Sunday July 21 Venice

Oops! I forgot to mention that we went to mass at St Mark's Church Saturday night. It was in Italian again. There was a visiting choir of young women who sang. We lit candles here too, prayed for those back home. I have to admit we were all a little tired and it was a struggle to keep the eyelids open. Just too peaceful...

                                          We had breakfast at our hotel in the pretty courtyard.

We decided to go on a 3-1/2 hr boat tour to 3 islands --Murano, Burano and Torcello. Beautiful day for tour.

We saw a glass blowing demonstration. Murano is famous for Murano glass. Of course we ended up in the gift shop. Such beautiful glass pieces of every colour you can imagine. I was told that some pieces are made to represent the murano flower.

This is the Murano flower. We went for a walk near the water and there were a couple residences and I noticed a bush outside a gate. I looked a little closer and moved a small branch aside and this is what I saw. There was only one. I was so excited to have found a real morano flower. Cool,eh?

 A lady making lace in Burano. It is becoming a lost art. Takes 7 women to work on a piece. There are 7 different stitches and each lady does one particular stitch

In front of the lace store. These pieces are not all handmade.

Houses in Burano. Homes were painted different colours so that when the fishermen came in, and it was foggy or bad weather they knew which house was theirs

Next stop was Torcello. This island has many restaurants and beautiful grounds. Apparently many weddings are held here. This gentleman was playing his accordion as we walked into the town.  

                                         Sandy & Michael in front of one of the restaurants.

Tom with our tour guide. She spoke 4 languages. It was amazing how she would slip from one language to   another

After our tour we walked around,window shopped, found time for gelato and went to the theater to see a film about the history of Venice and following that a play about Venice. Very intereting.

                                                                   

                                                               The square at night.

 OK these 2 picts are for the ladies who love shoes. Notice the price. 740 euros which would be over $1,000.00 cdn. How many pairs did you want?

The purple pair on the left [which look a bit like Alicia's prom shoes] were a mere 1700 euros. Yes there are very  exclusive shops here. It was so much fun walking around.

Until my next blog .......