The Acqua Alta Bookshop

On our way to the the next bridge on the Challenge, the Ponte Minich, we passed by Venice's signature Acqua Alta bookshop. It's exactly what the best second-hand bookshops should be: stranger-than-most and whimsical with a musty smell and quiet corners for reading and discovering unusual reads. Throw in an eccentric owner, a canal-side back entrance and gondolas serving as storage space for books, and you have the sort of place you can lose yourself in for a morning.

Unfortunately there was no time for browsing (not even for books about the bridges of Venice...) but Adeline had a quick walk up the 'book staircase' in the back courtyard, which I think it’s safe to say is the only one of its kind in the world.

For a city with the sort of 'romantic-olde-world-sight-around-every-corner' character that Venice oozes it’s surprising there aren’t more bookshops with a Dickensian character in Venice like the Acqua Alta. There are more than a few shops selling books, but most are specialty or rather ordinary-looking neighbourhood bookshops.  The Acqua Alta Bookshop is trademark Venice, and singularly so.