We spent a lot of time on vaporetti on the canal. It is a great thing to do, especially when your feet start to hurt and you paid for that vaporetto pass. Not only are there all the palazzi, but there is the life of the canal: the old guys in the rowing club all wearing matching green and white striped warm-up suits standing in a gondola and rowing in a slow jerky rhythm, the UPS boat, the water taxis with their drivers in leather jackets talking on their cell phones. Personally I like the palazzi, the little details, how like snowflakes each one is different.

Monday morning we took the vaporetto down to San Marco again. We had a date with a Doge. We braved the cold and sat on the back deck. I tried to take pictures of the other side of the canal this morning, but my eyes were everywhere. We also tried identifying some of the palazzo we saw, nearly impossible–who wants to look at pictures in a guidebook when everything is laid out in front of you? I’ve gone back since and tried to identify the pictures.

One of my best pictures ruined by scaffolding is in this group. I had read a few weeks before our trip that Salute would be covered in scaffolding this winter and at the time I’d hoped that maybe we’d miss it. Oh well, scaffolding is a fact of life when you travel in Europe, especially when you travel in the winter. I understand that cities want to look their best in the summer when most of the tourists arrive. As a winter traveler, and hater of hordes, I suppose I can’t have both my empty squares and my sparkling buildings scaffolding-free. Sigh.

The best way to view the pictures (in my opinion) is to click on the first one which opens a larger view, then click Next in that new window. This way you can also read the captions.