The far canals of Venice

We're finally getting used to the peculiar nature of Venice and the leg muscles have had a great work out with the constant crossing of bridges. It no longer feels scary to walk around several narrow laneways with signage that means little and what felt completely bamboozling a couple of days ago now seems to make sense. Even Lachlan was able to correctly navigate (ie. guess) the 13 weird laneway turns and four bridges from our nearest boatstop to our apartment. The island area is almost entirely dominated by tourists with the locals only coming in to work in the shops as it's too expensive to live there permanently. It's actually nice to have no cars or trucks around, with the area given overly to pedestrians on land or boats on the canals.
Friday 25 June the girls spent some time together doing what girls do (shop of course) and Lachlan and I met up with them in the early afternoon for a wander around the popular Rialto Bridge / Ponte before getting a gondala ride.
We had no idea what the going rate was for a gondalier and thought the 80 Euros for a 35 min trip around the canals was initially a bit steep, but later on we all agreed that it was worth it for a once in a lifetime experience (later that day I overheard an American guy accepting a 150 Euro charge for a 45 min trip at Saint Marco's Square so I'm guessing it depends on how long you want, the area you board, time of day and how much of a sucker you look like).
Our gondalier was a young guy who gave a great commentary of the area's history and famous buildings. The Grand Canal is like a highway and his skill navigating his gondala around the water 'buses' and bigger boats was excellent. But it was the smaller canals that we crossed over many times while out walking that we loved the most. They were so very peaceful and it was like turning off a highway and driving down a quiet country road. As a movie fan I thought it particularly cool to say to our gondalier that a little boat 'garage' down one canal looked familiar to find out that it was a key scene in the movie 'The Italian Job' from several years ago.