We rounded the Santa Maria della Salute and walked along the adjacent Fondamenta della Dogana alla Salute to the spearhead of land marking the end of the Grand Canal and the start of the lagoon. Then we swung back onto the long, straight Fondamenta delle Zattere ai Saloni, which runs along the start of the Giudecca Canal as some call it, but it's really part of the lagoon. There's a dramatically different atmosphere in the air here, away from the claustrophobic, narrow canals and tightly packed, multi-storied houses and palaces of central Venice. This feels more like a seaside village.
We're now walking along the sunny seaboard where Fondamenta delle Zattere ai Saloni has widened into a spacious promenade with the almost turquoise, blue-green seawater on our left. The umbrellas of the sidewalk cafés take on a different meaning here. Before they represented the bistro side of life in Venice, there they're all about ice cream and suntan lotion. There are few tourists here since there are no must-see attractions that could fit into a tour operator's itinerary.
The fondamenta we're following goes on from here for quite a while, unbending, and the only breaks we'll get from the steady amble we're settling into are six larger-than-average bridges, all set in a straight line along the coast and crossing six canals that branch off the lagoon into the island like secondary arteries.
The first bridge on the route is Ponte de l'Umiltà, or bridge of humility. It is named for a nearby church that was demolished in the nineteenth century to make room for a garden. The bridge apparently used to be the entrance to the customs house and had a gate for that purpose, but there's none of that to be seen today.
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