All About Venice

All About Venice

A different website about the floating city

Gondola

All About Venice is not the ordinary tourist website. I write about the hotels, the sites, and the attractions. I write about how to prepare and plan your holiday in Venice… But still, it’s different and the difference is me. 

Because I’m not a Tour Guide. I’m not a professional hotel manager.  

I am just an ordinary citizen. I walk the Calli every day to work, I eat my Tramezzino at the local bar, I ride the bus and the Vaporetto and I read bedtime stories to my kids. And I try to keep my house dry just like any other Venetian…

           And now I am going to tell you all I know about this amazing city…

The Latest Posts

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How à became @. As far back as in the early Venetian history, back when Venice was a small Byzantine province, the symbol à was used as at … Read more

water bus venice

Winter swim.

Man falls off Vaporetto Winter swim. On Sunday, January 15th, 2023, around 1 pm, a man jumped into that canal from the Vaporetto. Before that, everything was going … Read more

All About Venice – Arriving

Imagine… No traffic, no people, in fact, there are no sounds whatsoever, other than the just recognizable “swoosh” when the single big oar tweaks in the water moving back and forth in the dark. The air is humid… wet. In fact, it’s so wet you can feel drops of moisture rolling down your chin And it’s cold. Not cold as in winter and snow. But cold from the wetness, the water. It makes you shiver.

In the distance, you see the shadows of high, square buildings, and tall clock towers, so thin and leaning that they seem to be floating in the air, hanging from the grey sky. Very slowly you start to distinguish other sounds – footsteps on the marble, voices speaking in a strange dialect. And then you see the lights. Weak, white flows from small lampposts creating more shadow and darkness than actual illumination.

You pass the ships at Santa Marta and when you reach Zattere the voices become different, younger and louder, filled with laughter and good times, love and excitement, wine and music. The boat, or Gondola as we should call it to not insult the maestro gondoliere, reduces the speed and turns towards the shore. With some immensely complicated twists and roles of the oar, the gondolier slows down, misses a half rotten pole by an inch, turns the gondola 90 degrees and stops softly one millimeter from the wall, so perfectly you could hold a stamp between the stones and the gunwale. You have arrived. From here you walk…