Venice

Hi there! Here I am in Venice, Italy. A gondola is the name given to the craft used since the eleventh century for the conveyance of people along the canals of Venice in Italy. Gondolas are flat-bottomed boats, measuring 30 feet by 4 or 5 feet whose prow and stern rise high above the water and taper to a point. The gondolier stands on his poppa in the stern and skilfully propels the boat with graceful broad sweeps of his single oar. Usually there is a cabin, low, and curtained. Once the gondolas were gaily painted and decorated with oriental silks and rich embroiders, but since the sumptuary laws of the sixteenth century they have been quite black and altogether very different from the splendid craft of Carpaccio’s pictures.

Thomas