Venice day 3: Island hopping in the rain with fairweather tourists, a crap museum and divine hot chocolate

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Before I came back to Venice I had no idea it is made up of 124 islands. Today we started on 1 and visited another 4. And it all began at 6am....

We'd both had a better night's sleep so when the alarm went off at 6am we only swore at it twice. Each of course. Out of the door we went before 7...to find it pouring down. Typical holiday weather for us then. We hadn't checked the weather, hadn't put on warm clothes and it did get cold and windy late as well. Ah well, nothing new there either.

And then we got lost. Yet again. We were trying to find a place we were at yesterday to do slow shutter speed photos over the Grand Canal before sunrise. The latter wasn't going to happen obviously and the 10 minute or so walk turned into a 40 minute battle against the elements and Google Maps. They both beat us so we gave up and decided to go with our second plan of the day, getting coffee. The coffee here is so so good and worth coming to Italy for in itself. I have had a number of espressos here and every one has been worth writing home about.

Anyway. Rainy day. Check. Windy day. Check. Boat trip? Of course. For €20 you can get a one day city pass which allows you to travel between the islands amongst other things but that's all we used it for. The ferries have quite a few seats and are big enough so the ride is smooth, oh and you sit inside too so the elements can't get at you.

Someone commented on my blog yesterday that I hadn't mentioned the cruise ship crowds and that was because I hadn't seen them. But this morning a cruise ship the size of Bulgaria was pulling into town. Quite a monstrosity really, especially in somewhere as elegant as Venice. I'm not sure I could do a full cruise you know.....the different stops would be great but imagine all those Whitney Houston songs and the people on board....hmmm.....nahhh!

First stop, Burano. In the rain. Boo. Hardly any tourists. Hooray! What a fantastic place. Canals, brightly painted houses, bridges and load of boats make this one of the most photogenic places I've ever been to. The houses are various colours and are just crying out to be photographed. So to shut them up, we did. It was very quiet and that's the way we like it.

To escape the rain for a while we paid €5 to go into the lace museum as Burano is apparently famous worldwide for its lace... So you watch a film that goes on for at least 30 years....we gave up after that....it could still be going on now... Some of was unintentionally hilarious, bits of it were strange historical acting scenes with tenuous lace links and occasionally they mentioned some lacemaking. Rivetting stuff.

Then you go upstairs into the museum itself. After two minutes and 36 seconds you're pretty much done and thinking the rain looks like a good prospect. And at least it's free. There was one painting (picture included here) that I found particularly interesting. How anyone can dawb splodges of paint on a canvas in no particular pattern nor shape and then have the audacity to call it art is beyond me. It's an insult to sighted people as is the fact that it is actually hung in a museum rather than having the art teacher screw it up and throw it in the bin where it belongs.

I wanted Claire to notice me looking interestedly at it so she would come across and look at it thinking it was something good. It took her bloody ages! And all that time I had to stare at this usesless bastardisation of art which made it all the funnier when she did finally come across to me. Hey ho, those that laugh together stay together. It then took me ages to leave the pathetic excuse for a museum as I kept looking longingly at said painting as I was walking out.

We wandered acrosss a wooden bridge to Mazzorbo but there wasn't much happening there so we wandered back again to catch the ferry to Torcello. This ferry was a bit smaller than the previous one but perfectly adequate and we were soon wandering seemingly the only path on our next island. Not surprisingly this was alongside a canal.

We passed a stone bridge that Rocco was raving about yesterday and found it to be mildly interesting. Further along was a tower you couldn't climb and some churchy thing you had to pay to get in. It warrants a double page spread in Claire's book but we'd already been stung by some lace so we gave it a miss. On the way back Claire had some tiramisu which took ages to come so she thought it was being made fresh. After tasting it she suspected they'd been waiting for it to defrost.....

I had some deep fried fish and shellfish where the gimmick was that you could eat the bowl they were served in. It was edible but only just and I left most of it. Yes, I left food!

We caught the ferry back to Burano where the rain finally stopped so we went back into town again and lo and behold all the fair weather tourist scumbags had come out to get in the way and take crap photos of themselves and each other gurning and getting in the way. I almost went back to the lace museum....

I think I managed to get some shots without the klondykes in so the extra visit was worth it. The houses looked even more colourful and will give different pictures to those we took earlier. We also spotten an Italian tower that was....leaning. What is it with Italian tower builders and being unable to build something that will stay upright?

The ferry back to Murano was much more crowded than earlier now the rain had stopped but we managed to get seats. We arrived in Murano just before 4pm so things were starting to close or had already closed as it's low season and it's Sunday.

Claire needed a wee so we found a cafe. I had the best hot chocolate ever in that it was like hot, melted chocolate in a cup. I don't often use the word divine as it sounds a bit upper class but the hot chocolate was just that, divine. Claire had a better tiramisu than earlier, after her wee, and then we headed out to wander along, you guessed it, a canal.

Murano glass is famous the world over, even more so than Burano lace would you believe? And the canal is lined with many a glass shop mainly selling similar wares. Some of it is incredible though with incredible prices to match. Claire bought a few things at the more affordable end of the market as the light went and we boarded the ferry back to Venice itself.

The plan now was to have a wander around an area we hadn't seen before and have some pasta. So we had Chinese. We do like to try foreign foods in foreign countries even if they aren't from there. I mean, we had Spanish food in Japan!

It wasn't too expensive and was rather good. Mine was similar fare to that found back home but Claire's was different than any Chinese food we've seen before. The 'noodle' dish for example was made with gnocchi. It was really good though and she says she'd have it if she saw it again.

It was pretty much blog writing time so we decided to head in completely the wrong direction and get lost again. Welł that's what happened anyway. And so 13 1/4 hours after we left our accommodation we crawled back upstairs still with our blogs to write...but having hit all our goals on our Apple watches....

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