The Pros and Cons of Running in Venice

Hello!

After we had explored Venice all day, I got up to go running. Venice is very much a maze, but I figured that walking all over the place the day before had gotten me a pretty good sense of where things were. Added to that, Venice is very compact, so there's really nowhere I could go that I wouldn't be able to make it back within fifteen or twenty minutes. I planned to run for 30, maybe 45 minutes since we needed to get moving to get to Bologna then Florence.

I did great for the first little while, running along the Canal Grande (well, as close to "along" as you can get. There aren't sidewalks on the canals, so you have to sort of parallel it even though parallel is not a thing here) until I reached the sea, then running along the outer edge of the city. My plan was to run around to St. Mark's square, then use that as a landmark to get home. I could see the square up ahead on the shoreline, everything was great!

I was on the wrong island.

While there are 118 tiny islands making up the city of Venice, there are also bigger divisions separated by major canals. The Canal Grande, which separated me from my objective, is unusual in that there are only three bridge crossings of that canal in the whole city. They actually have special little gondolas that just go across and back at certain locations to make up for this issue. However, those cost money and I didn't bring any.

I knew the Academica bridge was somewhere near me, so I backtracked and hit some dead ends and crossed some bridges until I found the bridge, then did the same until I actually made it to St. Mark's square. From there, I made it home with only the occasional dead end or turnaround, about an hour from when I had departed.

Even though I was late, though, I got to see all kinds of things we had missed or seen from afar the day before. I got to see the Santa Maria della Salute church that they built at the end of the plague as thanks for not killing all of them. It's a pretty amazing church--it's said they drove a million pylons into the marsh to support its giant dome. I got to see Peggy Guggenheim's fabulous and modern art-filled pallazo. It's a museum now but when she was living there she hosted the likes of Jackson Pollock, whose work she's almost responsible for publicizing.

 Obviously not my picture, but hey, pretty! Sta. Maria della Salute.

Added to the things I found while I was lost, I got to see the workings of a city built in water. I saw garbage boats, DHL deliver boats, mail boats, and more public transportation boats carrying the city's workers to their day. I saw the shops opening, people carrying home their groceries (no wheeled carts here--Venice is full of stairs) and kids going to school. As I was leaving our hotel I saw the fish market setting up, receiving the day's catch, and putting everything on display.

 

Garbage boat! I only show you the coolest things.

As frustrating as getting lost may have been (I really like to think I'm omniscient), I think it's much better than what all the other runners were doing: running laps along the 1-mile sea wall where you see nothing of the city itself but are assured of getting back on time.

Love Katie