The hopeless romantics will love it. Not so romantic ones might too.
You will find romance rubbing on to you, with effortless charm, in narrow shadowy alleyways, moving through a slender neck of a canal when you hear sound of distant singing, when you stand on Rialto at twilight and see the waves melting the reflections of a thousand lights into a colossal concoction or when you cross those small bridges holding the island together or when you are gliding over the grand canal on a gondola and your gondolier sings for you!
Or may be somewhere else absolutely unsuspected, it will catch up with you.
While in Venice, we put aside an evening just for a gondola ride that erstwhile, the characters in my book had been enjoying. To do that, we slightly steered away from the most crowded part of the city (i.e around Rialto), hopped on a vaporetto to Santa Maria Salute, strolled around a bit and got lost a bit and discovered some nearly despoiled areas in the process.
- Santa Maria della Salute
Close to the church above.
On Accademia bridge, Santa Maria della Salute peeping behind me.
If you ever get lost how would you feel to find yourself here? Lucky, right? What else.
In a lovely unknown alleyway of Venice.
People like these skewed pictures now. Because everyone worth knowing is doing it & they have a trendy name to it – selfie. We call it a helpless compulsion in some situations and here’s ours.
The charms in Venice are endless. No wonder so many artists are born in Italy.
Somewhere, where we had a part of Venice to ourselves.
The gondola ride.
When I did some reading about Venice I came across several articles calling gondola rides overrated, over priced, a ‘rip off’ and even ‘tourist traps’. Well, my advice would be NOT TO MISS IT, AT ALL. If you want to shun it, try it & say so. Considering this advice comes from a person, who does not otherwise like activities in water, it must carry some weight. It is pricey, agreed. 80 euros for a 40 minute ride does sound expensive (and they rise at night). But it is worth it, down to the last cent. For Venice was built to be seen that way. It is an experience unique to Venice. And IT IS ROMANTIC, by far.
And for that matter, if I may add as an afterthought, have you ever taken a taxi ride in say London or Lausanne??
And please don’t even try to equate fuel expense with manual labour. There’s a reason why people fear the sight of a bill from the dentist.
There we go!
On a fine evening in Venice, a gondola ride that we took, forms our one of most memorable holiday experiences ever. Our gondolier was dressed in traditional black trousers and striped shirt and of course the hat! He sang, told us some history, captured the moment for us. It was great! There is no where on the world where you will glide along in a gondola drinking in the beauty of a such a city!! So call it touristy or whatever but do it. I know all the ‘be a traveller and not a tourist’ thing but then why travel to Venice at all?
There is no way you can taste the city with liquid roads without doing it.
Our gondola seemed to move to his muscle and music. I love how the intense, luxurious red of the boat breaks the monotony of the serious colours of Venice.
Here’s some gondola ‘gyan’ (Knowledge in hindi) that I picked on this sojourn.
Each and every magnificent gondola is handcrafted using eight types of woods.
Gondola ride is arguably the most romantic mode of transport in the world and legends associated with it are no less. They say a ‘crescent’ moon (that’s where our present day gondolas take their shape from) dropped from the sky to form a boat to aid the elopement of two lovers.
While the romanticism associated with it an arguable matter as I found, what I found unarguable was the chiseled looking gondoliers, who by the same virtue enjoy being the centre figure of souvenirs such as paintings, photographs, calendars etc.
Another impressive fact about gondoliers is that there are few in the world (about 400) and they acquire the license after rigorous training and several examinations including history and foreign language skills. No examinations for singing though!
So do it for the sheer exclusivity and exoticness of the ride.
Bottle neck canal with gondolas.
Yeah that happens too. But haven’t we all got stuck in traffic, now and then? And at times enjoyed it? So take it in stride & relax, you’re on a holiday. 🙂
I don’t know why I’m bearing a cautious look here. I would never get to the bridge, even if I was standing on my seat!
Between this and the above photo something crackling funny happened for sure. I think it was my husband losing his balance while changing sides and therefore the shaky picture!
Don’t forget to steal a kiss under Rialto, even if you’ve done it under the bridge of sighs.
We loved it to bits and wished it was longer!
The gondola rates are officially set so there is no scope of trying your bargaining skills here. However, a gondola can be shared with upto six people so that’s where one can get a relief on the fare. Also I’m sorry to break it to people who like to have choices that all gondolas are black (by law) and there’s no way you can pick and choose to match them to your shoes or bags or hats!
And by twilight we were back on Rialto, for the beautiful views of Venice.
For most people this is the highlight of Venice. So my take on the big question, whether you should do Gondola rides or no? Is a big obvious YES!
Also this is not all that Venice is, there’s more. Lot more. This time we did something in Venice that we almost invariably never do on vacations.
Up in next post. 😉
Read the next post here