A watery day in Venice

After discovering the delights of raised prices for sitting down and eating in a cafe’ for a late brunch, we headed down through the chaotic winding streets to the chaotic Piazza San Marco. Apparently Napoleon got to here and subsequently every over tourist to Italy does as well. This has the unique distinction of having the only real high bell tower in the country that is actually standing up dead straight (well that we’ve noticed anyway). They also have a real rising damp problem here as we discovered later in the day.
After taking some obgiatory photos we headed back through the maze of shopping arcades to our room which would have to be so well centrally located that a bulls-eye on a dart board could not have got it better. Deciding that we really needed to see what all this glass blowing stuff was about we hopped on a tour to three local islands.
Waiting to hop on the boat we got to experience a really good thunder storm which had the fabulous effect in clearing the piazza of the hordes of tourists and turned them into sardines under the few available shelters. We watched with interest the torrents of rain swirling down the same drains that (as it turns out) on a high tide it comes pouring back up again.

Our boat took us to the island of Murano where we saw a master craftsman turn a molten blob of sand into a statue of a rearing stallion and then light his cigarette from it to prove it was still really hot. These guys are good. The work they produce is truly beautiful and each one an individual work of art. Even if they all do look the same. After that we went to the island of Burano where they tried to flog Lace as an industry. Far more exciting was the fact that their bell tower has a serious lean on it (put Pisa to shame – except that’s not marble and no one’s allowed near it). They’ve also decorated their town houses in boldly different colours and have taken window boxes to another level. A really quiet place and struck as all as a unique location in the word. The next Island was Torcello which was where habituation in the area all began. Nothing there but a couple of old churches which was absolutely astounding with the effort put into the mosaics all those years ago. This will be a big attraction in years to come.
After dinner (it’s quite weird to have risotto on a Chinese menu and have the waiter say “prego”) we headed out to capture some scenes of the City of Lights at night. Good fun. Back at the piazza the full moon was bringing in a high tide which was filling up the square through the previously used drains, creating ample opportunities for those with tripods and wet feet for anyone who wanted to get through.