Bonus Italy Photo of the Week: Venice Gondoliere

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For this extra Italy photo of the week, here’s a picture I took two days ago in Venice:

While the role of a gondola driver (a “gondoliere”) may seem boring and not require much skill, if you pay attention you’ll see that those tight corners and other passing boats in narrow canals means that the person steering that impossibly long gondola has got to be pretty adept at not crashing into things. In this picture, you can see the driver using the nearby walls as a cushion – they all do this, to help negotiate turns or get out of the way of other boats. It’s quite a feat, and I’d wager that if these folks apply the same care to driving cars that they do to driving their gondolas they’d make some of the safest drivers on the road.

Check out my other Italy photos and the other photos of the week!