It’s 5:45 p.m. and we’re in noisy rush hour traffic Venice-style.
My wife and I and our 10-year-old daughter are in a gondola at the mouth of the Grand Canal—the nexus of all things water transport in this Italian city made up of 118 islands and 448 bridges.
The jostling for position starts as soon as we push away from the endless docks where thousands of tourists everyday pay big bucks to hop in a gondola..
Since these waters are heaving with gondolas and the craft aren’t equipped with horns, gondoliers standing at the back deftly working the single oar are yelling at each other in Italian.
We’d like to think our gondolier, Enrico Busetto, is screeching that his customers are the most important so please give right of way.
But the reality is he doesn’t want a collision.
And the sooner he can get us around the corner and into the narrower and quieter Santa Maria Formsoa Canal and back he can take on more paying customers.
Don’t get me wrong, we adore our half-hour gondola ride and it was surreal to be gliding over some of the world’s most fabled waterways in this unique boat.
But it isn’t at all what we expected.
With our daughter in tow we weren’t exactly anticipating a moon-lit romantic escape with champagne and serenading Italian.
But neither did we expect the cacophony of this ancient mode of transportation put to a comedic backdrop of tourism, commerce and chaos.
The gondola itself was a surprise.
I know what they look like from a million tourist brochures, TV shows and movies.
But stepping into the real thing revealed a black boat that had lost a bit of its original sheen.
The red upholstery on the bench and chair seating was slightly faded and tattered—remember the thousands of tourists’ butts that have been there before yours—and are reminiscent of a 1700s Venetian boudoir.
When we enter the smaller narrower canal there’s still lots of traffic, but there’s only room for gondolas single file.
This is where our gondolier Enrico puts on a show,
With a sweep of his arms, flick of his wrists and roll of his hands he glides the vessel through the passageway.
To this poetry in motion he regularly paces up and down his little Persian-carpeted runway in the back to achieve the right torque on the oar; occasionally has to use his foot to push off a wall so gondola and building don’t crash; and is forever ducking and weaving so he doesn’t bonk his head as we squeeze under bridge after bridge.
While Enrico is wearing the traditional red and white striped gondolier shirt, he hasn’t bothered to put on his straw hat with ribbon.
So I find my camera wandering to capture two such behatted gondoliers—one passing by and one on a bridge.
Our time on the canals is part of the Doge’s Palace, St.Mark’s Basilica and Gondola Ride excursion we pick while in Venice on a 12-day Mediterranean cruise aboard the Disney Magic.
Seems every tourist in Venice this day is after the same trifecta of the city’s greatest hits.
It’s crazy busy.
We finish up in front row seats on the patio at Al Todaro restaurant in ultra-busy St. Mark’s Square so we can people watch and, of course, eat gelato.
DisneyCruise.com and Venice-Tourism.com.
