Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Venice. Well the ladies and the gentlemen are, so I don't know why I'm mentioning them here. None of them read this anyway, just the stalkers that I seem to have accumulated. In the famous words of our tour manager, "Oh well".
Okay, so bright and early we woke up and went for breakfast before heading out to the ferry to take us to Venice itself. But first a word on the breakfast. Those of you who don't know, Venice is in Italy. By default, this means that in summer it is bloody hot. Being right next to a large body of water, it means that it is very humid. Humid and bloody hot makes for awful muggy weather. While it was fine in the rooms as they had air conditioning, it does mean that everywhere else kind of sucks. Taking this into consideration, it has come to my attention that eating cocoa pops with milk that has been steadily getting warmer is not a good idea.
Other than that mishap with breakfast, however, it was a fairly simple matter of walking the short distance to the ferry and heading into Venice itself. To say that Venice was geared for tourists would be like saying that snow is cold. It's a bit of an understatement. I am firmly convinced that there is no other business in Venice other than stuff for tourists. Everywhere you looked you found shops selling souvenirs. Sometimes you didn't even have to look as they had mobile shops and would come up to you. But more on shopping later. First, we had some demonstrations.
Our first stop after a mini tour by Chachi we were taken to a glass blowing demonstration. For anyone that seen glass blowing before you know that it is pretty cool. What we saw here was beyond awesome. Taking a small piece of molten glass the guy was able to mold it into the shape of the Ferrari rearing horse in less than 5 minutes. Needless to say I now have one of those sculptures taking up some space in my bag (hope it doesn't break in transit). After that it was time to go see another demonstration that wasn't exactly to my taste. A lace demonstration...
Now this was something different, and not in a good way. Our tour manager had continualy gone on about how all the guys in his previous tours had said that this was the best thing that they had seen on tour so even a few of the guys were excited about this (maybe they thought there would be lacy underwear being displayed or something, I dunno). The problems with the demonstration were twofold: firstly it was a lace demonstration, secondly our tour manager had been lying through his teeth. The demonstration was the biggest waste of time of my life. This includes the numerous times I have heardthe Superboy punched reality rant. It was that bad.
Anyway, I managed to duck out of there as fast as I could and we went a browsing. Letsjust say that not much actual purchasing was done, why? As I stated earlier, Venice is pretty much just there for tourists. Due to this fact, everything there is horribly expensive. Veniceis known for two main things, it's Venetian masks and Murano glass. Both of these things can be found in various locations all around the city which one would assume would help lower the price with such an abbundance of goods. The sad truth is that the prices seemed to be uniformly increased everywhere we went.
The other issue I have is with the Murano glass itslef. Sure, its got specific tints of colour to it but then answer me this, why were there different colours of Murano glassavailable? I've seen glass factories in various places all making different coloured glass items. So if the glass here was special because of itscolour why is it still so expensive? With the numer of places around the world that can make different coloured glass items why do the Venetians get to charge so much? I suppose it's because people are williung to pay the prices they set, I am proofof that.
Well not exactly the price they set I suppose. It was entertaining to discover just how much they seem to enjoy haggling overthe price of the items. When a shop assistant comes up to you and goes, "You like this? We can work out special price for you." Mostplaces I have been to they try and sell it to you for the listed price and only start haggling if you initiate it. I'm not sure if the Venetians were actually trying to make a profit on the itemsor if they just set prices so that they can haggle with people. They reallyseemed to enjoy it. Oh well, to each their own. It's not wrong, it'sjust different.
After copious amounts of browsing overpriced shops we managed to grab some lunch... for an hour and a half... the restaurant was cooler than the streets of Venice. The muggy heat seriously becomes oppresive after a while. I don't know how people manage to live in it. It's unbearable asfar asI'm concerned. Well after a long lunch and then finally reforming our tour group we all went off for gondola rides. It was pretty cool I suppose, it's definitelya different way to travel aroundacity and is pretty relaxing. Unfortunatelyour gondolier (is that the right word?) didn't seem to be one of the singing variety (one of the groups on a gondola apparently got shouted at for asking their gondolier to sing). Once we were done in Venice it was time to catch the ferry back to the mainland and head back to the camp site. And thatwas pretty much it for Venice... you can go now... seriosuly leave, you're creeping me out...
Score:
Me: 2
Her: 4
New Guy: 2
Chachi: 1
Bus: 2
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment