Day 12 - Venice & the Islands

---

Our first tour in Venice was the Escursioni alle Isole or "Excusion of the Islands." We met up with our tour guide at around 9:30 in the morning before heading out onto the Bacino di S. Marco. The first island we stopped at was Murano which took about 40 minutes to travel to by boat. Murano is famous for the art of glass blowing and the pieces made there are sold all over Venice.

We were given a short, but very impressive, presentation in the glass workshop. The glassmith first showed everyone how he creates a small vase and then (extrememly quickly) moulds a glass horse. The time it took for him to shape the horse with all of the detail was less than a minute! Avery managed to get a video on her camera. We were rushed through gift shop but what we realized later is that every other store in Venice sells the glass items. All of the jewelry stores buy their beads from Murano and make their accessories in the shops.

The second island, Burano, is the fisherman island and famous for its lace. The tour guide told us that on this island the men fish and the women make lace. Burano is also really interesting because all of the houses on the island are different colors. We were a little disappointed that we couldn't spend more time on the island because the pictures there are all really pretty.

The third, and final island Torcello, is "the first centre of civilization in the estuary. Only the Cathedral with its magnificent mosaics and the church of S. Fosca remain as testimony of its former glory." Unfortunately, we were only able to see the small church as we were give about half hour before heading back. Overall the tour was really interesting but we all agreed it was way too short.

The rest of the afternoon was spent touring around before dinner. We asked the hotel to book us a reservation at the closet gluten free restaurant for Emily but on the way there we got completely lost. Google map sent us in the opposite direction of the actual location but luckily one of the hotels were able to point us in the right direction. We were half an hour late but the restaurant told us that we are not the first tourists to be misguided by google map so they saved our table. So nice and the pasta was delicious.

---