I’m going to make this photograph the first in a series provisionally entitled Uncharacteristic photos from well-known or touristy places. Here’s an old shot taken in one of the busiest tourist locations on Earth, slightly photoshopped – fotoxx-ed, to be precise.
A generic sandy beach in the spring or the fall, off season, somewhere in Europe. It’s not even clear if it’s the Mediterranean. A storm is approaching – or retreating if you’re feeling optimistic.
Now, I can’t recall the exact location but it’s pretty close to this spot below:
I don’t know if it screams “Venice” or less specifically “Italy” or even “somewhere south of the Alps or the Pyrenees.” If memory serves me right, it is Venice. If visiting in spring, take a few steps off the canals and the streets and enjoy the empty beach with cold gray waves and menacing clouds rushing up to bury you in a downpour of rain.
Update. My title is misleading: as I realize now, it’s a view from the Lido island into the open Mediterranean rather than back into the Venetian lagoon. But Lido is so narrow – less than a kilometer wide – that you can never get very far from the lagoon.