April 15 – Venice, Italy – Day 2. Well, happy tax day!! Today we are ditching the main 177 connected islands of Venice and heading out to two of the outer islands, Murano and Burano. In addition to the main collection Venice's Lagoon has about 40 islands of varying sizes. The former is known for glass and the latter for fishing and lace. I'd be happy to go if it was only the boat ride out and back. Riding around Venice in a small boat is a lot of fun.
The small boat picked us up just aft of the Prinsendam so there's a shoe leather savings or several hundred yards already. I looked at the map of Venice last night and it appears that we walked about three and a half miles yesterday, all side trips included. That's really not that bad but when we weren't walking we were still standing and that's about six hours holding up my weight on my feet. My dogs were barking last night. They made a good recovery however and are just fine this morning.
If the main part of Venice, the 177 connected islands, was a clock face we'd be docked at about 9 o'clock. Murano would be at about 1 o'clock and we can't go clockwise so it's back along the Giudecca Canal past St. Mark's around the tail of the fish (A map of Venice's connected islands looks like the outline of a fish with the head to the west and tail to the east. We'd be docked about level with the fish's eye.) and then proceed north to the Murano. To continue the example, Murano would be at about the tail end of the dorsal fin but way north of the fish.
The Stucky building is one of the unique buildings on the Giudecca Canal. It was a flourmill starting in the middle 1800s. It's a large gold-hued brick building with a very art deco appearance. It was abandoned for quite a while but has recently been renovated and transformed into a Hilton Hotel. Because it's a historic structure, Hilton doesn't have a sign on the roofline. This is not any exception to the rule; even the churches don't have signs on them. At most they have the company's name built into the design of the building, but no sign.
The ride to Murano took about an hour and a quarter with the guide giving us a description of all the churches and sites we were passing. Perhaps the most unusual island is Saint Michael's, it's the cities graveyard. It's a graveyard because it's on the property of Saint Michael's Church. If the church weren't there it would be a cemetery. The entire island is taken up with the church, monastery and graveyard. It's the closest island to Murano. The vaporetto system extends to all the outer islands in the lagoon.
When we arrived at Murano the boat tied up to a small pier that led directly to the fornace (furnace, the designation used for glass manufacturing sites), in this case the Marco Polo Fornace. Once inside we had a glass blowing demonstration not unlike all the other glass blowing demonstrations I've ever seen but it's still fun to watch the artists work with the semi liquid, red-hot glass. No pictures were allowed inside the showroom so you'll have to take my word for the fact that the glass was exquisite. From huge sculptures to small beads the workmanship was perfect. One sculpture was a three with 5 types of tropical birds, cockatiels, parrots and one toucan, all accurately represented in glass. It was amazing. From the sublime to the ridiculous, they had a product for every taste. Some of it was pretty gaudy, but some was also very muted. They had a large sculpture of a green sea turtle that had exactly the correct muted colors. Just walking through the showrooms was a very nice experience. The salespeople were very reserved and would only comment if you stopped to examine something closely. They'd tell you something about the piece that you might not notice or something about the process for making that particular type of product. I had a good time and that's a little unusual for me in a shopping venue.
Burano is right next door and yet very different from Murano. Murano and most of the rest of Venice is done in fairly muted tones. Burano is not. Here the houses are painted in bright and varied colors. Here we docked at the public pier and walked into the center of town. There's a large open space there with the local church on the western perimeter. While the guide was talking outside the lace shop I ducked in to take pictures of some of the lace and a lady who was demonstrating the art of tatting. I did that because after the guide stops talking it will be impossible to get any decent pictures inside the small shop.
On the way over the guide told us several local tales. One was about a cookie that they baked for the men as they were leaving to fish. It's a plain cookie that's sort of half sugar cookie dough (no sugar sprinkles on top) and shortbread cookie. It's very crunchy when you first bit it but becomes very creamy when you are chewing. They were round to symbolize the compass to give the men luck on their journey. When I left the lace shop the guide had just finished her presentation and everyone was squeezing inside. I asked her where I could get some of the cookies and she told me to head down the main street until I found a shop with large ice cream cone and that's the place. I followed her instructions and sure enough, there it was.
As I was walking down the wide walk towards the store a large group of students came toward me that had on what appeared to be Superman shirts. On closer inspection the colors and basic outline were the same but the large 'S' was followed by a small 't' and in the upper right corner of the triangle of was a small capital 'Q'. I figured it had to be a school shirt and sure enough the little group I asked told me they all went to Saint Quist Academy, a prep school. (I am totally unsure of the spelling and I don't want to spend my Internet time looking it up. Their English was heavily accented and I'm not completely sure that they weren't saying Quest)
The shop owner didn't speak any English and my Italian is limited to the little Spanish I know. Nevertheless she understood that I wanted the special Burano fisherman's cookie and handed me a very small bag. I looked at the counter and found one that's a half-kilo and bought it. Everyone always wants to try the new food. Well, not everyone but most people.
The other story she told us she admitted is probably not true. When the fishermen came home it was dark and they were very tired. Since most of the homes look the same this led to some of them sleeping with wives that were not theirs. To prevent this accidental infidelity the women painted the houses different and very bright colors. Doubtful but funny and the houses are painted differently from every other area of Venice. Just like the rest of the city the island has a series of canals but also has some wide streets that, at least on this occasion, were completely without vehicles.
The island also has something in common with Pisa. The church's bell tower is no longer vertical but is several degrees off perpendicular with relation to the ground. Apparently this was a problem for Italian architects because there's one in Venice proper that isn't quite upright either. I guess I should give them a break because they were building very tall slender building earlier than most.
Then it was back aboard the boat for the return trip to the ship. The trip back was just as much fun as the trip over, something I can't usually say about a bus trip.
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