Category: Living in Venice
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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…
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Pussy Boat
One wonders what they were thinking. Spotted on Burano along the Fondamenta Pescheria on September 28th, 2009.
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Bello e tranquillo
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.
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Book: Barche del Golfo di Venezia
A dear friend of mine recently gave me a beautiful gift – the book Barche del Golfo di Venezia – an illustrated description of most of the traditional boats of the Venetian lagoon and the upper Adriatic Sea. The various chapters describe not only the different types and classes of boats, both rowed and sailed,…
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Lagoon turtle
There aren’t many reptile species in the lagoon of Venice. The lucertole are all over,there are snakes on some islands, and apparently one species of pond turtle, though I’ve never seen one of the those. Yesterday, however, I saw what looked like a different kind of turtle. We were paddling across the Canale delle Navi,…
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Pied a terre – Venetian style
One day as I was paddling through some of the smaller canals in the sestiere S.Marco, close to the Fenice, I spotted this little sign in a window directly on the canal: The sign reads: “Pied a terre of 50 mq, completely restored with high quality details”. Even though I was looking for a place…
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The Abandoned Islands of the Venetian lagoon
In 1978 two Venetian men in their mid twenties rowed around the lagoon of Venice, photographing all the abandoned islands there. The result was a book with photographic documentation of the state of abandonment of each island. Recently, some thirty years after, the book has been republished, now with a English parallel text and some…
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Regata di Mestre
There are many rowing regattas in and around Venice during the summer, with various kinds of boats participating. The Regata di Mestre is the first of the season, and it was held last Sunday, May 10th. My initial plans were to watch it from a kayak, but Mother’s Day intervened causing friends to stay home,…
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Theme park Venice
Venice used to be a big city. Actually, it used to be a small empire, but that’s a few centuries ago now. Venice grew slowly from 130,000 in 1861 to almost 175,000 persons in 1951, but since then the city has almost collapsed, with an exodus from the city on water to the city on…
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Poor gondolieri
The gondolieri of Venice are a poor bunch, working day and night and hardly managing to scrape a living out of their business. There are only about 400 professional gondolieri prowling the canals of the city with tourists. The official rate is €80 for 40 minutes, and a further €40 for 20 minutes more. This…
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Venice frozen 80 years ago
On Febraury 18, 1929, 80 years ago tomorrow, the lagoon of Venice froze over during a very harsh winter. It was possible to walk from Venice to Murano and people could go skating on Canal Grande. Here’s a video with pictures from back then:
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Drunk sailing to be banned in Venice
It has been illegal to drive under influence in Italy for ages, but not in Venice. In Venice they don’t drive, they sail, and in Italy is hasn’t been illegal to sail a boat while drunk or under the influence of drugs. This is about to change now.