The day after Christmas we decided to hop on the train and take a day trip up to Venice. Robbie volunteered to stay home with Michael so we didn't have to wrestle him on the train and try to keep him happy as we walked around the city. Mom also really wanted to visit the island of Murano, famous for the glass-blowing, and a showroom with hundreds of pieces of glass priced in the thousands of dollars didn't seem like a great place to take a one year old.
We arrived in Venice on a cloudy day without much incident. We bought our tickets for the water bus and decided to see Murano first, since I knew how to get there from the train station and figured St. Marks Square would be easy to find from anywhere. We waited and waited for the boat and it didn't come so I finally went and checked the schedule and the boat to Murano was suspended because of the high tide. So we set off on foot to walk through Venice and go straight to the square instead.
About halfway through our walk we got hungry and stopped at a little restaurant that had a reasonably priced lunch--15 euro for a drink, a pasta dish, a meat dish, and a coffee. I had a lasagna and baked chicken, Mom and Ryan both got a spaghetti with meat sauce and a steak. The menu was in Italian and there was one special Venice dish that Ryan was going to try without asking what it was as he was trying to get the full Italian experience. I asked out of curiosity before we ordered and it turned out to be liver. He decided against it and opted for the steak.
I'd heard of Venice flooding, and apparently it's really common in the winter. The tide comes in and all the sidewalks and everything are under inches of water. Here's a view of one of the walkways near where we ate lunch:
This was the first time I'd seen the flooding. It was bone-dry in the summer! We finally got to St. Mark's Square and it was also under water. They had kind of mini-scaffolding set up above the water like sidewalks to walk around the square without getting wet. You could also buy big plastic waders for about 10 euros at some of the shops nearby. I kind of wished I had worn my rain boots.
This was the first chance I'd gotten to actually go inside the basilica. The whole front entry way of the church was under water. The salt water can't be good for the marble floors! We walked on the wooden planks over the water and into the church. It was stunning. I've seen the mosaic ceilings in Ravenna and the marble mosaic floors in the duomo in Siena, but this was an amazing combination of the two. The entire ceiling and about 1/3 of the way down the walls was completely covered in glittering, gold tile mosaic. It was almost too much to look at. They had the chairs blocked off, but I would have loved to sit in there for a while and take the time to really see all the designs and stories the mosaics were telling. While the floors in Siena's duomo were depicting certain stories from the Bible, the floors in the basilica in Venice are small geometric patterns. They were really interesting. I can't imagine the time and skill it would take to lay the floors and ceiling. You weren't allowed to take pictures inside, but if you're even in Venice make checking out the basilica a top priority!
Once we left the basilica we were walking around the square and were stopped by a guy with a tourist badge who asked if we were interested in going to Murano to see the glass blowers and the galleries. We told him we had meant to go, but the boats weren't running. He handed us each a pass for a free water-taxi ride from St. Mark's Square to Murano where we could visit a gallery and see the glass blowers at work. He said we could take the public water bus (which we already had tickets for) back to the main Island when we were finished. Before we knew it we were weaving through the crowds on our way to the boat. I was trying to clarify with the guy that the boats were indeed running now (so we could get back), that we weren't obligated to buy anything, and generally make sure we weren't getting totally ripped off somehow. I read the fine print on our ticket, and it all seemed okay. It all happened so quickly and soon we were in a private water taxi headed out to the open water to drive around the main island to get to Murano.
Sitting alone in that boat we all started thinking maybe it wasn't the best idea to just get in a random speedboat while visiting a foreign country. The special "promotion" made sense to me though, because it was an Italian holiday, the day after Christmas, in the off-season, and the boats hadn't been running to Murano earlier. So they were probably trying to get people out to the island any way they could. Ryan (though he'll comment and say he wasn't really that nervous) was sitting across from me, clenching his jaw, saying how stupid it was that we got on the boat, and half-joking that we were on the way to Tunisia to be sold into slavery or something.
Fifteen minutes later we pulled up at a dock in Murano. We were helped off the boat by a man in a suit who whisked us away into the gallery. We spent a few minutes watching the glass-blower who was clearly only there to entertain the tourists and didn't look too thrilled about it. They showed us the powder they start with and we watched him heat the glass to be red-hot and pliable.
He went to his bench and took some plier-looking things and pinched a few sections of the glass up. He did it so quickly I didn't think he was actually making anything, just showing us how he could manipulate the glass. Then he came back over and sat this down in front of us:
It literally took him seconds. We watched him make another little vase, which he smashed as soon as we were done looking at it. It was really neat to watch. Then the museum manager took us up to the gallery to show us the amazing chandeliers, and glass art pieces. Every time we mentioned we liked something he'd say "oh, that one is 10,000 euros. But we can wrap it up and ship it for free back to America for you." Some of the pieces were well over $100,000. They were incredible, but clearly we weren't quite the right audience for those particular pieces. We went back downstairs to the less-expensive, souvenir pieces and picked out a couple of things. I think all together we spent about 85 euro. Definitely not the high-roller Americans he hoped we'd be, but I guess it was still 85 euro they wouldn't have gotten otherwise since we didn't think we could get to the island!
We wanted to walk around Murano a little, but were a little anxious about getting back to the train station. It was getting late by this point and we were going to run out of sunlight soon. We still weren't sure if the water buses were actually running and were worried the "catch" of the whole excursion was that we'd have to pay an arm and a leg to get a water taxi back to the main island. We walked around a little:
Then I saw one of the water-buses coming around and so we hurried to the dock to make sure we didn't miss our chance. We took the boat to the main island and were relieved that everything with the little Murano excursion ended up being on the up-and-up. It was a fun little adventure, and we got to see Murano as we had hoped! We got off the boat on the main island in a weird place we thought was near the square but wasn't. Then we got a little lost trying to find our way back to something familiar (the train station, the square, a water-bus stop... anything) and walked in circles for awhile, dead-ending into canals on several occasions. We finally found our way back to the square and got on the water bus back to the train station.
We passed some cool churches and buildings, and were dropped off right in front of the train station where we started the day just as the sun was setting. A train was heading to Ferrara just in time, and we all enjoyed sitting for a while on the ride back home. Another successful trip to Venice, seeing things I'd never seen before!
