Saturday, July 11th

Saturday was so amazing. We started out the day by taking a boat out to Murano island. I think that everyday should be started like this. Wouldn’t it be great to say “so I drove out to the island on my boat for work this morning…”? I think so. Anyway, we took our boat ride out to the island so that we could tour the big glass factory. Venice is famous for its glass works, and the factory on Murano is one of the biggest ones in the city. We got to go into the actual factory and watch one of the ‘masters’ make a small vase and a little horse statue. The silica sand (liquid glass) is all sitting in ovens that are kept ridiculously hot. The glass maker sticks a long pole into the stove and wraps some liquid around the end, almost like spaghetti on a fork (it’s the best metaphor I could come up with). He then rolls it across beams and pulls and stretches it with special tools to make whatever design he needs to. It was fascinating. He made a little horse statue in about 10 minutes, and they sell for about 40 Euro, or 60 US dollars. It’s insane. After we watched them make the glass, we got to walk through the showrooms. The building contains 9 showrooms that are all lined with miscellaneous glass works. The ceilings are all lined with chandeliers in all shapes, sizes and colors. They were so beautiful…if I ever get rich I’m putting a red one in my house (they start at about $15,000 for smaller ones, some go up to $200,000 or more). They had everything in glass ranging from small perfume bottles to giant statues of abstract people and shapes. It was honestly one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen.
After the showrooms, we took an hour to just wander around the island. I fell asleep in the sun on some stairs while everyone was sitting around me. It was pretty relaxing…until I woke up and felt like my body was 120 degrees. But it was worth it to relax for a little bit. On the way back to the water taxi we stopped at a dessert shop where I bought a weird cookie/roll thing. It was really good. It was shaped kind of like a potato, but it tasted like a sugar cookie mixed with a gingersnap. It was definitely different. We caught the water taxi and headed back to St. Marks, and the taxi ride was about an hour. It was soooo long and I wasn’t feeling well so it was pretty uncomfortable. But eventually we got there, and Michelle, Amanda, and I had decided earlier that we were going to go to the beach, and we’d been told that Lido was the best one around. So we rushed back to the hotel, took 15 minutes to change, and then rushed back to St. Mark’s to catch another water taxi. We were pleasantly surprised by the ride to Lido only being about 15-20 minutes. When we got to the island, we had to walk through the little town, which seemed like a completely different world than Venice. There were actual roads and cars, which after being in Venice seemed really abnormal to see. We walked for about 10 minutes and then we came to a huge building that opened out to the beach. It was so crowded…and much more naked than I’m used to. It wasn’t a nude beach technically, but people aren’t concerned about lying out topless or undressing to change. A little bit of culture shock is good for everyone though. The beach was beautiful. We played in the water for a while, and just relaxed on the sand in the sun. It was such a great vacation day. Visiting museums and sight-seeing is great and I really enjoy, but it was so nice to just take a day off and do a care-free vacation activity. I loved it. We all fell asleep on our backs for about an hour and acquired some pretty interesting tan lines…I have an oval on my chest because of where my necklace was lying. It’s pretty awesome looking. Even though it was a ridiculously shallow tourist activity, going to the beach was one of my favorite adventures in Venice.
The end of the day was not as great as the rest of it though. After the beach, I met Kylee and Megan back at the hotel so that we could go to dinner. It was our last night to eat out in Italy, so we wanted to be a little fancier. We decided to eat down by the Rialto Bridge on the edge of the canal. It was pretty pricey, but we were mostly paying for the experience. Apparently, that wasn’t good enough for the restaurant. I ordered an entrée, Megan wasn’t feeling well so she didn’t order anything, and Kylee ordered an entrée and a bottle of water. The waiter seemed ok while we were ordering, and then he looked a little confused and called the manager over. They chatted in Italian while staring at us, and then the manager started yelling “2 plates, 2 plates!” We couldn’t understand what he was talking about, so we asked him to clarify, and he held up 2 fingers, but them in each of our faces, and repeated “2 plates!”, implying that we had to order 2 plates a piece to be able to eat there. We disagreed, and told him that we would leave. Kylee had already drunk some of the water, so he told her to keep it as a gift and get out. He then continued to tell yell at us to leave, even as we were walking away. We stopped at a payphone a few feet from the restaurant so that I could make a call, and after we had been sitting there for about 10 minutes, he started to walk towards us, so we just turned away and walked down a side street. It was really awkward and uncomfortable. A little bit more cultural disagreement than I would prefer, but I guess he was probably just as insulted as we were. It was a weird experience. After intentionally winding through side streets to get back to the bridge without having to cross him again, we ran into some of the other girls, and just decided to go to a small street café. It actually worked out quite well for me because I got to order the same meal for 4 Euro less. We did get dinner, we just didn’t quite get the dinner experience that we wanted…but we definitely got some kind of experience!