Venice and Murano


On our last full day in Venice, we rode a vaporetto to the outlying island of Murano which is famous for its handcrafted glass ornaments and jewellery.  We found that every single shop there, if it wasn’t a place to eat, was selling Murano glass.  We spent a couple of hours wandering the island, and found it to be very much like Venice but with a whole lot fewer people.  Like Venice, Murano has its own Grand Canal, with a network of smaller canals crisscrossing it.  We took the time to attend a tour demonstrating the skills and techniques of a master craftsman and glassblower. The ovens they use have to be so hot that they never turn them off.  The manufacture of Murano glass is a 24/7 operation.  We had a hard time understanding how these guys tolerate the temperatures that they have to work in.


After our time at Murano, we made our way back to Venice with the objective of scritching off the final item on our “things to do in Venice” list.  We decided to take a ride in a gondola.  It had taken us a couple of days to convince ourselves that the experience would be worth the expense, given that we’d heard that a lot of people end up disappointed due to the indifference of some of the gondoliers.  We tapped into the advice of the all-knowing travel guru, Rick Steves, who said you should not just climb on the first gondola you see, but instead walk around and chat with various gondoliers to see how engaging they are.  We very quickly ruled out the guy who paddled by with his earbuds in, and we also eliminated the young fellow who barely looked up from his cellphone to answer our questions.  We’re glad we were picky because we then encountered Fabio, who turned out to be everything a person could want in a gondolier.  He served as a tour guide, telling us all about the sites we passed. He took many pictures for us from a gondolier’s eye perspective.  Best of all, on several occasions, he sang.  We had  heard that a singing gondolier was a rarity in this day and age, but Fabbio was an old school guy with 40 years experience plying his trade.  We came away loving our gondola ride on the canals of Venice.  It beat the heck out if the facsimile in Las Vegas.  Thank you, Rick Steves!


Our final time was spent walking back towardsSt. Mark’s square where we encountered a beautiful church having choir practice so we had to sit a listen for a while. Then we just sat by the Grand Canal and soaked in the sites (and rested our weary bones) after which we caught a water bus back to Rialto for dinner. Finally as the sun set we turned on our GPS and successfully found our way out of Venice after 3 days of being gloriously lost! We will miss you Venice❤️





Heading for our Murano glass making demo with a 
master craftsman


Basilica dei SS Maria e Donato (Duomo de Murano)
12th century Byzantine mosaic

Yes, one more gelato flavour to try!

Gondola for two ❤️

View from the water

Marco Polo bridge in a quiet little canal

The Rialto bridge from our gondola

Cruising gently down the Grand Canal

Chris and Fabio, our entertaining gondolier 








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