Venice, a-Maze-ing

An intense two and one-half weeks in Venice are over but I'm only blogging about it now that I'm in the quiet hills of Tuscany. It's not like I didn't have any time to blog while in Venice but I guess I wanted to explore, eat and sleep more than I wanted to blog.

I went to Venice for a two week Italian language class, arriving several days before it started and leaving a few days after it ended. Even so, I used my spare time seeing sights and museums, concerts, my first opera, and lots of exploring on foot (and a bit of homework). There are only two ways to get around Venice - on foot or by boat (gondola, water taxi or water bus). I took a water bus a couple times and walked a lot. Venice is fantastic if you like to walk but it's challenging. On one hand, there are no cars or motorcycles. Not even bicycles are practical on the main island of Venice. The streets are too narrow and there are too many pedestrians - so many in the main commercial areas and walking routes that it made me feel claustrophobic at times.

Last day of Italian class with our instructor Alberto on the left 

Another interesting thing about being a pedestrian in Venice is learning to navigate the narrow lanes ("calli") between buildings. There's almost no way to stay oriented other than learning individual streets, buildings and the signs that point in the direction of landmarks (Piazza San Marco, Rialto Market). Also, the layout of the calli is quite irregular and there are many cul-de-sacs. The streets are so narrow and the distances between intersections are so short that I found it difficult to find a destination even with a GPS. More than once, it took me 10 minutes or more to travel the last 50 metres toward a destination due to dead ends and canals. I wasn't able to reliably navigate the 25 minute walk between my homestay and my language school unaided until I'd been doing it for over a week. Inconvenience aside, I would put navigating on foot on the "plus" side of Venice. It's part of its charm and now I know what it's like to be a rat in a maze!

The Grand Canal, little canals, and in grey, the pedestrian lanes and foot bridges

A classic view of San Georgio Maggiore (neighboring island) from St. Mark's Square

In addition to the crowds, I'd add garbage and even dogs to the negative side. Venetians have a lot of dogs and in the absence of grassy open spaces, dogs pee and poo where they can, meaning urine stains on every outdoor wall and the occasional doo-doo on a narrow pedestrian lane. Another problem is that Venetians seem to be completely spoiled about garbage. There are NO recycling bins anywhere on the main island of Venice. In public, everything goes into undifferentiated garbage bins and on the ground. City workers are out in great numbers in the morning sweeping it up and taking it away (at least on work days) but the quantity and the lack of sorting is maddening! At my homestay, my family did a partial separation of waste (glass, plastic, paper - everything else) but it wasn't at all clear how it was dealt with at the curb. It was always just placed out in plastic shopping bags (often torn open by sea gulls). I have a feeling that a lot of manual separation and incineration get done on a large scale somewhere.

A less obvious gondola image. 

To end on a positive note, Venice is visually fascinating and loaded with iconic scenes. However, I'm not nearly as comfortable at street photography as I am with nature and landscapes. Fortunately, there are lots of things to photograph while remaining minimally invasive.

The nearby island of Burano is famous for its brightly painted houses.