Venice is the most beautiful city I have ever visited. This was my third visit. Continuing from Fabienne visiting me in Rome, we took the morning train from Florence, spent a day and a half in Venice and took the overnight train back to Rome.
Our first half day we spent in Venice itself. The only real sight we wanted to do was the Duomo; we did that first. We had seen museums in Florence, here we wanted to see Venice. We also found a cool shop that is one of the last two that hand makes the Venetian masks. They had all different beautiful kinds for men and women, adults and children. Then we just walked around and enjoyed the city.
St. Marc's Cathedral in St. Marc's Square, Venice
The next day we visited the other islands in the lagoon. We did them in order of distance, so we started with Murano. Murano is the most famous of the islands in the Lagoon of Venice after Venice itself. They are famous for their colored glass works. We went to a demo of one of the workshops and saw three men hand off getting the glass out of the oven, molding it into a vase shape, and finishing it off. The streets here are lined with glass shops. Some talked a bit about the glass. There are different types of glass, any of the colorful glasses are Murano, but the most traditional are the mosaics. The artisans who make the glass specialize in vases, lamps, or jewelry.
Murano glass master works a vase
After we went on to Burano. Burano is slightly less touristy, but so much more adorable! All the houses are bright colors. The island is famous for lace making, but it is the island itself that you should go there to see. Some shop owners there were nice and explained about the lace to us as well, for example some of the ways to tell hand made from machine made lace. The easiest is to look at the back and if it is different from the front, it has a clear front and back side, it should be hand made.
Houses in Burano
We also stopped at Torcello. I knew the story of the of Venice's origin; that the settlers came to the lagoon escaping barbarian hordes but I didn't know anything about Torcello until this visit. Torcello was the original settlement of Venice. Today only 20 people live on this small grassy island. It boasts some ruins and the oldest church of Venice, Santa Maria Assunta.
(Santa Maria Assunta on Torcello island, the oldest church in Venice)
All the pictures I took of Venice during Fab's visit are in my “Fabienne Visit's -Venice ” album: https://picasaweb.google.com/111221349198606775660/20110710FabienneSVisitVenezia
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