So, on this day of our Italy trip, the weather was slightly warmer and the fog lifted much more quickly than it had the day before. Nick and I started the day off by venturing to the island of Murano, northeast of the main Venice island.
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Murano is famous for its glass-blowing, so we wanted to walk around it for a bit, see if we could see any of the actual glass factories, and look at all the stuff they had.
When we got off the boat, we ended up right next to a glass factory, and walked into their shop. They had about ten or so rooms full of glass sculptures from the factory for sale. Some of it was little things that cost only a few euros (flowers, dolphins, tree ornaments, etc.), but there were also giant scultpures and chandeliers that were clearly very expensive (they didn't get prices -- instead, if you wanted to buy one of them, you would get a consultant who would come over and sit down with you). Nick was a little nervous carrying his backpack around, but it was fine. We didn't actually see any factory workings there, but it was still fun.
After wandering around there, we looked more around the island. Like the main Venice island, this one had several canals with bridges. It also had some public art sculptures that were pretty cool. And it had many more buildings from the 12th, 13th, and 14th centuries, complete with Gothic-style windows.
There were also a lot of glass shops that took pride in selling Murano-made glass. In one of them that we walked by, we actually saw a well-behaved dog wandering around in the store. Nick deadpanned, "That seems high-risk."
While wandering, we saw the following sign:
We debated whether it was a Sweeney Todd/Hansel & Gretel scenario, but decided to follow the signs along the back street anyways. We did find the glass factory, and you could wander into this bleacher section and see what was going on. We seemed to have come in halfway through a spiel in Italian, but the speaker invited us in in English (like everyone else, he figured we spoke English before we even opened our mouths). He continued his speech in half-English, half-Italian, and we generally followed it.
After that, they sheparded us to the gift store, where Nick and I finally decided to get gifts for each other, since the "tour" itself was free, and we had been wanting to get things anyways. After much debate, I got a little gondola for Nick and Nick got a dolphin for me. The dolphin is clear with some translucent light blue in it, but it's a bit tough to see here. (The red cat is a Christmas present from Nick's mom.)
By this point, it was early afternoon, and we decided to take the boat over to the remaining one of the six Venice districts that we hadn't seen yet, Dorsoduro. I was sleepy, and had a little nap on the boat.
We wandered around Dorsoduro for a bit, seeing the Accademia bridge across the grand canal, and a lot more of classic Venice as well.
From there, Nick and I decided to do one more trip up the Grand Canal to the train station that we had found the day before so that we could buy our train tickets for the next day. We needed one from Venice to Florence in the morning, and one from Florence to Rome in the afternoon. We managed to get them both, although train travel seems to be just as expensive as flying: each ticket cost about 30 euros, so we each ended up paying 60 for the day's travel. From there, we headed back down the Grand Canal.
As it started to get dark, we stopped by Saint Mark's Square again to get a good view of the Campanile unobstructed by fog, as it had been the night before.
From there, Nick and I took the boat back to the Lido.
We wandered up the street of the Lido to the beach on the opposite side of the island from where the boat landed us. The public beach was, in theory, open, but it was completely dark and freezing cold. We went up to the ocean, though, and touched the water anyways. (I had to not get my shoes wet while touching, because it was too cold to take them off, but I managed.) It seemed like it would actually be a really nice beach in the summer. There was an observational tower that seemed like it would be open for random people to wander up in the summer, but was blocked off with a board because it was winter. Nick and I both kind of wanted to go up it, but neither of us quite dared ("I'll only go if you go first...").
So we headed back to exam our eating options on the island. It turned out that beyond about the two blocks where our hotel was, pretty much all the touristy stuff on the Lido was closed. So we ended up returning to the same restaurant we ate at the night before, being too lazy and cold to go back to the main island. It was still good!
We expanded our gelato horizons, though, getting it from a different store on the island this time. Still good! We ate it back at the hotel this time.
From there, we went to bed quite early, since we'd have to get up at 6:15 the next day to make sure that we'd be checked out by 7, and on a boat up the Grand Canal toward the train station for our 8:47 train.
It was a good last day in Venice!
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