Monday 14 August Venice

After breakfast, (early due to deliveries, they couldn’t move us as they were too full,) we set off by water taxi to the ferry that goes to the Lagoon Islands, as we decided to visit Murano and Burano today. I did some more video recording as we go down the Grande canal, I love water taxis, so much more fun than cars, and you get great views of all the old building as you travel. A lovely scenic crossing over to Murano, famous for it’s coloured glass. Murano is a very pretty island with a canal running up the centre of it, and lots of little bridges, so you can cross over every couple of minutes to view all the shops. From enormous chandeliers to tiny animals anything and everything is glass. We had lunch in a little ristorante called Birreria by the canal, pasta and wine, both really good, before exploring further. There is a beautiful church the Basilica dei Santi Maria e Donato at the top end of the island, part of it dating back to the 12th century. The stunning mosaic floor dates from 1140 and incorporates fragments of ancient glass. the new additions to this beautiful church were built in the 16th century. Having exhausted all the tourist sites on Murano, and with no excessively strong urges to buy glass, we proceeded back to the ferry to visit Burano, according to our book it takes about an hour to walk around this small island. Burano is the island of lace, each lady apparently has her own special stitch so it takes several of them to make each item. The Scuola dei Mereletti was founded in 1872 and still runs today, the local lace is extremely expensive as it is so painstakingly difficult to make. This is also a fishing community, and Buranos’ other claim to fame is the brightly coloured houses, it’s a really picturesque little island. The shops are full of gorgeous clothes, I really loved one lace skirt in particular, it was truly stunning, noticed that it was over €3,000 – so I put it back on the rack. We stopped at a little bar for a drink, then meandered on around the island market, bought some cherries and local wine, it’s a very relaxing way to spend a day. Later back in Venice we found an ancient little restaurant down a side street we ate excellent steak there.