Venice: Boating through Lagoon City
When you travel to Venice, it’s easy to tramp around the narrow streets of the historic centre, getting lost at every turn and not caring because everything you see is beautiful, magical and wonderfully old. And at the end of the day, if your feet are aching and your eyes are popping out with an overload of looking, you can sit in an outdoor café sipping on a Spritz or a Bellini and gaze out over the water of the lagoon to relax.
But the lagoon deserves a bit more attention than just that. It’s because of the lagoon and its many tiny islands that Venice is even here. Take time to hop on a boat and see a little more than just the Piazza San Marco.
Venice: 118 islands and a lot of boats
Venice spreads over 118 islands. It has over 400 bridges. And a lot of boats. Vaporetto, the steadfast workhorse ferries; taxis, the expensive, wooden glamour queens; and barges carrying food in and garbage out, stacks of suitcases belonging to tourists, furniture belonging to relocating locals, and tree trunks to be sunk deep into the mud replacing rotting pylons and markers.
Speedboats, the Venetian family car, weave in and out, dogs surefooted on their decks, barking to signal ownership of the canals. Oh, and then there are the gondolas. None of them is privately owned anymore – the last was Peggy Guggenheim’s and she died in 1979. These days gondolas are an expensive tourist treat but the best way to see Venice as it has been seen for hundreds of years - from low on the water of the narrow canals. The palazzos turn their best face to the water. If you can’t afford a gondola ride take a Grand Canal boat tour or a tronchetto across the Grand Canal: slightly larger than a gondola, they’re just as much a Venetian tradition.
