Bonus Italy Photo of the Week: Venice Gondoliere

Well, not all of the gondoliers are that careful. Our gondolier spent the first 10 minutes of our ride talking on his cellphone while rowing with one hand, and then, realizing he was running behind, proceeded to row as fast as he could (”My Ferrari!”, he said) — and promptly ran into another gondola. Before it was over, we had was essentially a 4-gondola pileup, with each of the gondoliers cursing at the others in Italian. I thought it was great — by far the Most Italian Moment of the trip.

7th march 2008 just back from venice we where having a wonder full time untill yesterday when we realised the time, we had to get back to the hotel to pick up our luggage and head to the airport, we jumped on to one of those water taxi’s and there was no conductor on board to take our fare, we had two stops from the time we got on untill the time we got off, i got a tip on my shoulder from this very rude man,, tickets mam he said, i had in my hand 12.50 for two tickets well he let rip at us shouting … can you not speak you pay driver are you stupid.. oh my god what away to carry on the water taxi was full and we where so embarrassed it was terrible, he said to my boyfriend 50.00euros each now or pay 39.50 in post office we both looked at him and said we have the money for our tickets we are waiting for the conductor to take it , that was no good he start shouting at me i am the police now pay the fine, he took our passports and fined us both 39.50 each for a 6.50 journey and we have five days to pay it.we where so disappointed with the way this man treated us as tourists we will never travel to venice again , we are not going to pay the fine unless we get an apology from him.