IN SUMMERTIME, on days so sweltering that the cobblestones themselves seem to sweat, it is almost impossible to walk from Venice’s Rialto Bridge to the Piazza San Marco along the main roads.
The surge of day-trippers clog the central pathways.
A tourist struggling to haul a suitcase over a bridge is enough to bring a hundred people to a standstill.
A 10-minute stroll—by map directions—can take half an hour or more.
It’s the Venice so often described, and fairly decried, as a tourist trap: an on-rails carnival, less a city than a conglomeration of souvenir shops.
Organizations:
Piazza San Marco
Locations:
Venice