Gondola Ride - Check!

After the clock tower tour that set the pace for the day, we walked to the meeting point of our gondola ride. The gondolas are the fancy boats of Venice, made famous in namma ooru by the movie Manmadhan Ambu (climax almost shot entirely in Venice) and the song edho edho ondru from Enakku 20 Unaku 18. The gondoliers wear black and white striped t-shirts and some of the fancier gondolas also have live musicians in them performing for the riders. Our pick-up point was in front of the tourist office near The Royal Gardens(Giardinetti Reali), which was just a park filled with noisy tourists. The road leading to the gardens is strewn with predominantly Bangladeshi hawkers who sell Venetian masks, fridge magnets and the like. If you spoke Hindi or Bengali, they are sometimes nice enough to give you a little discount. But I am sure if you bargain hard enough, you can get discounts irrespective of the language you speak. Some of them don't budge at all though.

Ours was a shared gondola ride for six people and we had booked it through www.getyourguide.com. We had paid for a 25 minutes ride WITH a live English guide. The guide was the only reason we chose this tour but our gondola did not include any guide, nor did the gondolier act as one. We could have booked rides from other websites, which included a live performance in the gondola, kind of felt disappointed to have missed out on that, and not getting what we had paid for. Nevertheless, the gondola ride was pleasant – it was reminiscent of the backwater rides in our very own Kerala, except that the gondola sailed through narrow streets and tiny bridges. A tip for travellers going on a shared gondola ride – if you sit right in front of the gondolier facing the other end of the gondola, you could get pictures taken of you with the gondolier in the background and that makes it look like you went on a fancy private gondola ride.

See what I meant about the picture!

The gondola ride is an over-hyped over-expensive phenomenon in Venice – once you get through the initial excitement, all you will see is algae laden walls that are about a century old with the paint peeling off the walls. I would choose the backwaters of Aleppey any day over this. The Vaporettos at €7 per person is a much better bargain – they are as good a river cruise as the gondolas, just that you won’t be able to touch the waters from a Vaporetto. And by the way, in the gondolas you can’t move around too much since the balance of the weights is important. So if you are looking to cuddle up too close to your partner, hard luck!

The 25-minute gondola ride was over before we realized. But we were tourists after all, and the gondola HAD to be checked off our list, like all others’. 

The husband and I couldn’t enjoy the walk back as well. We had to rush back again to catch the penultimate bus from Piazza Roma. We didn’t want to be left waiting for the last bus on the first night in a new city, but we managed to enjoy a gelato though. As expected, there are a lot of Gelatterias strewn across the square and the streets. We walked back hurriedly, this time with more confidence and we reached the bus stop and took the bus back to the hotel. The hotel did not have a restaurant, but we got directions from the hotel receptionist for nearby restaurants to dine in, but we were too skeptical to walk through the dark alleyways so after a short walk and our tired legs begging us to go back, we got back to the hotel and ordered for a pizza delivery. Without learning from our lunch mistake, we ordered two pizzas and ended up wasting quite a bit. Nevertheless, with our tummies now full, we are off to sleep with full excitement for tomorrow, which begins with a trip to the islands of Murano, Burano and Tortello. Ciao! 

Expenses:

·      Venetian Mask and Postcard - €1.90

·      Fridge Magnet - €3.00

·      Water - €2.00 (best to fill water in your own bottles)

·      Dinner – Pizza Margherita and Pizza Marinara - €19.00

·      Gelattos(a small cone) - €3.00 for two