Glass and Old Lace

A pretty house in Venice

Thursday, June 14

Actually the title shouldn't be old lace, but it sounded more like the play with the "old" in there.  Today I will share the islands of Murano and Burano as well as discuss the vaporettos and "public" bathrooms of Venice.  

Vaporettos are water buses.  You can use them to get to one of many "bus stops" around the city on the grand canal and the other islands as well as outside of the island of Venice.  As an aside, we have a very detailed map of Venice on the wall of our apartment and usually Venice is described as looking like a fish.  Joshua mentioned a few days ago that it looked more like a kangaroo, and I think I agree with him (although it depends on the map you look at).  The bus stops are little floating things, like a raft with walls and a roof and benches.  It is attached to the sidewalk with a ramp.  The vaporetto pulls up alongside it, they open the gate for the people to get off, and new people get on.  You can ride a one ride pass or a longer pass (we got 12 hour passes), although no one ever looked at them.  Once we had to use them to get in the door of the station, but it is more of an honor thing--I'm not sure if they do random checks or not.  Signs on the wall say that if you got on without a ticket, to notify the bus personnel immediately; you will have to pay for your ticket but not the 52 Euro fine.  (I can't find the combination of keys to type the Euro symbol--very frustrating!).   The tough part about the Vaporettos is reading the map and making sure that the vaporetto that you want goes to all of the stops--it doesn't always and you may need to backtrack and change buses.  

A "bus" stop

A Vaporetto:  water bus

Today we purchased vaporetto passes to go the islands in the "lagoon" of Venice.  We went to Murano and Burano.  Murano is known for making glass--including art glass.  They include little beads, called Murrani, in their glass--the roll the bulb of molten glass in them.  We got to watch the craftspeople make a few pieces.  Shelby bought a necklace and earrings, I bought a small little dish--probably a candy dish.  Burano is known for making lace--we saw a few women in shops tatting lace--much more casual than the glass blowing.  I found some glass "candy" pieces to go in my new dish.  They actually look like candy but are made of art glass.  On both islands we walked around, looking at the houses.  Burano is also known for pastel buildings.  I don't agree with that--most of those buildings were anything but pastel--hot pink, bright aqua blue, dark red--you name it, they have it!

Murano glass workroom

Closeup of glasswork on arch

Glassworker

Art Glass Sculpture in Murano

Community Art Glass Sculpture in Murano

The colorful houses of Burano

After those, we went to the tower of one of the thousands of churches in Venice and went to the top for a great view of Venice.  Then we took the vaporetto all around the shouthern end to ride the Grand Canal from beginning to end.  That was cool, seeing areas that we haven't walked yet (although our feet feel like we have!).   Next was to see the actual church that Joshua bought a model of--byzantine in type, according to Randy.  Then to the bus stop closest to the grocery store.  We bought our last groceries, including stopping at our favorite fruit stand in the market to buy some cherries (one of my favorite stops!).  

"Joshua's church"

Now, about the public bathrooms--they have WC signs everywhere in the city, and after following the signs around, you eventually find the bathroom.  Now, when I was here (*gasp*!)  21 years ago, I paid for a bathroom to find a porcelain-lined hole in the ground.  It is better now, there are actual toilets, but you pay one and a half euros to use them!  So when nature called today, Randy found a gelato store that had a toilet--we still paid the one and a half euros but got an ice cream cone out of it!!  And, mine was absolutely yummy--homemade raspberry gelato--with the seeds still in it!

WC:  water closet (toilets)

One other musing, this morning I looked out our kitchen window that overlooks the street and saw a person empty her dustpan out from her balcony, another put wet clothes on a line to dry, and tradespeople off to work; one was pushing a wheelbarrow filled with a bag of concrete, a mini-concrete mixer and shovels.  It just all looked so normal--that's the Venice I want to see even more than the canals and St. Mark's. I loved roaming the labyrinth of walkways too. It also reminded me of a scene from a Disney movie (no groans!)--from Beauty and the Beast when Belle is walking through her village singing about her provincial life.  Well, we say good-bye to Venice early tomorrow morning!