Tag: Venice

  • Launching from a beach

    Launching from a beach

    For almost four years I’ve been doing my kayaking tours of Venice from a camp site on the Lido di Venezia. It has been, and is, in many ways a good launch spot close to Venice, but it is not without its drawbacks. The shore there is a road which is 1-2m over the water…

  • UFO – Unidentified Floating Object

    UFO – Unidentified Floating Object

    When paddling around Venice we often see slightly weird boats around — different shapes, odd names, alternative behaviour — but the other day I encountered something in a category of its own. I tried to get a good photo of it, but waterproof point-and-shoot cameras aren’t always that great for taking photographs, so this was…

  • Reflections

    Reflections

    At the end of the year we’re supposed to reflect on the year that passed. I have found that a bit hard this year, so I’ve decided to leave the reflections to the vaporetto (water bus) platforms of Venice. They do a good job at reflecting 🙂 Santa Maria della Salute Santa Maria della Salute…

  • Lessico Veneto – Malamocco

    Lessico Veneto – Malamocco

    I recently found some scanned books from Venice of times past. One of them is a kind of historical encyclopedia from the mid 19th century, and I must say it has its little oddities 🙂 The entry for Malamocco – a small hamlet on the Lido di Venezia with a glorious past – reads: Malamocco,…

  • Female Gondoliere

    Female Gondoliere

    Until recently all gondoliere in Venice were men. This summer a Venetian woman, the daughter of a gondoliere, decided to try the exam, and she passed it as the first woman ever. New gondoliere will start to work as substitutes for the older gondoliere, taking their turns when they’re unable to do so. They also…

  • Acqua Alta

    Acqua Alta

    Yesterday we had one of the first acqua alta‘s of the winter. It wasn’t exceptionally high, reaching a level of 100cm above the historical average water level, but it was just enough to wet a few places around the city, and more than enough to ground all but a few of the gondolas of the…

  • The Elagoonephant revealed

    The Elagoonephant revealed

    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

  • End of Season at the Diadora

    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…

  • Vogando di nuovo

    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…

  • Spooky Venice

    Spooky Venice

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

  • Vogata with VIVA

    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

    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

    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

    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

    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 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

    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.