Europe: Venice, Italy - Part III

It's 5:10pm here in Italy, you USA'ers will probably be just getting to work around now. Therefore, I will write to you, from the future.

Today Emily and I spent the day island hopping through the "Venice Lagoon". There are three islands in particular that we hit up, Murano, Burano, and Torcello.

First we took the water bus to Murano "Island of Glass". Murano has been the artistic center of glass blowing and all things glass for 800+ years so it was really mind blowing to see the stuff in person. Luckily we were in time for a live demonstration of it as well. Watching these artisans work is absolutely insane!!! Pictures later (I know...sorry) but we got some great pictures of one of the artists making first a really neat Vase, and then a glass sculpture of a stallion rearing up on it's hind legs. We walked the rest of the island checking out the various artists showrooms and looking in awe at all of the amazing art. There were all sorts of great pieces in all shapes and sizes in all colors and price ranges. At one point we found this amazing hand made glass chandelier selling for a mere 4000 euros, (~$6000) all the way down to hand blown glass beads you could use to put in a necklace. Wine stoppers, quill pens, pendants, rings, all sorts of amazing art. We finished up our wandering on Murano and hopped on another boat off to our next destination, Burano.

Burano is the "Island of Lace", which sounds lame...but it was quite interesting. I can't really describe why without it sounding lame, but yeah it was neat to see the quality and craftsmanship of the various garments. Apparently Burano is to lace, what Murano is to glass. So if you're into that sort of thing then you can appreciate it. One woman gave us a short demo of how some of the works are created and even small things like pillowcases can take up to a month to create due to the intricacy of the designs and just how much quality and heart goes into them. After checking out the lace we wandered around the island a bit and got some great photos of this quaint little island town. I'll be sure to link to these later as they are really very cool and colorful. After Burano we hopped on a short boat ride to the next island.

If you were to compare the three island with Venice itself in the way of how modern they are, then Torcello would be last on the list. The island had maybe a dozen buildings on it, half of which were part of an amazing church that kind of seemed to stand watch over all of the smaller shops and houses nearby. There wasn't much else to do on Torcello except stand in awe at how freakin' old and amazing everything is. It was like stepping through a time warp into the 15th century. It was really a beautiful place to visit.

An hour boat ride later we were back in Venezia and here we are! Great photos today, lots of cool imagery to come this weekend when we get back to Paris and can sort photos.

Ciao!