Christian's relaxing gondola rides — Local services in Venice

When planning our holiday to Italy, the wife said one of the only things she definitely wants to do is a gondola ride.

Im super tight with money and when I saw the price, €90 for 30 minutes, I thought thats a rip off, I had to hope she'd forget about it.

We stumbled across Christians, honestly, it was getting close to 7pm when the price goes up and I was sweating paying €90 let alone €110.

He welcomed us and took us for a very quiet and peaceful gondola ride, pointing out key buildings, answered questions we asked. The small quiet canel ended up popping on to the grand canel for abit, which was also quieting down too. After a while we then came back into the smaller canels and then ended up back at the beginning after so some tight corners.

I got off feeling that was actually worth €90. Definitely try and time a ride for around 6.20pm where the waterways are slowing down.

Thanks Christian keep up...

I wasn't going to take a gondola ride, but my daughter said that it was important to her. We are staying one plaza south of where Christian's gondola is located and saw on Google maps that it was close. Seemed a strange place to start a gondola trip. I assumed it would be somewhere along the grand canal. Very grateful that we took the time to seek out the reviews. Had a great trip, Christian was very informative and easy-going. He was happy to answer questions, but also let us just cruise in silence when we wanted to. I highly recommend is gondola, the route he uses, is not nearly as crowded and hectic as a lot of the other ones that I saw. Very peaceful. The photo that shows my wife and daughter, standing in a plaza is directly in front of his little corner of the plaza. Easy to miss just a couple chairs and a venetian, gold...

Extremely relaxing indeed. A 30-minute ride for 80 Euros (the standard rate in Venice when we visited). Along small canals, seeing homes and buildings from a different perspective. Calm waters (they don't smell), and out into the grand canal for a short while. The Gondola was perfectly maneuvered, and our host was skilled, informative and engaged (unlike some other Gondoliers we saw smoking and talking on the phone during their trips). All of our party agreed it was very relaxing and the best activity in Venice. Definitely worth it and I'd do it again if ever in the area. Thank you for the ideal experience. (We visited in April 23 but Google...