Venice - City of Alleyways & Bridges

This is a follow-up to my last blog entry on Venice - City of Canals. While canals are a defining features of Venice, so are the 100+ mainly submerged islands on which it is built (using wood piling foundations) and the narrow alleyways and bridges that make up the intra-island and inter-island highways. It is an experience to exit the Piazza San Marco (the main plaza) and traverse Venice on these alleyways when they are filled with locals and tourists, and good and products are moving between boats and businesses on handcarts. As narrow as the paths are, traffic jams seem to be nonexistent, even when tourists stop to window shop or a handcart is being loaded or unloaded. To visitors the paths are a maze, but locals know all the routes and connections. The foot bridges that link alleyways across islands are each unique, and wonderful places to linger and get a good look at the buildings. Visitors are pleasantly surprised when suddenly an alleyway opens onto a piazza with a church, sculpture, old community well, small hotel or restaurant, or the house of a famous former resident, such as Marco Polo. There is no other city like Venice and so a very interesting place to visit. The weather changed quickly in Venice on the April day these photos were taken, starting out misty, moving to cloudy at mid-day and becoming sunny by early afternoon, so the lighting varies greatly across them.