Travel Day 16 – A Glass Island
On this day – day 16 of our trip – Dean and I visited Murano, the island just north of Venice. But before I begin that, we first needed some breakfast. Once more we woke up later than we meant to. I think all the walking we’ve been doing has really started to catch up with us. I mean, we average 20,000 steps and just shy of 14km a day, so this is quite the change from sitting behind a computer or at a desk.
Regardless we got up and grabbed some breakfast at the hostel again. For €6,50 you can’t beat a buffet as everywhere else on Venice is pricey. After we ate and got everything we needed to head out for the day, Dean and I were off. Instead of just catching the ACTV all the way there from the hostel we decided to do some exploration along the way. We got off again at Piazza San Macro and walked north from there, making our way through the crowds of San Marco to the northern-most part of the island. Just exploring the island is my favourite part of being in Venice. It’s all I’ve ever dreamed and it’s become a great reality. As we made our way through the city there were less and less tourists the further we got from San Marco. While Venice gets about 60,000 tourists a day (mostly from cruise ships) practically everyone stays in the south to visit the main attractions. They miss out on the best part in my opinion but leaves the rest of Venice open for Dean and I.
We finally made it to the north side of the island to hop on the ACTV to Murano, accidentally getting off at the cemetery before we made it there. Murano is famed for its glass work, and even on Venice any handmade glass displayed there has a plaque saying “Made in Murano” or “Original Murano Handblown Glass.” As we walked around Murano we did some window shopping and looked at the beautiful works of art all around us. Making our way to the center of Murano on our way to the glass museum, we grabbed lunch and admired the glass art piece in the center of the square.
The museum was very interesting, both of us having some experience in working with glass we could appreciate the care and attention to detail in every piece. Also how difficult it could be to make such works of art. Over the course of the museum the glass work got more and more intrinsic and difficult to create. We spent about 2 hours in the museum admiring the works and also the vast difference in the pieces, but also the similarities when using different and ancient techniques.
After the museum we headed back to Venice, this time to visit the eastern park on the island. We slowly made our way through the park enjoying yet again the lack of tourists, and continued to walk around the eastern side of the island before finding some dinner. We had a pretty good meal but it wasn’t as groundbreaking as some of the others. We headed back to the hostel to relax a bit, and at about 21:00 Dean went to practice his valedictorian address and I headed down to the bar to grab a beer or two and hopefully meet some new people. I ended up talking to Tom and David from the night before and we played some pool. Unfortunately, Tom won, but the last game was very close as we were both going for the 8 ball. David helped wing-man me to talking to some girls from the USA, but honestly I forget there names (whoops)! We didn’t chat too long before they headed off to bed and I was thinking the same myself as this was yet another long day of walking. That said, I ended up heading to bed around 1:00 after an amazing day. Let’s see where tomorrow brings us!
~Spencer
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Thanks for the read!
P.S. I apologize that I didn’t post this the day before, I didn’t write it during the day like I normally do and was just too tired at the end of the day to do anything. Hope you all can forgive me!
