Water

Just one of the crazy things about Venice is how beautiful it is. Around any given corner you will find a breathtaking view. It cannot be helped, especially when the sun comes out:

Before arriving in Venice I had not really considered HOW MUCH WATER there would really be. I understood in theory that there were canals etc. but really water is everywhere and the people who live here traverse it, overcome it, make money off it, and fight with it every day.

You can click on the picture to see them bigger

The dotted lines are ferries which cross the Grand Canal

The 200 canals of Venice are like roads - in fact, they are more like roads than the actual roads, since no vehicles are permitted in Venice other than boats. Since there are no cars, you would have to be sure that you can carry home all the groceries you bought, or that you can carry your stroller up and over all the stairs of all those bridges - there are 416 small bridges in Venice, and four that cross the Grand Canal.

But for all those bridges and alleyways, you can just as easily hit the end of a street or passageway and find that only water lies ahead.

There is a ferry system with ferries that run lengthwise up and down the canal, as well traghettos, ferries which cross from bank to bank. There are water taxis and gondolas (for the tourists mainly). I was surprised to see that there are lanes in the water. Even with "street" lights!

But just so you didn't think that the people of Venice avoid the hassles of parking, you can see that they still have to parallel park their boats! I laughed to see all the boats lined up in front of the houses.

Many homes that face canals have knee-high water-tight barriers to keep the water from seeping in through their front door in the acqua alta season.

My first impression is that it can be quite difficult to live here. I read that every year 2,000 people move out of Venice to the mainland. In particular young couples, and as a result the average age here is 50 years old. Apparently homes are very expensive and often require restoration and repairs that are extensive. Plus there is an increasingly limited amount of work here: many traditional crafts still exist, like glass blowing, paper marbling etc, but their main industry is tourism. In recent years even the number of gondoliers has declined - 200 years ago there were 10,000 and now there are estimated to be around 500. But our gondola ride is a story for another blog post....

In the meantime, we got to be happy tourists, and laughed every time we hit a dead end; tourists with lots of leisure time to wander to the bridge that was out of the way, or wait for the ferry. For our purposes of enjoyment and drawing, it just couldn't be beat.