Laundry, the Sun, and Quiet Places

photos by Martina Zane

Martina seems to have a great eye for the beauty of the quiet places

in the Venetian lagoon.

Sure there are plenty of areas where it feels like an amusement park, with sweaty tour groups following their guides around, and boats zipping about, setting up plenty of moto ondoso.

But then there are the quiet peaceful places, with laundry hanging to dry in the sun, against a backdrop of peeling plaster and old bricks.

These are views of a Venice most tourists never see, because they are too busy following someone holding an umbrella, and leading them past yet another fantastic mask shop on their way to another spot on the must-visit tourist map they got on the cruise ship.

I once asked a Venetian why they don't use clothes dryers very much in Venice.
His answer surprised me.  I thought he'd talk about saving money, keeping with tradition, or how dryers wear out clothes faster (not sure if that's true but I've heard it before).  Instead he went straight to the sun.

This Venetian told me that there was a difference when clothes were dried in the sun, going so far as to say that you could "smell the sunshine in the clothes" that were dried by the sun's rays.