Hi, I'm JP and we're in Venice and I live in Venice.
And right now I gonna show my face a little bit but because of regulations I have to keep this back on.
So will cover up my ugly ace.
Right now we are in Cannaregio and I live here in this area and I gonna show you a different kind of Venice,
not the tourist Venice but my Venice, the Venice that I like to participate in.
We are out here in the lagoon. As you can see it is pretty foggy today.
And the guy, this handsome gentleman sitting next to me is Mathias Lühmann.
He's a master boatbuilder and he came all the way from Hamburg.
And what's cool about him is he is the first and the only one to built a gondola, that was a foreigner to built a gondola,
an outsider and have it sold to a Venetian gondoliere and have it used on the Grand Canal.
So he's kind of a legend. He works with us at Classic Boats Venice,
the company that I'm the director of and we restore traditional Venetian boats.
And now we're going to the 'Arsenale', just to say hello.
This is kind of a cool place. Letís see if the police stop us.
We're going into the 'Arsenale' which is one of my favorite places because we are talking about boats.
And everybody that works here is in love with boats. You can't be in Venice without loving boats
because it's part of the history. We are in right now.
This at one time — this is one of my favourite places to be — was the biggest shipyard in the entire world.
And the first kind of factory lines started here in Venice.
It's pretty thick.
We are on the island of Certosa now where we are based and where a lot of our fun appened.
We work here but we're also — on my off-days I like to come here to
hang out because it's just a really beautiful island.
It's an open area which has lots of gras and you feel nature here.
This is where the lagoon starts of Venice and where I think the fun happens.
Right over there you can see that abandoned structure there.
This structure is from about the 14 hundreds, don't quote me on that Iím not a historian.
But that was a part of an original monastery that was here.
The first group we know that kind of settled here was a group of monks called the Certosini monks —
hands the name Certosa.
And after they left you had Napoleon, that little guy from France.
And he brought his friends over and they set this island up in about 1797
as an artillerie island to support the war effort for Mister Bonaparte's wild adventures.
You are not allowed to skateboard at all in Venice.
So that I work in Certosa — this beautiful island — itís amazing that I have all this space.
The idea behind Classic Boats Venice was to create a company that was offering sustainable choices
as subroutines to the marine — the marine industry so to speak — in Venice.
So we thought to take classical craftmanship, traditional craftmanship that was Venetian.
A particular a boat like this which is a 'Sanpierota' which is a traditional Venetian sailing boat
and rowing boat and to convert it instead with an electric engine so that we could rent this without driver
and so that guests could come to Venice and experience the Venetian lagoon
in a sustainable way but also in a traditional way.
This boat over here this is a super cool boat. This is 'Sweet Molly' from 1938.
She's our flagship boat.
This was one of the first boats that we brought in to the company and we did a full restauration of the boat.
This is 'Lady Betty' and it was part of Queen Victoriaís fleet and was used not by the Queen herself
but was used by her admiral in the 18 hundreds to kind of get to land from the bigger ships.
This is the coolest part: the original gear box from 1894.
Every time I look at this I just think about the history thatís incredible.
She originally had a steam engine and we took the steam engine out
and it has now the electric hybrid system going on inside of here.
We are going with Karl, our owner of Classic Boats Venice.
But beyond just being an owner on our days-off
we actually hang out together because we are actually friends.
This is where the real Venetians live, work and they come home to.
And you only gonna hear Venetian language here. No one is speaking Italian here.
And you can find the real heart and soul of what moves Venice here. This area is called Castello.
And I love coming here on days off if I wanna have a twelve dollars meal
— they call it 'menu operai' — it's the workers meal so to speak.
And what you gonna see here is when people tend to think of Venice
they tend to think of people in these extravagant clothes and beautiful shiny clothes,
but the pallet here is very gray and flanell colors.
This is the real Venice. And they have mud on their shirts too.
They're workers and that's what moves Venice. And you gonna feel that here in Castello.
You have the 'Squero' which is a place where they are building gondolas,
repairing gondolas and also traditional Venetian boats.
And the 'Squero' is the place where that all happens.
The name in Venice: 'Squero'. And the bar we gonna go is called 'Alsquero'.
It's traditionally Venetian and you can find amazing 'chiquetti' which are the traditional Venetian style tapas.
And it's just a perfect place to meet people but also see the scene outside where you get to see the amazing boats
being built while you have a beautiful drink.
There's nothing more indicate of Venezia than this place. I totally recommend it.
It's not expensive, it's run by Venetians, it's own by Venetians
and you get a sense of what Venice is and was — now. And I like it a lot.
From 2020 looking at it Venice has suffered a lot in terms of tourism.
And we don't really know what the effects are gonna be.
We're all in uncertain times especially here in Venice, especially the tourism travel industry here.
We're wondering what's next for us.
But on a flip to that we're trying to stay positive and enjoying the quiteness that we have now
in this strange contradiction.
We had a lot of guests who were looking for sustainable tourism which was incredible which is a big plus for us.
And the cleanliness of the city definitely improved.
It was a pleasure to welcome you inside Venice into the day in a life of someone living in Venice
and I hope to see you soon.