Venice has always been on the top of my list of destinations. Today my dream comes to reality. Venice is considered one of the most beautiful cities of the whole world and it is featured in many of my favorite movies. It is renowned all over the world for a long list of things that make it unique: the Grand Canal, the ancient palaces, Saint Mark’s Square and the gondolas…
Venice consists of a complicated infrastructure and it is comprised of around 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked together by 409 bridges. It is very popular for the beauty of its setting, its stunning architecture, and artworks.
Venice is known under many different names like "Serenissima", "La Dominante", "Queen of the Adriatic", "City of Masks", "City of Water", "City of Bridges", "City of Canals" and "The Floating City".
It has been described as the "undoubtedly most beautiful city built by man".
Venice is also the most romantic city that I have ever set my eyes on because the beautiful black, gold and red velved gondolas replace common cars.
Did you know that the Republic of Venice was a major maritime power during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance age?
Venice was part of the Crusades and the Battle of Lepanto.
Salesmen were able to trade silk, grains, and spices from here with the rest of the world by sea.
This made Venice a wealthy city throughout most of its history and until today.
Venice has been part of very important artistic movements throughout its glorious history. Venice has played a very important role in the history of symphonic and operatic music and musicians like Antonio Vivaldi who has created the most beautiful symphonies over here.
I love the old center of Venice best where the canals serve the function as roads. Every form of transportation is taking place on water, boat and by foot.
The gondolas do fascinate me the most and there are many theories concerning their origin.
The gondola is a flat bottomed rowing boat especially adapted to conditions in the Venetian lagoon. The earliest recorded use of a gondola in Venice is dating back to the 11th century. Today a condola weighs 700 kg and consists of around 280 pieces and components. A gondola is built of 8 different types of wood including elm, oak, larch, lime, fir, walnut, cherry and mahogany.
In previous centuries gondolas could be made out of different colors than black, but a law from the 16th century requires gondolas to be painted all in the same color of black.
There are just over four hundred gondolas in active service today.
It is true Venice is the most charming and outstanding site of the world, but on the other side I have also heard some scary stories about it.
I am pretty sure that not many people know about these ghost stories and about the fact that this intriguing city is literally filled with places that could give the shakes to the most experienced paranormal fans.
To get mentally ready for the competition in Venice we are planning an itinerary around the scariest and most haunted houses and places that you can find in Venice today.
If you are looking to go ghost hunting yourself than you might listen to this.
Let’s discover some of the haunted places of Venice. Who knows? Maybe I'll get some cool slimy ideas for the fart competition that will take place afterwards.
Our tour starts from a place that is called Casin degli spiriti, an elegant palace.
Casin degli Spiriti means “house of souls” and it was believed to be a cursed and haunted place.
There are stories about the many religious sects that came here to invoke demons and spirits. There is also a scary legend about the ghost of Luzzo.
Casin degli Spiriti is a beautiful place but it is considered to be a cursed place and Venetian fishermen don’t dare to sail its waters.
We continue our tour at the nearby Palazzo Mastelli that is another ancient Venetian palace with a mysterious legend and troubled history.
There is an old story about three very rich merchants named Sandi, Afani and Rioba who tried to sell a poor quality fabric to a Venetian lady for a very high price. This happened around 1100 AD.
After the lady discovered the criminal act, she cursed the money . When the criminals touched it, they were instantly transformed into stones. These stone statuses can still be admired today.
I am admiring the stones in the square right behind the palace.
The third stop is one of the most famous haunted houses in the world.
Cà Dario is an ancient place and a fascinating palace on the Grand Canal.
Locals call this terrifying house: “The House of No Return”. This house is also believed to ruin or kill all of its inhabitants. Curious and scary things happened to more than twelve of the palace’s owners. Mysterious circumstances happened to famous people like Christopher Lambert, Nicoletta Ferrari and many more.
Have you heard about Poveglia Island?
This is haunted Venice pure! Visitors are not even allowed on this scary island without permission. Fishermen do not even approach the shores of the island because they really believe this island is cursed.
I have been enjoying the ghost hunting around the many mysterious places around Venice and hope that I will receive some paranormal powers to make this race the most mysterious and fastest race that I have won so far.
To make sure that we are going to win our race I feed El Ninjo some white antipasto bean salad with an extra portion of onions and garlic so the fart steams keep coming out extra slimy and steamy.
The competition always has to be controlled by our fart superpowers. This time we are disguising our skateboard fart freestyle and transform it into a style that is inspired by paranormal superpowers.
We turn our fart skateboarding movements into the most mystical and scariest ghost buster skateboarding style that this place has ever seen. We are also going to release some slimy green vapor farts that totally stink like paranormal farts.
Our mission is to win the race and using the power of ghost busting skateboard fart freestyle is how we are going to get there.
We are performing our scariest skateboard fart slime jumps and saltos. The trick is to move artistically from one gondola to the next one. From there and back to the land and onto the Rialto Bridge from where we are going to take Venice by storm!
We connect our skateboarding discipline powered by supernatural farts with the 409 bridges and move in a skateboarding, jumping, and farting style from bridge to bridge and from wall to wall.
We are crossing Piazza San Marco and the Saint Mark's Basilica, the Bridge of Sighs, Doge's Palace, the Opera, and many other uncountable architectural challenges.
Our Ninja superpower strategy has helped us again to win the tough competition of Venice.
Moving forward in Venice becomes a very challenging and almost impossible task because space is limited.
We found a way to break our mental and physical barriers because we tapped into a method called "Empowerment by Scary Venetian Ghost Stories"!
This thinking helped us with our new discipline of half skateboarding and half flying powered by paranormal superpowers.
I did not see the "Phantom Of The Opera", but one thing is for sure. We got some magical help from out of this world because this was probably the toughest competition so far.
I hope the next one gets a little bit less challenging because racing through limited space, over bridges, walls, and wooden gondolas is much tougher in reality than you might think.
The next destination is Paris and know we know that the winning spirit is this:
You just gotta see things from a different dimension in order to win!