ON THE WATER -- Loving his ride

Mathis Winkler

MARINERS MILE -- For years, Marco Tranquillini would take time off

from his job as a mail boat driver and gondolier in Venice, Italy and

come to Orange County to visit a friend.

But then, “one beautiful day, I went to rent a movie at Albertsons,”

said the 34-year-old Venetian. That’s where he met Alejandra, his

girlfriend, and the visits became more frequent.

He’d surprise her for Valentine’s Day, arriving with a single red

rose. Their love started to grow and he finally decided to settle here

last November.

Alejandra suggested he continue to work in his old field and found him

a job as a gondolier at Adventures at Sea Yacht Charters and Gondola

Cruises. Tranquillini’s been rowing passengers around the bay for about a

month now.

Dressed in his gondolier’s uniform, Tranquillini said men in his

family had worked in the profession for generations.

The mail boat deal -- Venice’s equivalent to postmen anywhere else --

worked out fine for a while. But getting up at 4:30 a.m. in the morning

finally got to Tranquillini and he became a gondolier, as well.

The gondolas might be the same in his hometown and Newport Beach --

that’s excluding his new company’s electric version, which Tranquillini

likes to call a “Disneyland gondola.”

But in Venice, they’re used like taxis and gondoliers are constantly

on the lookout for new customers. Tranquillini said he became a

workaholic, adding that he much prefers the way things are handled here,

where people make reservations for a cruise.

He likes his new colleagues, he said, adding that he’s been teaching

them some Italian.

“They first ask about bad words,” he said, smiling. “ I don’t know

why.”

He’s even brought Alejandra to ride in a gondola and “now she loves me

twice as much,” he said.

While he knows many other songs, he usually sticks to the standard “O

sole mio.”

“Everybody knows ‘O sole mio,’ so I sing ‘O sole mio,”’ he said.

Clearly, he still has a soft spot for Venice.

“You’re always in and out of little canals,” he said. “It’s more

romantic. Here in the bay, it’s quiet and romantic, too. But there’s

nothing to show to people.”

In Venice, he could point out palaces where Marco Polo and Antonio

Vivaldi lived.

But pausing for a moment, he decides that that’s probably not needed

at all.

“Under the stars, [the bay’s] beautiful, too,” he said. “For two

lovers -- they don’t care if it’s Marco Polo’s house.”