Venice Island Hopping

Day 2: Island Hopping Day

When we woke up this morning we really did not have a solid plan. I had things marked on my map to see but we had not solidified an agenda. After getting up and ready we made a last minute decision to head towards the island of Murano, world famous for fine glass. It was a walk across the Rialto Bridge and off to the northern edge of the main section of Venice to get a a water bus route.

This is the view outside of our apartment living room, kitchen and master bath. Right on a canal. 

The apartment is pretty fantastic. It is two bedrooms and two full bathrooms on two floors. The floors and the walls are traditional Venetian textures and treatments. The ceilings are all the natural wood beams that are also traditional. It is very well maintained and a great place to stay. 

On the other side of the space is a view into the large courtyard complete with a clay full size tennis court.

Above is the scene just outside of our courtyard exit. As Cindy said, people try to duplicate this look on purpose. Here is the real thing.

A large open piazza close to our apartment.

It is really crazy how narrow some of the paths are. 

Above in the background is a view of the Rialto Bridge going across the Grand Canal. 

A view from the bridge.

After we crossed over the bridge.

Murano is about a kilometer north and a boat is the only way to get to it.

We stood in line to get our tickets. The lady at the ticket stand helped me to understand some of the options. We ended up with four 12 hour passes. It was about eighty euros for 12 hours, more than I anticipated.

Shortly the boat arrived and we were off. We got off in the middle of the island and started exploring. This turned out to be a day of shopping, for glass. It was really cool and a fun afternoon. We did remember to pace ourselves and looked through several stores before we purchased anything. There were not a lot of traditional tourist attractions, just glass shops, glass galleries, churches, and restaurants.

The scenery around Murano was not that different than Venice. Still lots of canals, bridges and churches. 

This was one of the many higher dollar (euro) galleries with expensive glass. They were sensitive about pictures so some of these were taken incognito. You can see the large butterfly and the African style figure on the left. These were in the two thousand euro range.

Just a large villa in Murano.

Lunch was not great, not so much luck with good food yet. Take a look at the mural on the wall. It is a take on the Last Supper that I would guess some would consider offensive.

Anyone need some glass zombies or bugs?

More canal shots above and another gallery below. Not a great picture, but these were really impressive works. 

We decided to take advantage of of 12 hour passes and hit another island. This time it was on the south side of the main Venice island to a place called Guidecca. We had some interest here because we considered an apartment on this island before deciding to stay more central. This apartment is in a historic building called the Stucky Building and also houses a Hilton Hotel. There is a restaurant along the waterway looking back at San Polo, the main island of Venice. We wanted to go to this island to have dinner at that restaurant and to get some good photos.

From Murano we made our way on to the boat. It was going to be several stops to get to the other side. There were three seats in a four seat section open where Cindy and the kids sat down. The fourth seat was occupied by a middle age man. A couple of stops later he exited so I sat down. About the time I sat an old Italian lady nudged me to move. Being a polite southern Texas boy I quickly started to move for her. The problem was too many people were filing on to the boat and I had nowhere to go. This lady started pointing at a sign that, after taking a long look and processing what it was saying, indicated those seats are reserved for disabled or elderly people. She was speaking Italian and did not understand English. I looked at her and tried to explain that I was trying to move but had no way to do it until the people cleared. She kept pointing at the sign and bitching. I sternly told her that I was more than happy to give up my seat and inquired as to how many seats she wanted. She was trying to get all of us to move. We should have. Not far after that stop Katherine was trying to open the window next to her. Her foot slipped and gently touched the lady's leg. This lady reached over and smacked Katherine on the legs and pushed her away very aggressive like. Momma bear Cindy instantly reacted. I did too, but I don't remember my initial words. It was something like "what are you doing?" No explatives, just shock. She started going off pointing at the sign again. I guess she thought she had a right to all of the seats. There were no other old ladies standing waiting for a seat. At this point the area got quiet and we had all kind of eyes on us. I looked at this lady and said "DO NOT PUT YOUR HANDS ON MY LITTLE GIRL AGAIN!" At the same time Cindy was getting the kids up and moving them away from the situation while saying something about how "this kind of crap only happens in Italy." I really do love the country and all that it has to offer. Some of the people are unreal. As Cindy cleared the area with the kids I made sure to give her a "you should be ashamed of yourself for hitting a little girl", she pointed at the sign again. I assume she was saying that we should have never been there in the first place. The fact is the other side of the boat with the same sign was another family with small children. The boat ride earlier in the morning was able bodied people in these seats. Honestly I had not even noticed the posting until she pointed it out, like 50 times. Thankfully that was the extent of this scene, the cranky old witch got off a few stops later and we enjoyed the rest of our day. We have been working with David on his reactions to situations. We used this to show why you need to keep control of your emotions. Overall I was happy with how Cindy reacted and the restraint that we both showed. I think we were a good example for David. I explained to him that I would always be the bad guy in that situation no matter what the older lady did, if I were to strike her back or escalate in any other way. I still can't believe she felt like she had the right to strike a child like that and seemed to feel justified after the fact. Some people I guess......

On the boat ride we passed this docked ship. It was the largest one that I had ever seen. Much bigger than the ship we took for our honeymoon a long time ago.

We made it to Guidecca. We tried to walk around and shop or see stuff, but there is just not much there.

It was very quiet. Our 6 pm dinner reservations for an outside table overlooking the waterway turned out to not be a difficult thing to get. In fact we were the only table seated outside on a cool evening. We enjoyed the view and saw some cool things and had a nice dinner.

Above is the historical Stucky building and the restaurant where we ate. We had a table closest to the waterway looking at this.

During dinner we had some visitors pass through the area with tug boats on the front and rear.

This is a different ship than earlier, it was still docked in the distance. This one was much smaller.

All that we had to do was get on the boat one more time to take us across the waterway to San Polo one stop later. It was a nice after dinner walk back our apartment where we had showers and opened a bottle of wine.

Right now I am back to real time blogging. Right now it is the evening of the island hopping day.

Pictures back in San Polo during the walk back to the apartment.

We are going to get some rest for the rest of our journey. Hopefully we can steer clear of any other angry grannies.