In November I went to Venice; wet Venice, Venice of mists and high tides
A visit to Venice makes me feel improved with my eyes properly feasted. That’s why I share these pictures, a little tiny, much diluted teaspoon of Venice is better than none.
After nights of furiously sloping water and a rowdy monkey orchestra of battering raindrops the Acqua Alta siren announced yet another day of duck boards and wellingtons.
We stayed along the Fondamenta from the Ospedale. Those ambulances gave way to nothing, it must have been like the Ride Of the Valkyries for patients
You see, rain
That’s our apartment on the corner on the piano noble. We stayed in a crudely cut dollop of a C15 palazzo, dolled up in the C17th and ill modernised in the seventies. We had a great deal of space , enough for six opened drying umbrellas to make no impact on the acres of the main salon.
You need space indoors at this time of year as Venice is seen through the letterbox between your umbrella and opened map. Everyone scurries along narrow alleys, duelling umbrellas with people coming the other way.
It was perfectly possible to step from puddle to canal without the aid of the Mafia and rather wonderfully, away from the darkest alleys, the canal water was aquamarine ( apparently the exact hue is down to how much salt in the water)
It is the glimpses that are so arresting…
into a workshop
into an archive
into Venetian gossip
Or out of a bookshop onto yet another canal
It’s all marvellous even without going into a museum. But when you do go, you can loiter and briefly have a room completely to yourself.
They let you photograph and so you can play until you get the photo that pleases you.
You see extra magic. the painter is Rosalba Carriera.
Layers of fairy tale
How could you possibly ask for more?
Except being looked at can wear a dog down. This is the down side of vitrine life. This is the bit that Edmund de Waal glossed over. That dog is frankly fed up.
So there you are, a dash of Venice to begin the year
If you liked this you might like to see what my camera saw last year in Morocco
Handmade Lives 
Beautiful, real Venice pics.
Louise, thank you. It is odd when you search Venice pictures how many have been over- enhanced into Disney colour. I like plain
This was a very welcome taste of life outside Scotland! Thanks Dixie, I was almost there :) Off to Morocco now ;)
Mandy beats Easy Jet !
Ha! Absolutely! :)
I think I have been to Venice 5 times all in the Winter I can’t imagine it in the summer.
I was there in November too, but we missed the rain and the acqua alta. It was so bright and sunny and fairly mild. We sat outside to eat, even in the evening, with heaters it was lovely!
It’s never long enough though, is it?!
Lorrie, it was mild and between downpours we sat outside; this is the trip I discovered spritz so I was blissfully happy every evening.
Venice in the winter is the best