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.
On the Road: Week of Feb 1 (5 am)
Albatrossity – Winter in Flyover Country #3
cope – The Great Shearing, 1978
?BillinGlendaleCA – The Observatory, the Sign, and a City
way2blue – Graniti, Sicily
Origuy – Moscow Metro StationsOn the Road: After Dark: Week of Feb 1 (10 pm)
One more week in Venice with randy khan!
? And now, back to randy khan!
randy khan
Today’s photos are mostly from the main island, and there’s no glass.

It seems right to start with a bridge. By now you can see how much variety there is in them.

The opera house in Venice is La Fenice, which has burned down twice and been rebuilt, so the name is appropriate. (With all the water around, it seems funny that things would burn down, but as the story goes, the last time it burned down the canal behind the building was drained for maintenance so the fire brigade couldn’t get there.) It’s magnificent, all bright and shiny.

A close up of some of the decoration at Le Fenice.

This and the next photo are from some of our travels among the islands. We got around in water taxis. There are a lot of them, but there also are a lot of private boats and vaporettos, which are kind of like buses. I liked the sky in both photos.

This photo was taken on the way to dinner on Murano. You’ll be unsurprised to hear that it was a seafood restaurant. As it happened, though, the thing we ate most while we were in Venice was asparagus risotto.

This is the Grand Canal from the top of our hotel. We ate breakfast on the terrace each morning while we there, and one morning there was this great assemblage of boats. They were there for the Vogalonga, which is a 30 kilometer race (sort of) where everyone has to row or paddle. It attracts all kinds of boats – regular rowboats, dragon boats, traditional Venetian boats, kayaks, you name it – and thousands of participants. Even though it’s called a race, they don’t really have winners.

The Vogalonga is kind of a happening, a bit like the Bay to Breakers race in the U.S. – people dress up, like you see here. Also, there’s a lot of drinking, mostly when the race is over, but not entirely. And we saw people from all over; it wasn’t just Venetians or even Italians.

I mentioned the vaporettos before. This is a vaporetto. They have routes just like city buses and the fares are comparable. You need to make sure you get on the right one because the stops are much further apart than a city bus and the gaps between vaporettos are pretty long.
Lapassionara
Again, how very lovely to visit Venice this time of night. I think I like the small bridge best of all, but all of the photos are wonderful to see.
WaterGirl
Loving all these photos of water and sky. Venice is gorgeous.
Auntie Anne
The architecture I can see is interesting. I keep turning the pictures to see more – lol! The window arches on that building in the last picture are fascinating.
Yutsano
Paging MikeJ! Mr. MikeJ please come to the white courtesy phone for an important message! Mr MikeJ!
JanieM
Just beautiful. I chucked at the “asparagus risotto” punchline. I can just imagine.
Or maybe I can’t. Although having had an Italian grandma, maybe I sort of can. ;-)
randy khan
@JanieM:
Here’s the story: The people running the tour had worked out all of the menus in advance so that we would get different things and wouldn’t get bored. A lot of the lunches were catered, and at practically every one of those lunches, the cook said to the tour organizer “I know it wasn’t on the menu, but the asparagus was so good that I had to make a risotto.” So by the end of the trip, the running joke at lunch was that we were going to have asparagus risotto. Which, by the way, was fine with me. It *was* really good.
Captain C
I’m really digging on these photos; Venice looks so interesting. It’s definitely on my list for when traveling is possible again.
Mary G
These make me want to be there now. Love the little bridge and the skies.