Saturday Snapshot

 

Saturday Snapshot is hosted by Alyce at At Home With Books.   

Beer delivery in Venice, Italy.

This is a repost from a couple of years ago. This happens to be one of my favourite photos from Venice.


Apart from the car parks by the mainland bridge, and a private port area, all transport in Venice is by boat. And the more you think about it, the more difficulties that presents. Deliveries, emergency services, taxis - everything that is done on wheels in other cities must here be done by boat.

Boats are a major part of everyday life, not just for passenger transport but for pretty much everything else too.

Delivery barges are the most common kind of utility vehicle you'll see. Big delivery firms like DHL and UPS have their own liveried boats. Other barges will pass by stacked with anything from casks of wine to shoeboxes. Some have freezers to transport cold food and drink. Once goods get as near to their destination as the canals permit, they are unloaded and wheeled on handcarts through the lanes to their destination. You can watch shop merchandise being unloaded alongside the Rialto Bridge.
The Italian postal service have their own delivery boats, and you can see these moored outside the central Post Office by the Rialto.

The emergency services also have to operate by boat. The fire brigade (Vigili del Fuoco), police and ambulances all have sirens, just like emergency vehicles on land, and woe betide any small boats that get in their way as they race down the Grand Canal, leaving a massive wake behind them. Police boats buzz all over the place. Italy has countless types of police force (military police, urban police, local police, prison police, finance police etc.)
Garbage collection is carried out by boat, too. Early in the morning the refuse barges chug along canals, meeting up with collectors who have cleared every lane on foot, using handcarts.