Getting on the big ship

It was finally the day we would board the ship and see if our fears were warranted.  My fears were mainly:
Would I get seasick?
Would the room be impossibly small?
Would it be really boring?

We didn't need to board until about 3-4 in the afternoon, so we commenced with Venice sightseeing.  Our main goal was to visit the island of Murano, a long time interest of mine.  I have a collection of glass objects and was curious about glass making and this famous place.

We took the vaporetto, which was a bit more exciting than the day before.   The island of Murano is well within view of Venice, but we still had to get into the little water highway system of the lagoon.   We passed the island of San Michele, which is a cemetery.  It was hard to see much from water level, but the dense Cyprus trees peeking over the walls made for a solemn sight. 

We landed and thoroughly enjoyed looking in the MANY shops selling glass objects and jewelry.   It varied widely from fun trinkets to investment pieces.  I am still surprised to say that I didn't find anything I wanted to buy!  We visited the glass museum (boring) and never saw a factory that appeared to be wanting visitors.  Maybe that isn't a big deal on Saturday? 

This giant sculpture was cool from afar, but up close really dirty.  It was a Christmas decoration from a few years ago and if it light up, it would be really cool. 

We had a delicious lunch.  I had Canneloni:

 My mom had spaghetti:

 This light fixture was by the restaurant:

We took the vaporetto back a different way to see more of Venice island, and walked back to the hotel via a gelato shop:

 Here is our hotel, Hotel Dalla Mora. I would definitely recommend it if you wanted to be by Piazzale Roma, which was also convenient to the cruise port.  It was a fair distance from Piazza San Marco.  The hotel staff was very nice, the breakfast a little sparse, and the room was big.   This picture is from the alley, where you access the front door.  

 It is right on the waterway, so this is the "front" I guess.   Our room was on the top left of this picture.

After getting our bags we walked back to Piazzale Roma (again...) to the People Mover.  This is a tram that takes you to either a parking ramp or the cruise port.   My mom figured this out from reading the Cruise Critic web site, this was not explained at all by NCL.    There was a very strange lack of instructions about embarkation day.

We had to walk quite a ways, across several parking lots, to reach the ship.  Then we walked through a large warehouse building to do the final paperwork.  This is where we finally walked on.

Our room had a balcony, absolutely worth the money!

 

View from the balcony:

 

 We got pulled out by the tug boat.  It's hard to imagine this small thing could tow us.

 The view as we pulled away into the night:

 

The room was big enough for us, although I couldn't imagining using the pullout sofa and sharing with another adult.  MAYBE a small child.    We could barely feel any motion, and it was a rocking motion but rather some vibrating.