10-05-2018: Murano

Christine was feeling better today so we planned a trip to the glass island, Murano.  We studied the vaporetto map and took the 4.1, which should take us to Murano.  It is very fun taking the vaporetto.  It’s a hodgepodge of all kinds of people, tourists, locals, little old ladies with their shopping trolleys, families, people going to work, and we all pack into the boat.  It is amazing how many people can pack into the boat, just like on the Maltese buses, although I didn’t hear anyone shout ‘move back, please.”  Getting on and off is like a well-choregraphed dance.  The boat pulls into the stop, people get off, people get on, and we’re off in about 1 minute.

This vaporetto was heading right for our boat – a near miss

As we were walking to our Palanca stop, I noticed that our cruise ship had arrived at the terminal sometime Friday morning.  I was excited to see our ship.

Azamara Quest

Here are a few more scenes from the Giudecca fondamenta area around Palanca.

The vaporetto today went in a new direction for us.  We saw a lot of new places as we went easterly around the Venetian islands.  We’ve started a list of places we want to visit if we ever get back to Venice.  Two of those would be Giardini Biennale, an art and architecture exhibition area also comprised of many green spaces, and the other would be the Cimetero, an island where Venetians and others, famous and not, are buried.  We passed both these stops as we motored along on our way to Murano.

We reached Murano after about 45 minutes on the vaparetto.  Murano is famous for its glassworks, fornaces, as they are called.  The canals are lined with glass shops, hundreds of them.

The major glass factories have glass blowing demonstrations.  We wandered around until we found a demonstration at a place named the Gino Mazzuccato Glassworks.  We watched a vase being created.  It’s pretty amazing how quickly glass items are created.  Within just about 6 or 7 minutes, a fairly ornate vase was blown and decorated.

What was even more fascinating that within about one minute this little glass horse was created.

After the demonstration we walked along the canals looking in shop windows.  We aren’t big shoppers, like not at all, but it is fun looking at all the various types of glass that is available, all mostly made in the fornaces around Murano.

We then found a canal-side trattoria and had lunch.  We ordered from the menu of the day, which included a first, a second, and a salad.  We both had the lasagna de pesce, fish lasagna.  It was the best lasagna either of us had ever had and we both practically licked our plates.  Christine then had tuna and I had a pork chop Milanese.  These were okay, but not great.  The memorable dish was the fish lasagna.

We continued our stroll along the canals.  We looked in a church, which had some lovely glass chandeliers and a really interesting Madonna and Child sculpture made of orange marble.  After that we headed towards a vaporetto stop to head back.  We had thought of transferring to a vaporetto at San Marco that would go back up through the Grand Canal, but we were both tuckered out and just stayed on the vaporetto back to Giudecca.

 

Beautiful piece

We had a quiet late afternoon and evening at the flat doing some laundry, watching the goings on at the rowing club, and packing.  Tomorrow morning, we board our cruise ship.  We’re getting excited about that.

Greetings from Murano

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