Venice, the Sinking City

We visited Venice on Wednesday, September 2nd. It is a very unique city. Obviously, everyone recognizes that it has many canals, but there are some side effects for having so many canals. First, there are a ton of bridges; most of them have stairs, which makes it very difficult for people who are disabled. Also, no cars or automobiles of any kind are allowed in the city, therefore the streets are purely for pedestrians. Another strange fact is that there aren't any bicycles either, so the only mode of transportation is walking (or boat). It was very interesting to see the city, although it is very touristy. There are so many street vendors who set up stands that sell cheap little souvenirs.
We walked through the city on a tour led by one of our professors. He is acutually Italian, and he started the University of Florida Vicenza Architecture program about 20 years ago. So he knows the cities of Italy very well. The very first thing our professor showed us was a low-income housing area (I don't remember who designed it), but it definitely does not look anything like the low-income housing in the States (it looks much better!). After we saw the housing we saw a bridge designed by Santiago Calatrava and opened in 2008. We then continued our tour through the city, one of the images below shows the Doge's Palace, followed by a gondoleer in front of Querini Stampalia (designed by Carlo Scarpa), followed by an image of the Rialto Bridge, and lastly, an image that is typical of Venice.