A Week in Venice - Day 3
After two days in the city it was time to explore the lagoon a bit. The weather continued being hot and sunny, well over 30° C in the afternoon, so we loaded up on water and went north, to the two jewels of the lagoon: Burano and Torcello.
The tide would remain resonably high all day, so route planning was easy: we could go wherever we wanted.
We started by crossing the bocca di porto, the mouth of the lagoon. There’s a huge shallow area in the middle, but thanks to the tide we went straight through, avoiding most traffic easily.
We continued up along the east side of Sant’Erasmo, another shallow area opened up for us by the tide. At low tide the area between Sant’Erasmo and Punta Sabbioni is full of stranded boats whose proprietors wade around in the low water collecting snails and mussels while the kids play on the exposed sand banks.
The inherent giddiness of the group was immediately triggered by the shallow water and traffic-free surroundings, and most of the group started splashing around doing all sorts of manoeuvres, edging, bracing, trying to do the smallest circle or whatever came to mind. Nobody capsized, the water wasn’t even deep enough for a proper capsize.
One of the guests paddled my Rockpool, so I was in a Point 65° Whiskey, designed by Nigel Foster. It is very hard not to join in with such games when you’re sitting in the ultimate piece of maneouvrability. It is amazing what you can do in that boat.
We had to call an end to the fun after a short hour, or we woundn’t make it to Torcello and back.
We continued north along Sant’Erasmo, passing some of the barene there. Barene are lagoon islands that just manages to remain above a normal high tide. One of the girls in the group was a biologist, so we took some time looking at the very special species of plants found in such a humid and salt environment.
A couple of us squeezed into a rather narrow canal between the barene, and ended up having to either ’seal’ our way across a few mteres of land, or get out and pull the kayak across, as the canal got so narrow and curveous that we couldn’t turn or even reverse out again.
We were now approaching Murano, only much later than planned. We did a meticulous tour of all the small canals in the town, enjoying the spectacle of the many coloured houses, and a leaning campanile that could give the tower in Pisa a serious inferiority complex.
Just how yellow can it get 
Don’t idle on the wrong side of this tower!
At the end of our tour we moored our kayaks near the main square and went in search of a place to have lunch. We decided on a small trattoria, which proved a wise choice. Both pizza and pasta were excellent, and so was the dessert, and not expensive either.
It was well past three before we continued. Somehow it always takes longer getting into the boats when they parked near shops and bars.
We paddled the few kilometres to Torcello without any detours, or we would have had problems getting home before dark.
At Torcello we found a nice quiet corner to land, and went sightseeing. Torcello was a flourishing lagoon city for over six centuries, until silt deposits in the estuary of the river Sile led to serious problems with malaria, and around 1300 AD the city was effectively abandoned. Now only two churches, both dating from around 1000 AD, are the only buildings left of what was once an important city. In the 16th century the Republic of Venice had the Sile rerouted north of the lagoon to stop the process of the lagoon drying up.
We couldn’t enter the two churches as we weren’t properly dressed - both churches are still consacrated - and we had little time anyway.
When we returned to our boats, two taxis were squabbling over the remaining space, and one made a rather violent maneouvre which half floooded half our boats. From what I understood of their discussion in dialect it had nothing to do with us, but we got the splash anyway.
It was getting late and we still had almost two hours paddling between us and San Nicolò, so all further detours and unjustified giddiness had to be cancelled. We still paddled in a leisurely pace, just in a bit straghter line than before.
The route took us back to Burano and past San Francesco in Deserto. Legend says that St. Francis spent a night on the island on return from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and a franciscan monastery was founded there soon after his death. The monastery was abandoned later, but reformed again. The island also serves as the cemetery of Burano.
As we passed in front of Burano we saw that people were getting sports boats ready, and we saw a bright red racing gondola towards San Francesco. They’re incredibly fast, and none of us could keep up with it.
We then followed the western side of Sant’Erasmo towards Lazzaretto Nuovo. Most of the time it was a quiet paddle, with Sant’Erasmo on one side and some barene on the other.
We saw some beautiful, large branzini jump in front of the kayak, some must have been 30cm long. They were definitely no smaller than branzini I have been served in restaurants.
At some point a dog barked behind us, and a motorboat came up the canal with a fairly large dog standing in the stern. It stared a bit at us, but seemed good enough.
I also saw an egret on a pole, but as I approached to get a good picture, I hit the stub of another pole and the egret took off. I got a rather weird photo of an egret’s behind in mid-air.
From Lazzaretto Nuovo we only had a few kilometres, and with the persistent high tide we just went straight across back home to San Nicolò, in good order and well before dark.
