After a very rainy night, Thursday dawned with brilliant blue skies, the perfect weather to explore the three outer islands in the Venice archipelago.
San Marco took on a completely different personality in the brilliant sunshine, as the waiters started to set up their al fresco seating, tourists poured in, dressed in their tri-corner hats, capes and masks, and the lines were already long to enter the bell tower and the basilica.
We invested 20 euros for the Alilaguna guided tour of Murano (glass), Burano (lace) and Torcello (monastery). The boat ride alone was worth 20, and the short stays on each island gave us just a little taste of each in case we wanted to return.
Murano is famous for its glass, but the schedule only permits a 15-minute demonstration of glass blowing in one foundry, leaving just a few minutes to walk along the waterfront to visit some of the shops. None had any offerings better than what we had already seen in the glass shops in Venice. But it is worth further exploration. The regular vaporetto water bus has a route to Murano and the other islands too, for that matter.
Burano is more colorful, as the houses are painted in bright hues to help returning mariners recognize their homes. The island is known for its lace, in which we have no interest at all. So we ducked out of the lace demonstration and wandered a bit in search of a quick lunch. We also located the leaning tower at the church, which is off by exactly the same amount as the more famous Leaning Tower of Pisa–five degrees.
Torcello is all but abandoned, with only about a dozen residents, four or five restaurants (depends on how you count them) and one very famous monastery church. The flat overgrown terrain cut through by canals reminded us both of Shell Beach or Myrtle Grove. Hemingway used to hunt at Torcello, which reinforces our impressions.
From start to finish, the tour takes four and a half hours. Combined with gawking at tourists in San Marco coming and going, our day was pretty full. Plus, we had to navigate back to the Coop supermarket to buy the necessities we had failed to purchase the first time out–beer and garbage bags.
Incredibly, we did not get lost once. We’re getting to know this town.