What to make of Venice?
It’s busy with tourists, insanely busy, even in the low season.
There’s lots of jostling and positioning among tourists to get selfies, group photos, or just any photos at all.
I am nudged a number of times while I am just standing on a bridge looking out on the canal.
People will bump you, step in front of you and then stop, run their suitcases over your feet, jump the gelato queue, so you need to have both patience and the ability to hold your ground.
It’s not a city for the thin-skinned.
The city is a maze of canals and a maze of alleys.
The Grand Canal is the main waterway and is very busy, but some of the side canals are virtually empty.
Tourists run to take photos of a gondola seen alone in an otherwise empty canal.
The alleys are the same, some so busy, busier than a shopping mall on Christmas Eve, that one must wait while window shoppers finish their gazing because there is no room to pass.
Yet I pass many alleys that are narrow, dark, and completely empty.
I wander down some of these alleys and see doorways leading to the apartment homes of the locals.
I wonder what it might be like to live here.
You certainly wouldn’t be able to go for a run every day, or even a decent walk, unless it was in the middle of the night after the nightclubs closed.
It wouldn’t be an easy life for a guy like me.
The city has an interesting history and something not found elsewhere – the gondolas, poled by the famous gondoliers.
I decide that I like Venice, at least early in the morning.
And when I get to the front of the gelato line.
And when I feel myself as part of the history of this famous city.
And when I can escape down a quiet alley and gaze out on an empty canal.
