BuranoTruth be told, it’s actually Sunday and we’re in the Frankfort airport en route home. We went to bed early anticipating our 4:30 a.m. wake-up call, so I didn’t write last night.
Yesterday was a wonderful end to a wonderful week. It was really month. We went to Murano, Burano, and Torcello. We’d been to Murano before, but still enjoyed the glass demonstration and showrooms. Our guy at Orsoni had a guy at a glass factory; you know the deal -- door-to-door water taxi --and we were girded to resist the sales pitch. But this was so low key, with no pressure at all, and we had a great time smoozing with him. He’s the son of the owner, and an artist in glass etching, not blowing. He’s married to a Jewish girl from N.J. and we got the life story, how their parents reacted, how they’re raising the kids, how the business is suffering in the recession, yada, yada. What a kick! After strolling around and having lunch canal-side, we took the vaporetto to Burano, where we’d never been.
The atmosphere in Burano is quite different than Venice. The buildings are Caribbean colored, and the architecture has a hint of Dutch to it. The streets are broader and cleaner than Venice. It seemed more Curacao than Venice. This is the lace making island and the stuff is exquisite, but I wasn’t tempted to buy. All I could think of was the ironing!
From there we took the vaporetto to Torcello, which is tiny, with nothing but a couple of restaurants and a church. But this is the oldest church in Venice and is noted for its Byzantine mosaics. Now that we’re authorities on Byzantine mosaics thought we ought to give it a look. We looked, but I couldn’t see. The walls that are done are very high, and difficult to view. Charlie wasn’t as frustrated as I -- I was also hampered by a fuzzy audiotour -- and the island was so rural and peaceful it was worth the trip.
We returned to Domus Orsoni to get our bags and thence to Piazzale Roma via vaporetto, to take a taxi (by car!) to our fleabag in Mestre. The vaporetto is very expensive-- 6.50 euros per ride, or 16 euros for a 12 hour pass. We really got our money’s worth on the pass yesterday. Spent dinner rehashing the month and figuring where to go next. No decisions.
And here we sit, having cleared passport check and security at both Marco Polo and Frankfort airports. It probably won’t get posted until we’re home. This is it for my maiden voyage at blogging. It’s been fun keeping my journal this way. Now we won’t have to quibble over stuff when reminiscing.
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