Venice, Day 4

Today we got up early, had breakfast in the hotel restaurant (disappointing, definitely not worth going there instead of the executive lounge) and got all day passes for the water buses.  We successfully managed the boat schedule and got on one for Murano, and I promptly fell asleep.  Forty-five minutes or so later, Lyle woke me up and we wandered around a little town famous for its handmade glass.  It was still raining a bit, but not the downpour we were concerned about.  We poked about in a couple of shops just as they were opening and then attracted the attention of the owner of one.  He took us upstairs to see the real works of art.  They were amazing, and he offered us VERY big markdowns, but very big markdowns from thousands of Euros is still not in our price range for non-Seuss related works.   They really were amazing though.  We watched an artisan blow glass and make a vase and a little horse.  I have seen glass blowing demonstrations before, but the horse was especially impressive.

From Murano, we took another boat to Burano.  Burano is known for lace work and brightly colored houses.  We had a really good time here, just poking around shops.  We had been bumping into the same couple time and time again, and we finally talked to them.  They live in DC, are traveling for their 15th wedding anniversary, he works for WeddingWire, and his name is Marty.  Small world.  We gave them a bottle opener.  We were told that in Venice, only children can ride bikes, they're not allowed as a means of transportation.  Apparently this is not true in Burano though, because we saw lots of bikes here.  It may have just been that the weather cleared up so nicely, but we really enjoyed this part of the day and would recommend it to anyone looking for a bit of a change from the main part of Venice.

We had another excellent lunch.  I had more pasta, and Lyle had some kind of fried fish plate.  The couple next to us was from Rhode Island and getting ready to embark on a four week cruise.  Crazy.  We had gelato twice in Burano, and then caught the boat back to Venice.

We went over to St. George's island and toured the church there.  There are almost 400 churches in Venice, and we've been in 4.  We climbed the bell tower there, and got a great look at St. Mark's.  From the bell tower, you can see the garden/maze/labyrinth, but I didn't find anything about a tour that gave access to that.  Unfortunate, because it looks awesome.

We poked around St. George's just a little too long because we just missed the chance to go up to the top of St. Mark's basilica back on the main island.  We'd already missed the opportunity to tour the Jewish ghetto and do a bar crawl (because the tour was booked up by the time we decided we for sure were interested) and so we're making a list of things to do on the next trip.  We've determined that we could make Venice a weekend trip if we left after work on Thursday and refused to accept jet lag as an excuse.  We did check out the "treasures" (relics) of St. Mark's, which were fascinating, though I think Lyle was a little creeped out.  After that we walked around looking for more gelato, didn't find the place we wanted, got some anyway, and came back to the hotel.

We had dinner at the "nice" hotel restaurant tonight, and were underwhelmed.  The food was good, but honestly, we'd have been just as happy or happier with another plate of pasta from the bar or room service.

We have to catch the boat to the train station at 5:15 or something equally ungodly tomorrow morning to get to Milan, so we're making it an early night.

Looking back at Venice, we agree that our favorite day, by far, was kayaking.  It might not be the best recommendation for everyone, as it does require some degree of experience and skill, but for people competent in boats, it's an absolutely not to be missed experience.

On our list of "what we should have remembered" is testing out all the electronics so we'd have known there was a problem with the camera before we left; we should have brought our small umbrella and wound up having to buy one here; and we will in the future pack Dayquil or something similar because navigating Italian pharmacies is a little tricky.

We'll see what else we wish we'd had by the end of the trip.

Stay tuned for reports from Milan!

Marty and Lyle