When Jeff was young, he had always been thin and strong. When Jeff was forty, and he was fat and his muscles were very 1. He did not wish to get fatter and softer every year. One day one of his friends said to him, “Do you want to be thinner, Jeff?” 2, I do," Jeff answered.
“Well, stop going to your office3 car, and get a bicycle. ”
Jeff had not ridden a bicycle for many years. “It is very hard to learn to ride a bicycle again at your 4, ”his wife said.
In 5, it was not too hard for Jeff to ride a bicycle again. He usually sat in his living room and read the newspaper in the evening. But now he 6 riding his bicycle every evening. He hoped that it would help him to get 7 , and he also got a lot of pleasure from it.
He found some little roads which were not really very narrow but were not 8 enough for cars, and there he got away from the noises of the city, which were becoming too 9 for him.
Then he began to go to his office on his bicycle. Sometimes all the cars stopped at a red light, but he could pass them to the 10 , because his bicycle was narrow. So he was happy.
A city without cars would be very strange, right? But Venice is such a city.
Venice is in the northeast of Italy. It wasn't built on land like Beijing or Shanghai, but on more than 110 islands. Seawater is everywhere around the city.
Even so, travel isn't difficult. The water ways have always been the best way to get around. There are 177 canals and more than 400 bridges that can guide you to where you want to go. People in Venice move from place to place by boat. They like to enjoy the scenery and cool summer nights while taking boat trips. They can talk to other people as they go along.
Venice grew out of small islands in saltwater lakes when some Italians escaped from a war over 1,500 years ago, and built homes there.
Water makes the city special, but it is also a big problem. Sometimes tourists will have such strange experiences. One moment they walk across the Rialto Bridge, and there's nothing special. But when they come back to the bridge an hour later, it's underwater and everyone is wearing rain shoes.
Once, people used too much underground water. This made the city get lower little by little. Now the city has gone down by about 23 centimetres. Another problem is the rising seawater. The temperature has risen over the years. This has made the ice of the Arctic Ocean(北冰洋) melt(融化) .
Every year, high water hits the city in autumn and winter. When a lot of water comes, more than half of the city is underwater.
Scientists are trying different ways to stop the city from getting even lower. The Italian government has asked some of Italy's biggest companies to build the MOST project, which is planned to be built under the seawater to stop the rising water. Anyway, this project is helping solve the problem.
