Venice and Murano

We took the train into Venice from the station by the hotel and after a wander around caught a Vaporetto (water taxi) to the nearby island of Murano. This is the centre of Venice glass making with wall to wall glass making factories, show rooms and shops lining the canals. Some of the glass art is spectacularly beautiful with prices to match, while other stuff is difficult to distinguish from Chinese copies.


The shops claim everything is genuine so I have a genuine Murano glass Shaun the Sheep to add to my collection.

Murano is much quieter than Venice but still has some nice churches and restaurants to attract the tourists. We took a break and had a nice long seafood lunch off the main drag to cool down from the sunny warm day.

We were waiting for a Vaporetto back to the station when one appeared for St Marks square so we took that instead. It goes all the way round the outside of Venice before entering the Grande Canal so it was a pleasant cruise. Needless to say it was much busier at St. Marks with tour groups and gondoliers in abundance. We had seen the main Venice sights before so we just walked back to the station via the Rialto bridge. It was a lot further than we both remembered and required a gelato and a Spritz break.

We picked up a snack to take back to the hotel and caught the 6:40 train as the sun was setting over the lagoon. Pretty tiring way to start the holiday (15,000+ steps) but it will be a rest day tomorrow as we join the Celebrity Constellation. Seem to be quite a few Americans in the hotel tonight so I guess they are fellow cruisers.