René Seindal

The elephant sculpture in the lagoon now has a father too – the sculpture is made by the Dutch artist Serge Van de Put.

• The Elagoonephant
• The Angry Elagoonephant

A couple of weeks ago I made a map of the rii of Venice where I had never been paddling – I had made a few mistakes which I have updated on the original post.

Since then I have looked for occasions to paddle through some of the few remaining rii, and the list has been shortened considerably, as of this map.

The remaining un-paddled rii are:

1. Rio dei Meloni, S.Polo (N part only, there’s an unpassable bridge in the middle)
2. Riello S.Sofia, Cannaregio (dead end)
3. Rio dell’Arsenale, Castello (dead end at the Celestia vaporetto stop)
4. Canale delle Galeazze, Castello (inside the Arsenale – navy area)
5. Darsena Arsenale Vecchio, Castello (inside the Arsenale – navy area)
6. Canale Sacca Fisola (Giudecca)
7. two nameless canals on Sacca Fisola and Sacca S.Biagio.

These rii have been traversed since last:

1. Rio di S.Giobbe, Cannaregio
2. Rio S. Maria Maggiore, Dorsoduro (both parts)
3. Rio delle Burchielle, Dorsoduro
4. Rio della Cazziola, Dorsoduro (only kayaks can get through)
5. Rio Briati, Dorsoduro
6. Rio delle Erbe, S.Polo
7. Rio S.Michiel, S.Marco

I have taken the liberty of keeping Rio S.Andrea out of the tally, as it is completely closed off at this time. Half of it is interred, and the other half is currently without water.

Venice is said to have some 150 canals, and on top of that a lot of canals were interred in the 19th century for various reasons.

I was recently asked if I had paddled all the canals of Venice, and I haven’t. There are parts of Venice with unpleasant traffic or just run down places where you don’t go unless you have to, and even if I have been to many of those places too, there’s still a handful of canals I haven’t paddled through yet.

To get an idea of how much of Venice I’ve paddled I’ve marked in light red the waterways where I haven’t been, on this map.

Maybe half the unexplored canals are dead ends where you’d have to back out again because there’s no room to turn around. One is military and has a chain across to keep boats out. The canals near Piazzale Roma and Canale Scomenzera are places where I would never take anybody unless I was really certain of their paddling skills, because of the heavy traffic there. Those are the places where goods are loaded from trucks to cargo boats and vice versa.

The local above average size lagoon mammal can have a bad day. If the weather is foul, he is foul too.

The average depth of the Lagoon of Venice is not much, about 1.2m when the tide is at the historical zero mark, but much of the lagoon is a lot more shallow than that.

The tidal difference can be up to 1.5m, from about 0.5m below the historical zero mark to 1m above, so it is not always easy to know if you can actually pass a certain spot in the lagoon at a given level of tide.

Sometimes we make mistakes and we’ll have to do the lagoon walk:

One wonders what they were thinking.

Spotted on Burano along the Fondamenta Pescheria on September 28th, 2009.

There’s a lot of dogs in Venice, and many are seen in boats, often up at the bow where they can see and smell everything.

This one particularly caught my attention: bello e tranquillo.

There has been a larger than usual mammal on the loose in the lagoon this summer.

The life size elephant stands on a shallow island near the Certosa island, just east of Venice, on the canal that leads to the airport. Most boats pass at a distance, but we can paddle right up under its trunk. It doesn’t seem to mind, though.

It appeared there in early June, just at the opening time of the Biennale, so it probably has something to do with that. If that’s the case, it will likely disappear in November when the Biennale closes.

Seen up close it looks like its made from old car tyres, heated and moulded into shape, and some pieces of drift wood.

Some have suggested that the little red ball is like a key stone on an arch. Remove that, and it’ll all come apart

Yesterday I was paddling around Venice with a German couple and their daughter. The girl was almost mesmerised by the crabs scuttling around on the walls and steps on the rii, so daddy picked one up to show her, then put it down on the kayak so it could get on with its life.

I tried to get a photo of the crab on the kayak, but the camera wouldn’t obey, and I missed it.

At least I thought I missed it.  When I zoomed in a bit I found that I had caught the crab in mid jump

This evening I felt I had deserved another ice cream, since I had been very productive at the computer. I had been down for one in the afternoon, but why not two on a warm and sunny day.

I go down to the Gelateria S. Stae, 50m down the salizada, I say hi to the girl behind the counter, who remembers me from the afternoon, so I tell her that I’d been working hard all day and that I feel I’ve deserved a second ice cream of the day.  She asks what I’m doing for work. I answer “kayaking in Venice”. She starts jumping up and down, screaming “Its you. Its you”. I no doubt looked rather baffled, but she was delighted with her discovery, so I just waited for the explanation.

They had realised that in this modern world, if you don’t have a web site, you don’t exist, so they have started making a web site. In preparation of that, they entered “Gelateria San Stae” in Google, and found the above photo, which I had taken and uploaded to Flickr a while ago, to express my delight that I had a quality ice cream place near my new home. Via my Flickr profile they arrived at Venice Kayak, where there’s a photo of me, hence the “Its you. Its you” cry

I was then forced to leave a stack of my cards for their clients, and to accept an ice cream on the house, which I reluctantly accepted   Their sabaglione, called Venexiana, and an ice cream with pear grappa are really good.