*Note I apologize for the poor quality of pictures in this post. I forgot to take many pictures with the phone, so these are pictures I took of the pictures on my camera’s screen.*

Last night we had our first taste of Venice, it was one of those night which had that perfect temperature, it almost feels like you’re indoors when you are walking around town. Had some really good prosciutto with one of the sweetest cantaloupes I have ever had in addition to a pretty good gnocchi.

This morning we took a water bus over to Piazza San Marcos, a woman tried to jump on the boat with her luggage after the boat had begun moving away from the dock. The attendant pushed her back on the dock and began to berate her in Italian, I couldn’t make out much but “stupida” was heard several times.

Moving right a long: Piazza San Marcos. A lot of street performers plying their trade in colorful costume. Also a lot of street venders who aggressively sell their goods, not a fan of the hard sell myself. On the sides of the square are live instrumental bands each consisting of a violin, double bass, flute, piano clarinet, and accordion. Very pleasant to hear as you walk on by.

There is a clock tower there you can ascend to get a great view of the entire city.

After taking in the views and enjoying the cooler air afforded by just a few hundred feet more elevation, we came back down, had lunch, and took a journey over to the island of Murano just north of the main island.

It was refreshing to take a boat around in the more open deep channel around the east and north sides of the main island. The air a little cooler, the wind a little stronger as some times it’s nice to get away from the masses of people (particularly when the throngs squeeze through teeny tiny alleyways)

The island of Murano is world renowned for their glass makers, the secrets of their craft being handed down father to son for generations. The result is many beautiful works of glass art and an island with hundreds of stores dedicated to glass. It’s much like an episode of the Simpsons where Bart goes into a mall to get an earing and when he comes back out all the stores have become Starbucks, including the store he was just in. Stiff competition to say the least.

After wandering about the glass shops and visiting a slightly leaning church, we took another water bus back to the main island, did some shopping and went by one of the few food markets to build an inexpensive dinner before turning in for the night.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 25th, 2012 at 7:47 pm and is filed under Italy. You can follow responses to this entry through the Comments RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.