Venice

Next must see city on my list was La Serenissima. Who would not think a city built on water special? It's the prototype, other cities with significant water courses are called Venice of the something or other. This is the Grand Canal, the major artery, looking out to sea so probably taken from the Rialto Bridge.

Gondoliers waiting for tourists. Behind them is the Rialto Bridge. Note the communist flavoured banner on the bridge. More on this later.

The Piazza San Marco, with tourists and lots of feathered residents.

Other sides of the square.

St. Mark's Basilica with the domes and its Campanile.

Closer to the sea is Doge's Palace and the Bridge of Sighs, from a fanciful idea of Byron.

A view of the bridge on the front and right of the Doge's Palace. Cartoline is Italian for postcards. 800 lire was about a dollar then.

Glass work is an important industry. There are many shops like this in the tourist district. Well, all of Venice is a tourist district.

These photos of a glass craftsman at work were taken later than the previous photo so I may have taken a boat trip out to Murano, where most of the industry resides.

An assistant helps attach a blob of glass.

Back into the furnace to fuse the glass.

A few finishing touches, è finito, another thing of beauty.

Then again, given this shop display, I may have simply attended a demonstration in a workshop on the main island, and not Murano. I bought a tiny glass bird as a souvenir, not wanting to be weighed down for the rest of my trip, and not rich enough to afford bigger pieces anyway. I don't know what happened to that souvenir since.

I stayed at the youth hostel on the island of Giudecca, so took ferries to the main sights. On one trip the ferry passed a festival organised by the Italian Communist Party. This seemed to me incongruous with the idea of dour communists. But then the views were magical around dusk so any party would have looked good.

Another episode from the hostel was about an uninhibited Swedish teenage couple. In the men's showers, the girl quickly stripped to her panties and joined her boyfriend in the shower. They were obviously having fun, from the laughter emerging from the cubicle. Another hosteller who had just come onto the scene asked me in confusion: Is this the men's?

A couple of last vignettes of Venice: There were persistent rumours that Venice was sinking, so the city was at pains to explain with this information poster that it wasn't that serious, yes there is subsidence, and yes water levels rise sometimes, depending on wind and tide, but no it isn't sinking. But 32 years on, with global warming, it quite likely is.

Some furry locals who didn't have to live outside the city, due to rising property prices from visitor demand. They are feral of course.

I think I did take a trip out to the affluent Lido, the famous sandbar, and the setting of Thomas Mann's Death in Venice, but didn't take any pictures.