It's only worth buying something if you'd be pissed that you didn't buy it when you got home

---

Today we were going to head over to Murano and Burano. Murano is famous for glass and Burano for lace. Drat...it's raining. I had booked an 11 AM tour of a glass factory that had some really nice pieces on its website. We left at 10:15 thinking we'd have time, but vaporettos don't travel very fast and we didn't get to Murano until 11:45. When we walked through the door, the salesman was more than happy to show us around. I have a glass piece I love in my house and I remember asking the craftswoman how long it had taken her to make it. She replied something like 4 hours and 20 years...4 hours to make the particular piece and 20 years of training to be able to make the piece. The factories have master craftsman with expertise and a design sense and other workers who help. They work in small teams since the molten glass has to be handled with surety and speed. The ovens are at 1500 degrees centigrade and the glass is constantly being worked, reheated in the oven and worked again. The factory was doing a large custom order. The Japanese designer watched as a large glass ball (2 feet in diameter) was blown and then she'd take rods and push against the glass to make indentations. After making a few indentations, stand back and look at the work and then make a couple more. There must have been two dozen balls in a variety of colors sitting around for the project. I wish I knew how they were going to be used. After the walk-through it was time for him to sell us something. The work was expensive and lovely, but I wasn't sure so after he gave us his very best price, I told him we needed to get some lunch and would get back to him. I think Jack liked the work more than I did and asked why I didn't want to buy the piece. My answer was that I wasn't sure that I'd be kicking myself for not buying it when we got home and that 5 years in the future it would still make me happy. Also, it was the first place we'd been I really wanted to see what my options were. On the way to a restaurant for pizza and a sandwich, I spotted a vase that stylistically was much more inline with my taste. Jack humored me schlepping around in the drizzle for a bit looking in several shops. After half an hour, I realized that I was unlikely to find anything I'd like better than the second piece and we went back for it. The saleswoman offered a second factory tour and since we were going to be buying something, we took her up on her offer. Rosa also showed us their chandelier collection which mostly had traditional chandeliers that were very much like the ones we'd seen in museums. She explained that since the introduction of Chinese Murano glass about 10 years ago business was way off and a number of factories had closed.

After completing the transaction and having gelato, we headed for home. Jack had some work to do and my socks were soaked. When they talk about flooding here they aren't kidding. The apartment comes equipped with rubber boots, which fortunately we haven't had to wear. Since we've encountered persistent, but limited rain most of the time.

---