At a price of thirty dollars for half an hour, the Venetian Gondola Tour sounds like it has an easy victory over the horse carriage rides as the best valued date Central Park has to offer: You can be serenaded with opera, you're not trailed by the scent of manure and you don't have to worry about a throng of commenters on this blog questioning your integrity. But with that price comes a risk—your seemingly peaceful trip around the lake and interactions inside the boat might be judged by the seemingly sweet postgrad manning your boat...on his blog. And worse than that, now that blog's been taken to the next level—the Sunday Times!
The Times has an essay from gondolier Liam Daniel Pierce, primarily accounting some of the more amusing tales of his sails, that include forty-plus proposals he's seen since rowing the boat, not one with an awkward rejection and silent cruise back to shore. He tells of the guy who immediately asked him, “Hey, boss, know any cheap restaurants around here?” after popping the question. And we're dying to find the two tweens with Coke bottle glasses who spent the entirety of the ride furiously sucking face. He's also had to pull over the boat more than once for couple looking to sing a little opera of their own (sex), crossed paths with Steve Guttenberg and can apparently give an answer to the question: how do you squeeze twelve skinny hipsters into a six-person boat?
Does broadcasting this for the world make the ride any less romantic? We're not sure. But something tells us our "Wedding Story" wouldn't be made all the richer by a blog described as "a four-letter obscenity. I’ve signed on to a life of Feelings Talks, told with urgency—endemic to the internet—that is neither effective nor accurate to how my mind works."
