I love to travel on water, and I think a gondola, the most romantic mode of transport. The gondola has always been a symbol of the beautiful Venice.
In Italy gondola appeared many centuries ago, because there were many channels, and formed a huge water labyrinth, but in order for people to be able to move around the city, just used different gondolas.
These boats, according to its elegance, not inferior, and some small yachts high grade, and administer such boats gondoliers, which originally stood in the centre of the boat, but after some time, to transport more passengers, they began to be placed on the stern.
The word "gondola" is translated into Russian language as — the traditional Venetian rowing boat. In Venice it is customary to pronounce the word with the accent on the first syllable, as it sounds in the original.
Venetian gondolas do not have this appearance, they for centuries and have changed and improved. If you think of paintings by Venetian artists of the XVI-XVIII centuries, gondolas appear as short and wide boats like the painting by Giovanni Antonio canal (Canaletto).
Today gondolas are built on sophisticated technology that is transferred from generation to generation in many of the ship docks. And many tourists are already aware of the fact that in the gondola have to be a long, hard paddle, which is doing most of the solid and dense beech to manipulate through various channels of Venice. But from the gondolier requires considerable dexterity, attention and remarkable strength.
Each gondola has a special "Forcola" - gate, fork, which helps to keep the paddle, but made it just in walnut. And I advise you not to call this place a ROWLOCK, for Italians it's an insult. An experienced gondolier easily "switch" their paddle from one mode to another, and at night takes "Forcola" home security reasons, without forcoli no one dares to steal your favorite gondola.
Not everyone today can become a designer of these boats only after 3 years of training and passing the exams difficult students "squerarolo" (designer gondolas) can take up such delicate and honourable work.