• Spooky Venice

    Photo from evening paddle on October 24th, 2009, taken in Rio di S.Giovanni Laterano.

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • End to End

  • The Angry Elagoonephant

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

  • 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.

  • 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…

  • Lost in the Lagoon

    Now where? Good thing they have road signs in the middle of nowhere.

  • Pussy Boat

    One wonders what they were thinking. Spotted on Burano along the Fondamenta Pescheria on September 28th, 2009.