i.e. a gondola with a V8 Engine) for 600 baht an hour, about 18 bucks. In Venice, it is 80 Euro's for 35 minutes, or about 200 an hour! But it was worth it. Our gondolier was a fifth generation gondola driver, who had family members oaring away since the late 1700's! The job of gondolier continues to be highly coveted, as these guys do very well for themselves. I'll end with an another "arty" shot, that I took as we rounded a corner where there was a mirror for the gondola's and boats to keep from crashing into one another.

Enjoy, and we were off to Croatia!

Comments

[John Gerard]

Two comments about this part.
First, I think the name of the island across from Venice is the Lido.
Second, a memory I have of being a seven-year-old in St. Mark's Square: "John, come back here! Don't touch those pigeons!"

[Matt]

Hello!

I am contacting you because I am working with the authors of a book about blogs, and I'd like to request permission to use the photograph you have posted in this book. Please contact me at matt@wefeelfine.org, and I'd be happy to give you more information about the project. Please paste a link to your blog in the subject field. Your assistance is greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,

Matt