Thursday, October 14, 2010

What's Missing?

I stopped by Sunset Gondola recently and found a few things missing.
Namely, gondolas.  All three of the gondolas were gone - out on cruises.
From a gondola operator's perspective, it was a beautiful thing.
In this economy, even more so.
As much as we love to look out on our fleet and admire the curves of our sleek Venetian boats, seeing them absent because they are busy with passengers is even better.
And while Sunset Gondola isn't my operation, Tim is a friend and I'm happy to see him doing well.
Seeing boats out like that also gives me hope for the economy.

This is a beautiful picture, not because of what you see, but because of what you don't see.

3 comments:

Tamás said...

When gondolas are gone, not for cruise, but because they've been chopped up for wood to fire up soup kitchens, that'll be the time to start worrying about the economy...

Not trying to sound ironic, but it feels a bit strange to read your posting, since much of Europe is in a worse shape. It will be many years until Venice experiences a shortage of available gondola capacity due to strong demand...

USA may have all the debt, but she's still more competitive and quicker to invest, with a lot more capital available immediately and that's what really counts.

The only potential problem I could see is maybe the people in California are so much pre-occupied with computer high-tech, they no longer do romance, leaving gondolas empty?

Sean Jamieson said...

Two boats out for maintenance and one on a comp cruise.

Bepi Venexiano said...

Tamas,

Don't worry, Europe and the U.S. will soon be at parity. When that time comes why would I break up the gondolas? I'll be living on them.