Venice

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For PG, Italy is always a great idea.

His very most favorite city is Florence, but if he could have two most favorites, the second would be Venice.

PG took the photo below when he was on an early-morning walk in Venice.

For those who haven’t visited, Venice sits above 118 small islands, but the city is mostly constructed upon millions of wooden pilings, each about 60 feet long, that have been driven into the islands or the floor of the shallow Venetian lagoon over the centuries.

You either walk or ride on a boat to move around Venice. Instead of streets, there are 150 canals with 400 bridges connecting various parts of the city. If you don’t cross a bridge, you can’t get too lost because you haven’t left the artificial island you started on.

It’s not cheap to build a city on pilings, so, once you exit any of the main pedestrian areas, the sidewalks become narrower and narrower and wind between various buildings instead of going in a straight line for very long. Sometimes, they’ll simply end in a courtyard.

Some of the sidewalks become so narrow that, when two people meet, either one steps into a doorway to allow the other to pass or they both turn sideways to squeeze past each other.

You’ll see an off-the-beaten-path sidewalk that winds through a residential area in the photo below. This isn’t one of the turn sideways versions, but you’ll get the idea.

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And here is is a courtyard where the sidewalk ended.

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