Venice - Murano and Gondola

Debbie has been a bit sick for the last couple days, so we're trying to take it a little easy so she can recover. Of course, when you only have two days, you can't afford to take too much time off. She'll get more time to rest in Tuscany.

We started off our one full day in Venice with an exciting trip to the train station to get our tickets to Florence. After that, we took the vaporetto (the aquatic equivalent of a bus) to Murano, which is the Venetian island famous for its glass. It's packed with stores selling pretty glass things and with the workshops for making those things. They have a problem with stores on the island selling glass not made there, but we were careful to buy local.



Here's Debbie with a big glass tree in one of the squares.



And a goofy self-portrait with the tree in the background.



We looked around the island, had lunch, and bought some stuff. We wanted to buy more, but we're afraid that fragile glass wouldn't survive two train rides and two plane rides, so we limited ourselves. Someday, when we're spectacularly rich (haha) we'll have to buy one of those chandeliers.

After we got back to the main part of town, we took a gondola ride. It was ridiculously expensive, but as Debbie pointed out - first, it's the archetypal Venice thing to do, and second, we're not likely to come back to Venice, so it's really now or never. (It's a nice place, but it doesn't draw me back in the way that London, Paris, or Tokyo do.) Anyway, it was a good chance to take more pictures of canals, but this time with parts of the boat in the picture, too. For example,



Lots of people get gondola rides, notwithstanding the cost.



We got the gondolier to take a pictures.



We also did a kissy-face version, but Debbie's strange notions of dignity won't allow me to post it. (She's probably right, but still...)