Author: René Seindal
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End of Season at the Diadora
Today we had the end of season event at the Diadora rowing club, where I should have spent a lot more time this summer. Most of the morning was taken up by ‘social’ regattas for each of the types of rowing practiced in the club, both ‘English’ rowing (backwards in various types of boats), and…
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Vogando di nuovo
Last year I started rowing Venetian style, voga alla veneta, where you stand up in the boat, looking forward, pushing on the oar to move forward. I continued Venetian rowing when I returned to Venice this spring, but then work took over, and I haven’t been rowing for several months now. Yesterday I finally went…
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Vogata with VIVA
Last Sunday I was supposed to meet with Angela Nickerson, an American travel writer I’ve met via the social networking site Twitter, to talk about Venice and kayaking and much else. Two other ‘Tweeps’ were invited too, Nan McElroy and Monica Ceserato. Nan McElroy is an American travel author who lives in Venice for some…
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Uncharted Venice – part II
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…
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High Water Gondola Rowing
Rowing a gondola at high tide requires some special skills. The higher water makes for lower bridges, and a gondola is not a low profile boat that’ll just go under anyway. The gondoliere have to do all sorts of weird manoeuvres to get the boat under the lowest of the bridges. Crouching The simplest way…
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Uncharted Venice
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…
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The Buddhist Gondoliere
In July this year, I saw this gondola stopping to let clients disembark at Campo San Barbaba in the Dorsoduro sestiere, and it immediately caught my eye as different. Watch the foredeck, and in particular the little figure often placed there. No an angel, not a little soldier, not a little holder for a few…
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The Angry Elagoonephant
The local above average size lagoon mammal can have a bad day. If the weather is foul, he is foul too.
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Rainy Day in Gondola
Some people won’t renounce their gondola ride, not even if its raining cats, dogs and medium sized lagoon elephants. Photos from Rio di Santa Marina, on September 14th, 2009 – a fairly humid day in Venice.
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Doing the Lagoon Walk
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…