On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
These outdoor photos are both stunning and charming, and the colors are fantastic! Now I want to go to Venice!
Oh, and don’t forget to check out On the Road After Dark ~WaterGirl
way2blue
Our friends have often urged us to visit Venice, and we’ve always resisted because it’s so overwhelmed with tourists. This past year, however, we planned an October–November trip to a less traveled part of Italy in the pre Alps. And decided to include a few days in Venice as it was off-season. We stayed in a little roof-top flat in a district mostly populated by Venetians.
Our last couple days in Venice, the high, high tide (acqua alta) would flood some of the main plazas, but this flooding was considered a lark by tourists, who bought colorful galoshes to pull over their shoes, and splash through the shallow water covering the plazas & quays. The day we left, the water bus (vaporetto) service was reduced owing to choppy seas, and as we drove north to Salzburg, we encountered snow in the Alps. Venice was inundated by exceptionally high flood waters soon after…
A UPS boat on a canal.
Artifacts from battles past.
Beautifully etched helmet.
Helmet for a horse.
Produce boat on ‘our canal’.
Alleyway to our flat’s entrance.
View from our rooftop terrace.
Sunset view from our terrace, with a passing cruise ship getting tugged out to sea.
gkoutnik
Love the art in Venice – walk from church to church and enjoy the awesome altarpieces by some of the best-known painters of the Renaissance – like wandering through a city-sized museum. Looks like you got to stay in a real neighborhood – with a great sunset view! Thanks for the pics.
JPL
What a lovely view from your terrace. I’m sure you saw the pictures of Venice during the quarantine. There’s something to be said about limiting tourists.
eclare
Sounds and looks like a wonderful trip.
debbie
Lovely! Next life, I intend to live there.
Msb
Thanks for the lovely photos. Venice is just great: very walkable, easy to navigate and usually lovely to look at. Much lovely art, especially the (non-drinkable) Bellini paintings, scattered about. Would love to return.
zhena gogolia
Beautiful.
Auntie Anne
Thank you – these are wonderful. I love the UPS boat!
Dmbeaster
Venice is a wonder. I have had the good fortune to have visited several times, and would eagerly go again. It is innudated with tourists and has relied on tourism for a few hundred years now, but it hardly matters. Every street and piazza is its own little world. It also has wonderful churches to visit everywhere. The architecture is old and fabulous.
One of my visits was part of a Uniworld cruise and got to travel over most of the lagoon, which was a real wonder. On the deck on a a warm autumn day cruising the uninhabited northern isles of the lagoon and viewing the Dolomites in the distance.
MelissaM
Why is the UPS driver wearing a blue shirt??
Lovely pictures!
ET
I was in Venice for a wedding in the Spring of 2002 and I was amazed at how their systems worked given the nature of the islands that make up Venice.
Obviously there are the vaporetto and traghetto that get people around the islands and across the grand canal, as well as the water taxis that get you need to go, but it was the other things that were interesting. he big one was having to deal with aqua alta but it was the more mundane as well. Garbage pick up, mail delivery, moving, getting an new washing machine, grocers that really made me think.
arrieve
I love Venice! One of the best cities to get lost in, and it’s almost impossible not to get lost.
Uncle Cosmo
Whoever put this thread up should correct the title – Venezia, not “Venizia.” Or just “Venice,” ferdogsake. Using the indigenous name doesn’t look or sound very sophisticated when it’s misspelled.
Anonymous At Work
How wide was that “alleyway”? It looks like only one of my nieces would be able to fit…
WaterGirl
@Uncle Cosmo: I appreciate the correction. I might’ve appreciated it even more if it had been made in a more constructive way!
Miss Bianca
@WaterGirl: This *is* Uncle Cosmo we’re talking about…
Just One More Canuck
@Miss Bianca:
when I was doing group work in university, we would sometimes leave spelling mistakes in our slides as “asshole detectors”
TomatoQueen
If I had that view from my terrace, I would never move again.
J R in WV
Thanks for the photo set… I bet you have more you could submit in a few weeks!!
This look at residential life in Venice is really nice, mostly we see big famous buildings, here we see the way life is in a city in the water. Well done selection of photos of working boats, and the rooftop terrace views are especially great!
Thanks again!
Dan B
I’m curious what pre-alps area you visited. We had an accidental day in Verona. We were planning on visiting the Dolomites but it was a German Bank Holiday so tours were booked and the only car rental was $300 per plus. And the clouds were moving in. The next promising stop was Verona. The piazza was wonderful next to their fantastic functioning colliseum. On one side of the piazza were rows of fascist buildings, on the other were the fairytale renaissance buildings on every street. The river wraos around this neighborhood on the far side are villas and neighbirhoods on the slopes and a fantastic garden backed up to and climbing a cliff. The stone entry walls and gates were the most architecturally impressive I’ve ever seen. It was less pricey than other locales in Italy, part of the reason I have not made it to Venezia (Venice, in Italian). Wonderful pictures!!
KS in MA
Late to the party, but … What lovely pictures! Thanks!
way2blue
@Uncle Cosmo: Oops. Not trying to sound sophisticated. Only giving a nod to how locals refer to their places…
way2blue
@Dan B: We visited an area colloquially called the Prosecco region. A friend had mentioned how beautiful it is, and that it’s not particularly a tourist destination. Quite lovely, with rolling hills of vineyards. Plus, an Italian friend, who works in Treviso, gave us a wonderful tour of the region…