I Gondolieri

Knowing my love of music and Venice my friend Lorraine sent this along.



Like most of the Gondolieri around today he can't sing worth a damn but the sentiments are altroché.

Thanks to marieohanesiannardin for posting this on YouTube.

13 settembre - San Giovanni Crisotomo

I Gondoleri

In Venetian Stories, her book of interconnected short stories set in Venice, Jane Turner Rylands (who's very Venetian intrigues with the estates of Peggy Guggenheim and Ezra Pound are worthy of a book themselves) tells one story of a slightly over the hill Gondolier. Bruno has been rowing gawking tourists through the canals for 40 years - and as his body becomes thicker with age he tries desperately to live up to his nickname "Volpon" - the fox. Its rumoured that many of Rylands stories are thinly disguised portraits of people she knows in Venice - and may have scores to settle with. As we walked by the gondolieri - many of them aging like Bruno, I wondered which one of them had pissed Rylands off.

Two Gondolieri waiting to be called for work - some eye candy yes but again echoing Rylands' story - it really is a young man's job but what does someone do when they get too old?

This, of course, is the picture most of us have of the gondolieri - the gondola stand just off San Marco where tourists cough up the E150 for the 50 minutes ride.



There is a cheaper way of hoping a gondola ride, be it only for a few brief minutes. There are only three bridges crossing the Grand Canal between Santa Lucia train station and San Marco, so the practical solution is to boat it across. At seven points along the Canal there are traghetti stations. You hop on a traghetto - sometimes having to stand - give the gondolier the E1.00 ($1.45 CAD)(exact change only) and a minute later you on the other side. It certainly saves a great deal of walking... and money if all you want to say is that you've been on a gondola.

The traghetto station at Santa Sophia is busy in the morning taking shoppers to and from the open air vegetable and fish market.

07 maggio - Santa Flavia

Gondoliera???????

It appears that Venice's macho Gondolieri - much fabled in Gilbert and Sullivan as the gay gondolieri but that's another story - are up in arms. These men's men of the canals - I've included a few pictures taken on a vacation back in 2000 to show just how macho these boys are and 'cause hell beefcake is beefcake - are horrified that a woman is attempting to break into their manly domain. Alexandra Hai - a foreigner and a "gasp" woman - has won the "limited" right to navigate through the waterways of la Serenissima.

An article in today's NYTimes quotes one veteran gondolier as saying "Let's leave one tradition intact." And Venice is a city that loves its traditions. However you will notice that none of these gentlemen are wearing the traditional straw boater with the long flowing streamers - guess it just isn't manly and besides it would get in the way of those traditional Armani sunglasses!