Europe: Venice

October 31st, 2010

Wednesday-Venice

We drove on the bus to the boat station so that we could catch a boat over to the island of Venice!

It’s overwhelming seeing EVERYTHING as boats and no cars. It’s beautiful and easily one of my favorite places so far.

We saw a lace demonstration, and a glass blowing demonstration which were both fantastic! We filmed them both so I’ll show nana when we get home. I also bought some pretty handmade venezian lace for my craft group!

We had a walking tour of the city and bought venetian masks-awesome!

Dinner that night was one of the extras we’d paid for and it was an antipasti, then 4 serves of pasta (really 3 and a risotto) and dessert! It could have been nicer, but again, that’s what you get with 50+ eating the same thing.

Kim, our tour manager, has a ‘Gelati Challenge’ where someone on one of her previous tours ate 10 cups of Gelati in one day (a cup has two scoops, so its 20 scoops). The challenge was to try to beat that record and take photo evidence of each one. Today was the last day for the challenge cause it’s our last day in Italy and Luke was up for it. I filmed it and made it into s video you can see below. He did 14 cups (quite easily actually), and was the winner! People on the tour started rumours that he threw up and was a cheater. They were really incredibly rude about it. They didn’t say anything to his face but would just whisper ‘cheater’ or ‘liar’ when he said he didn’t cheat. And when they were announcing the winner on the bus they were shouting down the isle.
Luke took the microphone and asked everyone to speak to him privately, not just accuse him of stuff. I had spoken to Kim earlier about why people thought that Luke had cheated (another guy was throwing up/dry reaching in the toilet cubical next to Luke), and she quickly said something about him not cheating after Luke had spoken on the bus.

The rudeness of the other people on tour pretty much ruined our night though and we just had some quiet time in the hotel and went to bed early that night.

I was/am hesitant about recording the appalling behaviour of the other people on tour on my blog, here, but it’s an important lesson for anyone thinking of going on a contiki tour. Don’t go. Unless of course you like dealing with or acting like an idiot, drinking more then excessively and throwing up all the time. They should be paying me to be on this tour, not the other way around.

-T

Flooding in the square
Lace, glass, masks and Gondolas.
The winged lion.

-L