16 Jan 2023
I’ll start by saying the guide who picked us up from our hotel was fabulous. He was a true native and a pleasure to chat with. The glassblowing artist we “trained” with was a wonderful teacher, he guided your hands so you got a feel for how the glass moved. Unfortunately, you don’t have the freedom to make whatever you want, it’s at the discretion of the teacher. We pulled what only could be described as “abstract lilly flowers.” We did get to collectively blow a colored vase (there were 4 of us and we took turns creating it.) The biggest downfall, lie, false advertisement, is that you get to keep your pieces. The glass has to cool down over a 24 hour period, so they claim they will ship you your creations “if they make it.” They gave this disclaimer a lot, and the reasoning is so that they don’t have to send you anything you created. I can tell you though that 5 pieces did not shatter in the cooling process. We chose this more expensive tour because of the idea that we could make and take something larger than a bead. However, we never got our pieces, an email, a phone call, nothing giving us any information about our art. I’m sure they destroyed it. In our opinion, it’s not worth the excessive cost when you don’t get to keep anything. We did love our artist though and ended up purchasing one of his beautiful vases from the shop afterwards.