Venice, Italy: Murano & Burano

Before I go anywhere – Happy Birthday to Robin - one of my favorite people in the world. I miss her all the time on ships but love that every time we see each other, we pick up exactly where we left off!

I knew I wanted to do another tour in Venice, but I was unsure of which one to do.  After reading all of the descriptions of each offered excursion and talking to my colleague, Maja, I signed myself up for “Murano & Burano” because she had nothing but amazing things to say about them.  Like I mentioned yesterday, we’re docked a good distance away from the main part of Venice, so with our tours, we provide a motor launch (a small boat) for each tour to depart on.  My folks embarked onto our vaporatto, the bus-style boat to get us to Murano & Burano, and set off on our small adventure.  

The weather was finally a bit cooler, but this morning, we definitely were wearing wind breakers on the boat because it was quite chilly heading over (despite the slow speeds of the boat, causing minimal wind). We had an incredible panoramic tour of all the islands around Venice and an overview of the area and its statistics. After a 45 minute scenic boat ride, we reached Murano, our first stop, and disembarked the boat. . Murano is an island that sits a bit northeast of Venice and is known for its glass making and production of beautiful and colorful masterpieces and we entered for our glass making demonstration and shopping.

The glass making demonstration was performed by a man who had been working for this particular factory for 28 years, as far as I could work out. He worked very quickly simple because of the need for speed to create his product before the glass cooled. In a matter of five minutes (if that), he had picked up the clear glass from an oven at the back, picked up the colors that he was going to roll into the clear glass and had blown the blob of glass into a beautiful vase. It’s so incredible to see the manipulation of the liquid glass to the final product of a beautiful vase in a matter of minutes. As soon as the vase was completed, he had already picked up more of the clear and liquefied glass and put some ruby colored liquid glass in the center of it. Never could I imagine that within 60 seconds, he’d have created a horse that was able to balance, and stand on its hind legs. Just blew me away!

When we had finished the glass making demonstration, we continued back to an overwhelmingly large shop located up one level in the building. From the minute I set foot into that showroom swarming with vultures (uh…I mean, sales representatives) to the minute I left, my jaw was on the ground. Yes, most of it was beautiful (most) but the prices as well. The ceiling was covered in chandeliers ranging from clear and classic to vibrant colors and modern in design. Just glancing at a few of the prices on the chandeliers, they ranged from 5000 euros to 37000 euros. Nope, I didn’t add any extra zeros there either, folks! I wandered through all the rooms of the store and after quickly discovering everything was out of my price range, made my way towards the exit. I had heard one woman behind me say “I thought there was a bargain room!?” One of the gentlemen that worked there overheard her and escorted her (and me!) down to the bargain room that was down the stairs, around the corner and through a very small door. Lo and behold a dream for me – things with red lines, -50% stickers and labels with “imperfects”. They were PERFECT for me! Three vases later, I walked out the door proud as punch to have made purchases that I adore with prices that my bank account could agree with.

Outside the factory and store, the guests gathered ready to board our water coach and head to Burano and see what the little city 20 minutes away had in store for us. So, Murano is known for glass and Burano is known for lace making and for the colored houses. If you look at the pictures below, you will see rows of brightly colored homes with a story to tell. Some of the homes we saw were actually four colors on the outside, which indicated that four families resided within that one home. The story behind these colored homes on this tiny fishing village island goes like this… At the end of hard work days, fisherman used to go out to the bars and drink quite a bit. When they returned back home each evening, they had a hard time distinguishing which home was theirs, so they would “randomly” wander into the wrong home and sleep with whatever woman was there. The wives all got together and developed the idea of painting each home its own color so that the men could easily find their way home each evening. I absolutely love this little town – walking up and down the streets of the village lining the waterways and exploring the colorful rows of homes with fresh linens hanging on the line out second floor windows – it was just picturesque. I almost felt as if I was part of some movie and that it wasn’t real! 

 

While wandering the streets, I made my way into a store that had packaged their own fresh pasta flavored with all sorts of things like cuttlefish and bitter cacao. After examining each package, I decided to purchase curry flavored pasta, bitter cacao pasta and chili parmesan pasta. The most unusual is definitely the bitter cacao. I did ask the girl running the store how she would prepare the bitter cacao pasta and she said to take some crème fraise, mushrooms and parmesan and that’s exactly what she would do at home. I must admit, I’m pretty excited to try and make them when we get home!

We had about an hour ride back to the ship, slow and steady because of the speed limits on the canal, but the beautiful weather combined with the two great islands just made for a perfect day – can’t rave enough about it!