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After an evening in the Venice maze everyone was pretty worn out. A combination of the late night jaunt through town and residual jet lag made for a late start on Saturday. A promise of breakfast in the morning was ‘..let’s meet at 1pm..’ when we all finally got up at noon.
We hopped on a water taxi into town with the goal of lunch and wandering the streets to San Marco Square, to get a chance to see what it looks like in the daylight. Our first stop was lunch at a little place on the water (of course). I can’t find the name of it but it’s right next to the public transportation Zattere terminal. A few bottles of wine and some pizza we were good for a day of shopping and touring.
We followed the throngs of people which led us to the Piazza San Marco, shopping along the way. We some pictures and decided to go to Marano Island, famously known for their glass making, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murano_glass. The water taxi dropped us off at the Signoretti glass factory. They gave us a glass blowing demonstration and took us through their very large sales rooms loaded with
beautiful pieces of glass made by different artists. The artists use the Signoretti equipment and then Signoretti sells the items. We found a glass blown dog with 24 carat gold flakes in it, looked like a golden retriever. We were interested until we found out it was 6,000 Euros ($8,400)!
Anyway we left there empty handed and were faced with the question of how do we get back. Apparently Signoretti is off the beaten track and as we later found out was the only glass factory open on Saturday. We finally found our way back to the main shopping area of Marono had a Gelato and regrouped. This would have been a perfect spot to start at in Marano rather than the glass factory. There were glass stores and other great little shops. Unfortunately we needed to get back to Venice before the stores closed to buy some glass pieces that we had liked but decided to hold off on buying.
We were getting tired of paying for the water taxi, 10 to 15 Euros per person for each trip and decided to take the ‘bus’ at 6.90 Euros per person. Worked great, we got back to Venice
in time to buy some nice glass pieces at Capriccio (www.capriccio.it), which had some very nice pieces, great help and reasonable prices. Shelly, Martin and myself broke off from the group to go to infamous “Harry’s Bar” while the others went shopping. Well we(I) didn’t read the reviews that there was a dress code, so all we got to do was look inside.
Back to the hotel and off to dinner at Da Romano on the island of Borano, said to have the best Risotto in the world,
according to Anthony Bourdain and friends. There are three different Risottos on the menu, Shrimp, Fish, and Squid Ink. And yes we tried all three of them and they were fabulous. The rest of the dinner was as impressive from the fish dishes to the pasta dishes.
We met the owner who gave us a tour of his kitchen and met his mama, who still cooks at the restaurant. The staff was great with their recommendations and service. When we had to leave they opened a couple bottles of wine for us for the ‘bus’ trip home. This will end up being the best meal and meal experience of the entire trip. Also
Borano looked like a cute little town it would have been fun to show up a little earlier and wander the town before dinner.
Closing out our trip to Venice: Venice is a place you have to experience. It is expensive but much of that expense can be averted by two simple lessons. One book a hotel on the island of Venice and two get a schedule of the public water bus system. It is considerably less expensive than water taxis and will deliver you to anywhere you want to go in the Venice Islands.
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