Mindful Walking in Venice

By Tammy H. – Guestblogger from Venice
Venice is a fascinating and amazing city. Built on 118 islets in a lagoon over 1,500 years ago, it is shaped like a giant fish with the Grand Canal winding through the middle. Laced together by 150 canals, 400 bridges and more than 2,000 alleys, it is a completely car-free city ideal for wandering tourists and walkers. Here people move around on foot, by boats, motorboats, vaporetti (steamboats served as water buses), traghetti (gondola ferry boats), or gondolas. It is home to 65,000 Venetians and a stop for over 20 million tourists a year, many of them staying for just one to three days.
Venice is a fun and charming city to walk around and get lost. It's like walking in a maze. Even with a map, it is impossible not to get lost here since there're thousands of narrow streets called calli – hundreds of them with no names and only wide enough for one or two people.
For me, Venice is a great city to practice mindful breathing and walking in addition to learning Italian. Every morning, neighborhood church bells wake me up to tell me that a brand-new day is awaiting me. I open the windows, deeply breathe in the fresh air, savor the picture-perfect scenes in front of me, and watch the boats moving along the canals below. Happiness and gratitude fill my heart and soul as I get ready for school. The school is only 5 minutes away.
At 8:30 am, I walk mindfully down each of the 40 stair steps from the 2nd floor condo. A few meters later, I carefully climb up and down 19 steps of a black little bridge, walk through a narrow little alley and stroll leisurely around the large Campo Santa Margherita square where morning activities have begun in earnest. Three fruit and vegetable vendors are busy displaying their produce and two souvenirs stalls are already up in the center. In the far right, three seafood stands are crowded with buyers. The coffee shops are busy with customers.
I stop by one for a cup of cappuccino and a croissant, then walk around to check out prices of different fruits and fish and to learn their names. At 8:55 am, I mindfully climb up 20 steps to my school on the 2nd floor of a corner building. What a lovely way to begin the day for me…