Gondolas are SCARY (but I rode one through Venice anyway)

I finished my exam for Sociology of Media, so now it's time for more blogs (and also more ear drops and naps and food)! I'm almost caught up now, just have Venice, Bari, and Paris left! How exciting!!

As I said before, Saturday was spent in Venice! We had booked our excursion in advance - it was the Murano and Gondola Tour excursion - because we wanted to make sure we got in everything we wanted to do. We took a tender from the boat to a dock in Venice where we quickly turned around and took a different boat to Murano. Once on Murano, we walked into one of the shops and sat down for our glass-blowing demonstration! It was crazy cool. At first, we just watched the guy make a vase. But then he made a horse in less than two minutes (because the glass dries in two minutes and apparently it can't be reheated without screwing up the horse) which was actually one of the coolest things I've ever seen in my life. Like, first it was just this blob, and then all the sudden there was a HORSE. It was crazy!!!

After the demonstration, they took us to their store so we could buy a bunch of glass-blown things. I wanted to buy everything in the store. I resisted, although I did pick up a few gifts for some of my favorite people :) After Murano, we took the boat back to Venice where our tour group embarked on a 15-20 minute walk to the gondolas... however, Melissa, Steph and I wanted to take pictures, so every so often we would stop and take photos and then have to run through massive crowds of people to try and catch up with our tour group. It was pretty exciting and highly entertaining. And definitely worth it, because we got some great pictures that we otherwise wouldn't have gotten!

The gondola's held six people, and somehow our tour group managed to divide evenly between the lot of families we were. We ended up sharing our gondola with a nice family of three which included a kid who couldn't have been more than 9 or 10 and his name was Pedro. He was hysterical. This family said they were from Venezuela, except they were currently living in Egypt and had just moved from Russia and were probably going to relocate soon. We didn't ask about why they moved around so drastically because we were too awestruck by all of the amazing places they had been! Basically, they were really cool.

that is the look of sheer terror, my friends

The gondola ride itself was straight up TERRIFYING. I don't really like boats, at least, small boats. For some reason I'm just really worried that they are going to capsize and I am going to end up in the water and some sea creature is going to eat me or something. I don't know. But I don't like them. However, we were in Venice, and who goes to Venice and doesn't ride a gondola? So aside from the fact that I was 100% certain we were not going to make it out of this gondola alive, it was a pretty cool thing to do. At one point we rode past the "Royal Gondola" and another gondola full of people singing and playing instruments. It was really exciting, and I actually felt like I was in Venice, even though I was doing really touristy things. If that makes sense.

After our gondola ride, we once again had to run through the streets of Venice in order to make the (free) boat ride back to the ship. We could have stayed longer and taken a water taxi back, but we all felt safer sticking with the group and not paying for a boat ride. Venice was really beautiful and I wish  we had more time there, but I am happy with the way we occupied ourselves while in the land of gondolas and glass-blowing crazies.

Once we got back on the boat, we occupied ourselves with naps until dinner, where we were once again the only people at our table. Dinner was yummy for our last night, I had tomato and mozzarella "salad," basil and oregano risotto, and baked turkey with cheese. For dessert, Sang made us each gelato sundaes with a scoop of banana and a scoop chocolate gelato with whipped cream and chocolate sauce on top :) Everyone seated around us was jealous because they only got like, one scoop of gelato. Hah! Anyway, after dinner we headed back up to our room to start packing. Our last night on the ship was spent packing, watching strange music videos, and dancing around strangely. Good times!

Next up: Bari! and then Paris! Yeahhhh!!!