Monday – Day 2 Venice

Today we are off to Murano, the glass island. There are glass factory tours on offer, but you can also get to the island by ferry and do your own thing, so Anne and I headed off to St Mark’s square to catch the ferry to the island. There are lots of different ways to get to St Marks and our walk this morning took s to the top end of the square. On the way, we found the kick-off point for where the gondola’s leave from beside St. Marks square. It’s a large pool, big enough for the gondolas to park about 10 side by side and several rows deep. When we got there at about 9:00 in the morning, there were about 30 gondolas in the area waiting to take loads of Japanese tourists on their gondola ride. When you look at the map the meeting area is quite visible, as is the circuit that the gondolas do from St Marks square, through the narrow canals out to the Grand Canal, where they come out opposite our hotel, then down the grand canal away from the Rialto bridge before heading back inland via another small canal to get back to the starting point.

Evan at this early hour, St. Mark’s square and the promenade out on the grand canal are very busy, with tourists flocking into the city. Fortunately, the 10:15 boat (the first) to the island wasn’t too busy, so we managed to get a seat on the front of the boat. Murano is a small island near Venice, which is famous for all the glass it produces – chandeliers, jewelry, glass art, lamp shades – all that stuff.

We had hoped to find some special glass thing to buy, but unfortunately there was nothing that really grabbed us, although I did like the glass guitar that was housed in a special room that we had to be taken on a tour of. I knew it would be expensive, but I had to ask anyway, just to be sure it was out of our price range – at 80,000 Euros, I figured it definitely was. Despite not finding anything to buy, Murano was a beautiful little island to walk around – again more canals, but a bit quieter that the main part of Venice. It’s amazing how many glass shops there are – literally hundreds – and some of the glass sculpting is quite beautiful.

We walked around Murano for a couple of hours before heading back to the mainland, where we got off at one of the first stops and walked back to the Rialto bridge, as the route back took us to another part of Venice that we hadn’t explored. We stopped for a small lunch in a square near the bridge for a light lunch, then relaxed for the rest of the afternoon, before dinner beside the canal again and another nice walk to St. Mark’s square to finish off the evening.