I have always liked this picture of Piazza San Marco taken looking down on it from the campanile on the square. I loved the black and white nature of the scene offset by the brightly color umbrella of a vendor selling food for the pigeons.

Except on the one occasion where I saw Piazza San Marco in the light of pre-dawn the piazza seems always filled with both pigeons and with tourists content to be pigeon perches. In the pre-dawn the square is so completely empty as to unrecognizable.

VeniceHotel.org has a great feature for those traveling to Venice in the very near future. It has a forecast for which days will have the biggest crowds. I assume they are predicting this using bookings at hotels in the area. The only catch is that the forecast only goes out for 21 days. But, for instance, if you are planning on going in the next 3 weeks (which includes carnival) and you wanted to avoid the biggest crowds (did I mention carnival) then they recommend avoiding February 2nd.

Thanks to Italy from the Inside for finding this gem.