Ahhh Venice, Part 3
As you can see from the lede photo, people need a place to tie up their boats. Cars aren't allowed on the islands and neither are scooters, it's walking or nothing. Most people have boats instead of cars. I'm pretty sure I saw a few teenagers using the family boat for a date and I also saw a few families going out in the family boat for some "road trip" to who know's where.
Some places had a ring bolted into a wall where you could tie your painter off and moor your vessel. Look at me with all my nautical talk. Pretty soon I'll be tying sheep shanks and clamoring up the mizzenmast to luff the main royal like a boss; not really I don't think I like heights on a boat. Anyway, in Venice you can moor to a ring or one of the myriad posts sunk into a canal or where ever. Like this:
I'm going to assume that this is "reserved mooring" a "slip" as it were, because why else would someone tie a chair to a post like this. There was essentially zero space to put the chair on the "dock" which consisted of a 1x12 board (2.54x30.48 for you metric folks). This does look like as good a place as any to tie up your boat. I imagine you sit in the chair in the boat and hang out drinking prosecco with your friends.
There are more places to moor your boat by the Arsenal. I really wish I could have gone in and taken a tour, or more for me poked around, at the Arsenal because it looked impressive. There just wasn't a way to do that. Near where I took the above photo there was a shipwright shop and I was too shy to ask some people I'm convinced didn't speak English if I could photograph them working. I was quite far from any tourist areas.
There is an art museum near the Arsenal and it has large windows where you can get a peek into the huge space where they used to, or maybe still, hoisted ships out of the water for repairs. The museum is in some sort of old manufacturing or repair facility. One room had a bunch of old forges along the walls. Mostly it was some giant, empty rooms.
See, giant and empty. There were a few rooms like this and in one of them the glass door was broken and the light was beautiful and I had just been looking at a lot of art, so I got creative.
Tempered glass is neato. Speaking of getting creative and mooring boats, remember I was talking about that, I did see a superbly-impressive mooring job by someone who perhaps couldn't afford the best boat in the world.
I for sure would be hesitant to ride the canals of Venice in this thing, so I'm guessing it is for kids. You can toss them in here and pull them behind your boat when they get annoying maybe. I really liked how many doors just seemed to open right into the canal. Many of them had steps, making it look like perhaps there was just a good flood happening.
Others didn't have steps as if the people who built the building realized that steps into the water might be a bit silly. It could also be that the doors without steps were set back further into the buildings. What do I look like, an architect?
It's pretty damned difficult to take a bad photograph in Venice. I'm sure some people can, I did take a few bad ones but I'm not going to show them to you here. Almost every door is interesting and there are so many beautiful things to see.
Look, another gorgeous doorway. That's almost the end of it as far as door photos go in this post. There is just one more, I promise. Don't misunderstand buildings kind of have doors, so you will see some more, but not as the focus. This next one combines some things I'm working on and a door.
All over Prague, and to a lesser extent Europe, I see randomly discarded shoes. At least in this photo there is a reason for it. Venetians just put their garbage out the front door to the building on collection day and the trash man (yes, I'm suuuuper sexist) collects it. In Prague, I see discarded shoes in totally random places. At times I also see discarded garments. Just the other day I saw a pair of women's jean shorts on the side walk and I can only think, "what is the story here" every time I see things like that.
I got a little framing and layering on in the photo up there. I thought it was a fun take on the usual gondola photo. Why not, right?
The above photo is also neat the Arsenal. in fact the only way to get into the giant ship maintenance area of the Arsenal I talked about earlier is via boat. I suppose you could figure out a way to break in to the Italian military garrison that blocks the land entrance, but I wouldn't try it. You can also see how the lagoon looks gross. The water doesn't even look very enticing at night.
The smaller canals anyway look pretty yucky, The grand canal looks fine at night. Probably because there isn't as much light on it. I was told by some people that Venice smells bad too, thanks to the canals. It doesn't, so don't worry about that at all. They actually do a good job of dredging them to make sure the place doesn't reek.
See, with some reflection action the water starts to look a little better at night in the smaller canals.
Still not the best-looking water in the world.
The Grand Canal looks fine at night though. I give myself bonus points for the neato reflection on the ripply water of the running lights of the passing boat that you can't see because the exposure was so long. It's a bit like a mini aquatic Pink Floyd show.
No such laser-light luck with the photo above, but hey. You can't hit it out of the park every time. I mentioned that I stretched my street-photography legs while I was in Italy. I am still using them too, but I don't post a ton of those. I may make a post of my favorites at some point. From this trip my second-favorite street-style photo is this one below.
I suppose if I were to give it a name it would be "Boy on Bridge in Venice" or something like that. To me it's just a great moment between friends with some nice layering and it comes together pretty well.
I liked this one a lot too mainly because of the subject matter. You're growing up in Venice and you want to play soccer, where do you go? There aren't really a lot of parks and I don't know if people would really appreciate a soccer match in the ones that do exist. This is one of the cooler pickup games I've seen with the old buildings in the background etc.
This one above too. You don't have a car on the islands in Venice, but if you travel you need to walk to the train station or wherever. It also have the obligatory hanging laundry action going on. Honestly photos don't get much more stereotypically Venice than this. I will close with a concept that I really enjoyed, having had to come up with a different solution to this same problem. When you have a street light this close to your window, you really do need to do something. I've been there. I waited until the 4th of July and shot the light out with a gun. This solution was is much more diplomatic.
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