I spent a wonderful few days at the beginning of January with my friend Debbie in and around Venice, and on one of the days we took a boat out to the island of Burano, famed for its coloured houses. Despite the bitterly cold wind, we thoroughly enjoyed wandering the little streets looking for photo opportunities. As we arrived mid morning, the island was busy with residents going about their daily lives and we got a feel for the true nature of the place, before the inevitable hoards started to arrive. With so much colour and prettiness at every turn, it was difficult to avoid cliched shots. At one point we were practically chasing a woman in a red coat down the street, to be able to photograph her in front of a green building – sadly, she decided to escape into one of the shops before we got our shot! There were plenty of young Chinese tourists around and I managed to hijack one of their photoshoots, as the guy stood posing! It did make me wonder how it must feel to see endless people using your house as an Insta backdrop – it must be hellish in summer.

It was fascinating to see how house proud the women were (certainly saw no men cleaning), with mops and brushes hanging outside most of the houses…probably to clear the debris deposited by the high tides that covered many of the walkways outside the front doors. By this stage, we were starting to get used to the fact that houses had boats, rather than cars, “parked” outside and it was wonderful to walk around without fear of being mown down by a car or moped. But it did mean that everything had to come in by boat, and there were men everywhere wheeling essentials round on trolleys.

And I found a new obsession to photograph – washing!! Be warned, there will be plenty more washing shots coming up in the Venice blog!!

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