Venice, Italy Day 8

April 7, 2010

Day 8 Venice

Our morning began with a lovely breakfast included in our hotel.  It was very nice.  Then it was time to explore Venice.  With the sun shining on the city, I instantly fell in love.  Amazingly beautiful with all the canals and clean little streets (and no cars), it was such a pleasure walking around.  First stop was San Marco Square, the main tourist area on the main island.  Along the way we saw some incredible stationary stores and bakeries and other cute little shops.  It was so awesome.  At the square I noticed some girls feeding pigeons and the pigeons actually landing on their hands.  Trevor had some crackers so we decided to try.  Sure enough, the pigeons started landing on us!  It was so much fun!  Then we decided to go up to the top of the bell tower in the square to see views of Venice.  It was very nice at the top, though maybe not worth the 8 Euro a person to see it.  Next destination was Murano and Burano, islands near Venice that were easily reached by water bus.  Our first stop was Murano.  There were a lot of people waiting to get on to the boat and it just happened that Trevor and I were standing in different parts of the loading area when the bus came and sure enough, we got separated.  Trevor got on the bus and I was stuck trying to tell the guard that my husband was on the boat.  He didn't seem to care too much, saying that there was another bus coming.  Figuring that we both knew we were to head to Murano, I tried not to panic too much and go onto the next boat that came 5 minutes later.  I sat down and tried to stay calm.  Not 30 seconds later Trevor shows up!  Turns out, he got off at the next stop and sprinted back!  Thank goodness!  The trip to Murano was about 20 min.  Murano is apparently famous for its glass and pretty much every store on the island had some sort of glass souvenirs.  They were incredible!  They made little animals (and I'm talking little.  They had ants that were almost as small as ants!) and other different shapes.  We walked around looking at the shops, taking pictures and enjoying the weather.  It was then time to head over to Burano.  Right before we left, Trevor performed a mini rescue.  A little girl (maybe 3 years old) slipped about 4 feet from the sidewalk to a little beach area that Trevor was on.  Trevor grabbed her and handed her back to her parents.  Thankfully she was mostly just shocked.  We took the waterbus over to Burano, an island famous for its colorful houses and it sure was colorful.  Most of the houses were painted very vibrant colors.  They were so pretty.  It made you so happy just walking around and looking at them.  After a bit of walking around, we went back to Venice where we decided it was time to get lost (apparently a must when in Venice).  Trevor is too good at knowing where he is, so it was up to me to get us lost and by the time I was done, I had no idea where I was, but Trevor apparently knew too well.  When we finished with that game, we decided to go back towards San Marco to buy a souvenir that I had only seen there.  Unfortunately, when we got there, the store was closed.  Seeing that people were cleaning inside, Trevor figured he could convince them to give us the items if we had exact change.  Sure enough, they let us in and let us buy the souvenirs.  We then went back to the restaurant we ate at the night before and had some yummy supper.  Going back to our hotel (to pick up luggage) we used some the free internet again before catching the waterbus back to the train station to catch our next train.  Here began the awful night train.  When we got into the train, we were kicked out of our seats by some train workers who decided that they were going to take over our cabin until the next stop, and we had reservations!  I was not happy.  Luckily there were seats in the cabin next door.  We transferred cabins when we got to the next stop, but quickly had to change again because a group of people got split up between 2 cabins and wanted to know if we would switch with them.  We said sure, and moved into a different cabin.  We were in cabins of 6 people, 3 on each side facing each other.  It's definitely an interesting way to have to sleep, but thankfully we got a few hours in before our first destination.