Today I spend almost the whole day walking Venice. Now I find that putting all impressions into a few sentences is quite hard since they are quite different. From luxury shops to poor quarters, from polished palaces overrun by tourists to abandoned places. There was a lot to see.
In short I can say: I found the city more interesting than the famous buildings. Piazza San Marco is in my opinion overrated. St. Mark's Basilica and the Doge's Palast are impressive but a bit over the top. I did not go inside though, since there were large queues and in times of Corona I did not think this was a good idea, even with masks. Probably I missed a lot, but I'd rather come back at another time.
There are many other places that are just great to look/be at. I'll just paste some fotos below:
The strange thing in Venice is that you sometimes only have to turn one corner to get from a totally crowded touristy place to a quiet street where nobody is. The crowded places often are like theme parks, but in other places there is also a "normal" Venice where people live. For me the living part was more enjoyable and interesting. Allthough many buildings look like they need some more maintenance and according to what I have read, the ground floor often is in no condition to live in (there also seem to be some protests of the locals against the city development, by I could not understand what this is exactly about).
Another interesting thing about Venice is that you have an example of a city that has to be organized completely different. Many things have to be done by boat even ambulances or packet delivery:
Most of this probably cannot be transferred to other cities, but it helps to see that different approaches are possible.
Another nice thing is that the branding of shops is very limited. This improves the city a lot.
After a day of walking I'll do the boat trip back to the Lido island tomorrow and start cycling again.
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