It’s all about the floods.  The flood of tourists as well as the Acqua Alta, the high tides. It all adds to the boat traffic and congestion on and through the Grand and lesser canals of Venice.  The Laughing Pirates took a field trip to explore this famous and fascinating city that faces the challenges of rising sea levels and increasing tourist counts.  The city has an infrastructure that is totally dependent on boats for all local transportation and deliveries as well as city and emergency services.  And boats in the form of massive cruise ships add to that flood of day-tripping, camera-snapping, walkway-blocking tourists.

Who has the right of way in this photo?  I would say the boat constrained by girth, (lower center with captain in orange) limiting its safe maneuverability.

 

Trash removal boats jostle with delivery boats in the early morning hours, while midday finds gondoliers jousting with fast water taxis and an endless parade of passenger ferry boats.  Hope you don’t have to dial 116 to access a water ambulance that could be stuck in a narrow waterway.  High water makes passing under the many low footbridges even more challenging, and in the evenings under a full moon we found St. Mark’s Square to have a large reflecting pond bubbling up from the sewer grates in its center.

They say that water quality in the canals has improved, but in many of the narrower, slower moving canals the water smelled putrid, making even my Laughing Pirate deodorizer/air freshener that I carry when traveling shed a small tear before cleaning the air in the my personal space.

All in all, it’s a beautiful city to visit, but I wouldn’t want to boat there.

If you are interested in going:  Gondola rides go for 80 euro for a 20 minute excursion.   Though we saw many close calls, and many taxi boat captains texting in between looking up to redirect their boats,  I couldn’t find evidence of a tourist getting crushed to death by a larger boat since 2013.  You can read about that here.  We passed on the gondola ride but did utilize the ferry system to reach our hotel and the airport.  I did not receive any compensation from the city of Venice for this review.