Venice is a magic place. Rising out of the misty waters, it is a mythic kingdom, unlike any other. Once you're there, it is easy to daydream yourself back to the time when it all came about, to picture the  frantic desperation than drove its founders to annex what was little more than a marshy swamp, daring their attackers to come after them and risk a watery defeat.

In such a watery city, what surprises many people is how much walking there is to do. Before visiting Venice, I imagined I would be in a boat all day, but in reality you can walk for hours and hours through tiny back streets and lanes, and always, always there is another arched bridge over yet another canal, so in a day of sightseeing you also climb hundreds of steps.

HOWEVER........other places in the world have also been likened to Venezia!

For instance: Stockholm, St Petersburg, Bruges in Belgium, Amsterdam and Giethoorn (both in the Netherlands) have all been cited as 'the Venice of the north'.

Stockholm, Sweden

With 14 islands connected by 57 scenic bridges, beautiful ancient Stockholm has long held a connection to Venice.

(City Hall)

Stockholm is known for its beauty, its buildings and architecture, its abundant clean and open water, and its many parks. And just in case you're in any doubt, look at this Panorama over Stockholm around 1868 as seen from a hot air balloon (below).

Le Venise Verte

France has its own Venice - a marshy maze of canals and islets, a green wilderness that becomes a playground in summer.

It is called the Marais de Poitevin – La Venise Verte or Green Venice. It's a waterlogged land where mossy paths turn out to be rivulets covered with fine emerald green algae-scum. Tiny wooden bridges span shining ‘roads’ overhung by trees, and occasionally you might confront creamy cows, who stop chewing, surprised, just long enough to ponder your appearance. 

And while the waterways seem narrow and scaled down, the area is extensive: eighty thousand hectares of marsh (marais) some of it drained, and dotted with villages and forests, an eco-paradise for both the visitors and the many species of birds it attracts. Who knows how many kilometres of canals there are. 

As in the 'real Venice', when we visited, we became lost almost immediately.

For those with time, the obvious solution is to hire a barque, a form of punt, from an 'embarcadère', or take a bicycle and devote several hours – maybe days – to losing and finding yourself again among the complicated network of canals, waterways, roads and lanes. It becomes fun once we adopt that mindset too, and allow ourselves to wander, almost unsure whether we are on land or water as the two apparently merge and interchange.

In some villages which are more tuned to tourism, rows of low black rowboats with yellow plastic seats stand waiting for customers. While some people gently row themselves off for a day of relaxation, other boats provide someone to do the work, the oarsman standing like a gondolier at the front, poling the group along.

Regents Canal, London

'Little Venice' sounds a good deal more romantic than the name of the nearest tube station - Warwick Avenue. The canal itself was opened in 1820 to join the Grand Union Canal at Paddington Basin with the River Thames at Limehouse. Today it is the street address of dozens of red and green and yellow narrow boats used as houseboats, that are moored along its banks, as well as swans nesting and fluffing their feathers in reproof at the disturbance.

The canal passes through several tunnels on its way to Camden Lock. The Maida Hill Tunnel at around 250 metres is the longest, and tourists shiver until they reappear into bright sunshine at the other end. At some points grand houses back right onto the canal and, gliding along a few inches above the green water, passengers are just centimetres from bobbing dinghies moored at wisteria-covered back gates.

The teeming rush of London is just two or three kilometres away yet it feels as if you could be in a country village. Flowering chestnuts overhang the water, and somewhere from them comes birdsong. A nightingale? Or perhaps a lark? After about 45 minutes the canal tour terminates at Camden Lock which at weekends is noisy and bustling with markets and craft stalls.

If you want to, you can get off here and walk around and return on a later boat – there are trips every couple of hours – passing places with fantasy names: the Pirate's Castle, Primrose Hill and Blow-Up Bridge. 

Little Venice, lovely Regent's Canal, is a quiet backwater to regroup and wind down. Far enough from the sirens and traffic of central London, yet close enough for a lazy afternoon escape.

Venezuela, South America

This is one of those parallels that you might have to squint a little to see it.

Here's how the story goes – in 1499, an expedition led by Alonso de Ojeda visited the Venezuelan coast. The stilt houses in the area of Lake Maracaibo reminded the navigator Amerigo Vespucci of the city of Venice, so he named the region "Veneziola". The name acquired its current spelling as a result of Spanish influence, where the suffix -uela is used as a diminutive term or "little Venice". The German term for the area, Klein-Venedig, also means little Venice.

However there is a twist  as there is with all good stories – although the Vespucci story remains the most popular and accepted version of the origin of the country's name, a different reason for the name comes up in the account of Martín Fernández de Enciso, a member of the Vespucci and Ojeda crew. In his work Summa de geografía, he states that they found an indigenous population who called themselves the "Veneciuela", which suggests that the name Venezuela may have evolved from the native word instead!

And of course they had never heard of Venice, Italy.

Tongli, China

Tongli, alternately Tong-Li, is a town in Wujiang county, on the outskirts of Suzhou. It is known for a system of canals, it has been given the nickname "Venice of the East". There are 55 bridges in the town. The most famous are the three bridges - Taiping, Jili, and Changqing which all represent blessing. When getting married, the birth of a child, celebrating birthday, people will walk across the three bridges to pray for the health and happiness.

A bonus: Macau, China

And, no, Macau itself is not like Venice, but just a few kilometres south on the island of Taipa, a new Macau has arisen. The casinos for which the city has become renowned draw visitors from around the world. Here in the Venetian Casino Resort, Venice has been recreated within sight of downtown Macau's business hub.

Even though it is within the complex it is so realistic that it even has a painted sky, clouds and all!

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Words and images: ©Sally Hammond