Saturday 28 May

A day of two halves (or 3 thirds if you count the evening).  Spent the morning wandering some tiny little streets, visiting an 18^th century Palazzio on the Grand Canal, looking round the Rialto market (fish and fruit/vegetables) and exploring more little alleyways and canal ways around the Rialto bridge.

Here are some pictures:

Some of the alleyways are tiny or lead straight onto small canals:

Then in the afternoon we took the ferry out to Murano and Burano, two islands in the lagoon to the north of Venice where they make glass and lace,  Murano is the more famous of the two (in the 16^th century most of the glassware in Europe was made in Murano) but Burano is much prettier (a small island with lots of brightly painted houses).  We had a superb lunch on Burano, a home made pizza from a little deli on the canal side (no expense spared here!):

Burano has an interesting leaning bell tower (although in this picture it looks like the house which is leaning).

Burano also has lots of lace shops (they make lace on the island):

The waterbus takes about 40 minutes to get out to Burano. These are what they look like:

Skip was very happy to be on the water today and is thinking of jacking it all in to become a (water) bus driver.

After a long day out, a bit of a break back at the hotel and then a lovely dinner at another canal side restaurant.

More tomorrow