The gondolier is a big part of Venetian culture.

You will see them all over Venice : in the summer dressed in the easily recognisable straw boater with jaunty ribbon and the stripy vest; in winter not quite so colourful as, along with most other Italian people, they cover up in fleeces at the first sign of a cool breeze.
The first mention ever of an Italian gondola was in Venice in 1094 and, of course, there have been gondoliers as long as there have been gondolas - so it's one of the oldest professions in the world.

Until August 2010, there had never been a single woman gondolier in Venice.
The licence had always been passed down male family members and the physical strength needed was thought to be too much for any woman.
She is the only woman ever to have completed the rigorous training and was given her licence despite reservations not only from the Gondoliers' Guild, but from her father who commented that he was not sure whether it was a "suitable profession".
But the age of chauvinism is not dead amongst gondoliers. Giorgia is only allowed to drive gondolas as a stand-in for a fellow male gondolier.

Pierrot is a stock character of pantomime and commedia dell'arte whose origins are in the late seventeenth-century Italian troupe of players performing in Paris and known as the Comédie-Italienne; the name is a diminutive of Pierre (Peter), via the suffix -ot.
His character in contemporary popular culture—in poetry, fiction, and the visual arts, as well as works for the stage, screen, and concert hall—is that of the sad clown, pining for love of Columbine, who usually breaks his heart and leaves him for Harlequin.
Performing unmasked, with a whitened face, he wears a loose white blouse with large buttons and wide white pantaloons. Sometimes he appears with a frilled collaret and a hat, usually with a close-fitting crown and wide round brim, more rarely with a conical shape like a dunce's cap. But most frequently, since his reincarnation under Jean-Gaspard Deburau, he wears neither collar nor hat, only a black skullcap.
The defining characteristic of Pierrot is his naïveté: he is seen as a fool, often the butt of pranks, yet nonetheless trusting.

It was a generally buffoonish Pierrot that held the European stage for the first two centuries of his history. And yet early signs of a respectful, even sympathetic attitude toward the character appeared in the plays of Jean-François Regnard and in the paintings of Antoine Watteau, an attitude that would deepen in the nineteenth century, after the Romantics claimed the figure as their own.
For Jules Janin and Théophile Gautier, Pierrot was not a fool but an avatar of the post-Revolutionary People, struggling, sometimes tragically, to secure a place in the bourgeois world

Piazza San Marco is the city's main public square and contains its most famous buildings such as St Mark's Basilica and the Doge's Palace. Napoleon called it "the world's most beautiful drawing room". Piazza San Marco is in the heart of Venice.
Piazza San Marco, often known in English as St Mark's Square, is the principal public square of Venice, Italy, where it is generally known just as la Piazza. All other urban spaces in the city are called campi. The Piazzetta is an extension of the Piazza towards San Marco basin in its south east corner.

The Vaporetto is the only real public transport in Venice. It is a passenger ship, which is similar to a bus used in other places. There are about 20 water-bus-lines in Venice. The ferries are used within the island of Venice. But they also connect the main island with other islands and Venice with the mainland.
Some Vaporetto lines go in both directions, other lines run in a kind of roundabout. As a tourist you should be careful not to go in the wrong direction. At larger stops there are several piers side by side.

The ferries operate where are no roads, but wide channels. In summer you often have to wait long to get on a crowded ship. In winter you often get a seat by the window. The ships are heated in winter, as a rule there is no toilet on the vaporetto. You can also sit outside. In smaller ships you will find about 50 seats. The size of the water buses in Venice is therefore comparable to a regular bus, but there is more standing room. On some lines you can also find larger ferries, some of them are also big car ferries. These also have a toilet.

High waves are rare in the well-protected lagoon of Venice, but other ships sometimes produce waves. Especially when standing you should watch out.

There are hardly any ferries to Mestre on the mainland because there is a bridge for buses, cars and trains. Vaporetto means translated steamer. The plural is vaporetti and not, as many tourists believe, vaporettos.
The Vaporetti run until late in the evening. There are even three night lines.