Great view from the Ponte degli Scalzi on the Grand Canal and many old colored palaces

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Hey guys,

today my Post will be about the probably most beautiful city I have ever seen in my life - Venice. I was so fascinated by the city and still am!

I was there last summer. At that time the water was still very dark there. With Corona and the drastic stop of tourists, the water there is supposed to be crystal clear now and fish are supposed to have been sighted there! That was unthinkable in summer last year when I was there! A lot has happened since then and yes, Corona is incredibly drastic for people - but nature is recovering. That gives us some hope. I just wanted to get rid of that at the beginning ;)

As I already told you in one of my last Posts, all our ventures started from Verona. We went to Venice by train - in fact our only two train rides in the north of Italy... well, if you leave out a story about the strike of the public transport in Milan. But I prefer to tell this story another time ;)

The train ride took about an hour and a half (I guess). When we arrived there around noon, we were already approached by the blazing midday heat - yes, we always had good weather in nothern Italy, really every day. When we got out of the station we already saw the beautiful scenery of Venice. I must say that Venice overwhelmed me from the first moment. Do you know the cities where you already know from the first moment that you want to stay longer here? Unfortunately I couldn't and one day was definitely too short, but I will surely come back here again, hopefully before the city is completely under water.

So there we were - at the square of the main station S. Lucia, surrounded by tourists, and already the first bridge was waiting for us directly: the Ponte degli Scalzi. Of course we took our first pictures here.

The Ponte degli Scalzi is a bridge in Venice in the Sestiere Cannaregio that spans the Canal Grande. The bridge is named after the nearby Scalzi church.

The Canal Grande separates the citra (this side) of San Marco, Cannaregio and Castello from the ultra (beyond) districts of Dorsoduro, San Polo and Santa Croce on the right side of the canal.

We were mainly on the left side of the canal. I will introduce you to the individual districts in one of my next posts.

The Canal Grande is an incredible four kilometres long and between 30 and 70 metres wide. About 45 smaller canals (Italian Rii) flow into the Canal Grande. I have really taken an unbelievable amount of pictures here. The canal is lined with countless palaces. The palaces are all colourful and have different colours. In the second picture you can see a landing stage for gondolas, which are in abundance here. Unfortunately we only had one day and decided against riding a gondola. If I would be there again now, I would definitely do it - a unique opportunity ;)

Instead, we decided to explore the countless small alleyways. In Venice, I partly really felt like being in a big labyrinth - oftenly, there were dead ends and the streets, better called alleys, were very high and narrow. On the houses were numbers like 1789, where we first thought of a year. But then we noticed relatively quickly that these are house numbers ;)

What I found very interesting while reading about the palaces in Venice: The distance between the palaces and the Canal Grande was partly bigger in the early and high middle ages. Only in the 13th century, one started to extend the buildings that were built on many small islands towards the Canal and to move the courtyard to the back. In contrast, the main front was moved to the water. This one previously pointed to the land side.

Even if oftenly, something else is assumed, the palaces of the most famous families were not located at the Canal Grande but at bigger and smaller places or at the side canals. The stones, the building material or also bricks, wall, wood and roofs were transported from the mainland. This was due to the fact that in Venice, naturally, nothing was available.

But now enough about the history of the palaces and how they were built, I know that was a lot of information about the city in general. I just wanted to give you a little insight about our arrival in Venice. In the next few days, I shall tell you about our favourite places in Venice. I hope you liked my Post as always, please leave me a feedback ;)

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