Holiday instalment #7 - Venice -city of glass and lace

More about the Venetian part of our holiday....

We started the day by going up to the top of the Bell Tower in St Marks Square ( know as Campanile di San Marco in Italitan).  You get an amazing view of Venice from up the top -

 After seeing this, we went into the Basilica di San Marco  ( St Mark's Basilica).  It is just beautiful inside.  We went upstairs and saw the Horses of St Mark.  The original horses made in around 1254 are housed in the Museum inside the Basilica and reproductions are outside

We had to come out of a side door from the church as by the time we had finished the water was starting to rise and flood the main entrance.  There were boardwalks over the water to get in and out.

Venice is made up of a few islands other then the main city area and two of the islands are quite famous.   Murano for it's beautiful glass and Burano for it's fabulous lace.  We took a tour of the two islands and a third called Torcello where there is a beautiful old church and was the first of the Venetian islands to be inhabited.

On Murano we watched a master glass blower at work.

I purchased a small elephant to add to my collection and got a lovely red glass bracelet.

Burano is famous for it's handmade lace and also for it's wonderfully colourful fisherman's houses.  We visited a Lace making shop and watch one of the elderly ladies hand stitching the lace.  One piece might take up to a month to do and might involve up to 7 ladies each doing a certain bit.... all the work was stunning but as you can imagine, quite expensive.  I picked up a couple of small round doilies, just to say I bought something.

The next day we left this wonderful city and caught the train to Rome....

This was us, waiting to catch the ferry to the station at 8.00am in the morning.  We enjoyed the train trip - talking to an interesting Australian couple who sat next to us from Florence onways... catching up with some Aucklanders we meet at the Bell Tower the day before and finding out that the All Blacks beat Australia in the rugby...

Arrived in Rome around 2.00... quite a different city with even more adventures.....
so till next time.... thanks for visiting