"Venezia the Fairground" a Venice Travel Page by yelyah99

I've read that nothing about Venice is real anymore - that it's all invented for the tourists, the tourist market being the income of modern Venice (or Venezia, as the italians call it). However, standing on the Ponte di Rialto, looking out over the glittering palaces, imagining them housing the merchants in their days of glory, Venice came alive for me. If you can feel that, and ignore the "Gondola! Gondola!" cries from money-hungry tour guides, then you can capture something real that still lies in Venice. And then it feels a privilege to be there, rather than just a "must-do" on the tourist checklist.

You have to think about Venice to love it.

I love the glitter of Venice. In its heyday, the money made in this city made it glamorous and the sparkling of the water evokes that for me in its present state (the black gondolas only serve to remind me of the tourist overhaul). You can be as cynical as possible, but you can't deny that on a sunny day, Venice is striking.

Once it was ships full of gold and silk.

Now they are full of camera-toting men and burned women (myself one of them).