Visage of Venice

I had been meaning to write something about Venice and...well...a lot of things...but it seems Mariah has beat me to the punch. As it turns out, my punch is that of an eighty year old man crippled with arthritis, a broken shoulder, diphtheria, and a nauseating aversion to self motivation. Hers is more like Bruce Lee...

Venice is truly unique. It has it's faults - saturation of tourists (though not nearly as bad as Florence), high prices, and rude-ish restaurant patrons (though that whole service-with-a-smile thing, otherwise known as "quality customer service," often seems unique to the US) - but as I walked along the canals of Venice, every direction I looked there was a picture waiting to be captured. As you may know, traveling really isn't my thing, but it's definitely Mariah's thing (she has travel where I have iPhone), so photography has been one way of coping for me.

Venice was a gold mine in that regard.

The colors were so rich and vivid. I'm sure it helped a great deal that we had some beautiful weather while we were there (some of our only good weather while in Italy) that made those colors reach right out of the walls. The stucco, it's aged variations and the moisture saturated edges, give the buildings a muted and varied texture that brings life to the place.

The canals reflect light in unexpected ways and allow for another level of texture with every view. The "streets" are varied by bridges cutting across at seemingly random intervals, each of unique construction. The scale is low enough to allow the sun into most everywhere, though shoulder wide alleys branch off here and there linking to other streets like veins.

It's so easy to get lost, but hard to be lost for too long. The city just isn't that big, and as long as you don't have somewhere to be, your better to let it happen and enjoy discovering each random piece. Discovery is the best part, especially with a camera.

So, in Venice...get lost.

If you haven't already, see all of the pictures.