2018 Feb 22-25: Venice (part 1)

For the impatient, all pictures may be found in this album on flickr. 

At the end of February, I had earmarked some time to go on a trip, which I decided to go ahead and do despite some complications in life, which also made picking the destination rather last minute and slightly dependent on luck with flight search engines.

Venice had the cheapest airfare and shortest flight (and easiest way from the airport), and is one of those things one should see before they become entirely submerged and unlivable in the next 50 years or so.

Thus, Venice in February, after the Carnival, with its 2wks/1 month of masked balls.

hand made masks on display in a shop

[Thursday: Arrival]

Maybe the post-festivities energy drain lead to some of the feel. The rest was likely the weather, and the general feel of Venice to be a floating sarcophagus, a museum of a city, with no real residents, no local children, no schools.

Stepping of the rather short flight resulted in immediately being drenched with cold rain and battered around by winds that snaked around buildings and along canals. This was not an auspicious start. Some of the evening was used for getting back to the mainland to a store to buy rain pants and a cheap rain jacket to throw atop the semi-permeable one I had brought along.

Stayed at Alberghiera Venezia  (positives: floor heating, big windows, kitchen, comfy bed (firmish mattress), very thick walls, clearly recently renovated. Like staying in your own rather nice apartment)

Discovered that the train station has a really great sandwich/snack shop of which I wanted to eat everything, it looked so delicious:

[Friday: Seeing Venice. Water taxi, Cathedral, Bridges]

The thing you should do in Venice for sure is take one of the water taxis. 

It is hard to convey how surreal they are.

As a warm up, here is a picture of a boat designed for construction-y type use. Like a Venetian digger/crane/whatever they are called.

• A short video of the trip which I took.
• Another short video. 

Some pictures from the water taxi: 

There is a neat art installation highlight the general sinking state of Venice:

Landed at the canonical place, near the canonical church. 

 Walked by the market which was shutting down, and took a lot of pictures of seagulls fighting over the scraps. 

The water is a weird greenblue. It really offsets the bright buildings well. And the sort of dilapidation as well.

Walking around (and up and down the many bridges):

Came across some stores with lovely store fronts. One had four displays of people-sized people doing various crafty/artisanal things. 

Another cool shop window, full of jellyfish lamps:

Turns out, there is only one disco in Venice. It is, as you might expect, sort of tiny.  Left picture is the door, right is the sign above the doorbell. 

Next post is part 2: Lake Garda, Mount Baldo