As unique as they come

Day 4 of the Europe trip was Venice. We reached on the evening of day 3 from Pisa (previous post on the series is here...) and saw Venice by night. Our first challenge was to go from the Train station to the Air B&B. It was a 10 minute walk but the challenge was crossing the bridge over the grand canal with a broken suitcase. It was done.. with great difficulty!

The Air B&B we had was on the "attic" floor. We had pretty much the entire floor to ourselves and a great view from the window. We dropped our bags and went back quickly to catch a gondola ride. We were very lucky as we got the last ride out. It was a 40 minute ride and the sun was just starting to set.

Right when we finished the ride and docked, it started raining. The views we got on the trip were amazing. Vibrant colors from the setting sun..

I got two photographs to cherish thanks to this Gondola ride... the first one with me and San 

and the second one when we were just about to go below a bridge. The kids were in focus and the bricks look like they are moving towards us..

a fun portrait session during breakfast time using the large mirror as a frame.. we were the only ones at breakfast and they had quite a spread!

We got dinner at different places (Jr. at a burger king, San and the little one went for an Italian place where the service was terrible and the food was okay and I decided to skip) and headed back to sleep. 

Day 4 was fully dedicated to Venice. We walked around on either side of the grand canal in the morning and took a boat to Murano island. 

How they make these pencil type structures is amazing..

This is an interesting place where they have all the glass factories and the museum. There was a glass blowing demo (no photos/videos allowed!) and elaborate descriptions of how they make the different glass pieces. We spent half a day there and took a boat back to the Grand Canal station. 

Here are two slide shows of photos from Venice and Murano..

After checking out a few places and realizing that the farther we went from the train station, the better the places for lunch (price, quality and service) and we had a really nice lunch at this place.. 

Saw a lot of interesting notices like this on displays..

The people of Venice see the tourists as a necessary evil. They are not nice to tourists. We saw some blatant xenophobia and racism. The only folks they hated more than dark skinned folks were Chinese. We were joking that if DJT wants to go win somewhere outside of US, he need to look no further than Venice! 

Funny thing was another note we had read earlier in the day at Murano..

did the Syrians have a similar notice about cheap Venitian glass being dumped into their market in 1500's ?! Who knows?

Venice is beautiful. The people understanably are stressed out by the influx of tourists and the strain has taken its toll.. Still, Venice is beautiful. When you go there, do spend money. Do be nice to the locals. Maybe things will change. 

We had already checked out and put our luggage at the train station. We were walking around with just our backpacks. 

One interesting thing is the service provided to take your luggage across the bridges. All they have to do is to put a ramp on the end of the stair case on either side so folks can drag their luggage up and down. Instead there is a thriving market for these porters with their dollys and they make a living moving luggage to either side. Most of them are from Bangladesh! Guess that is not helping with the strain.. (you can see it at the end of the video)

We had exactly 24 hours in Venice and we made the most of it. We did not want to go through more museums and cathedrals. So skipped those little tours. The glass museum was unique and we enjoyed it!

After some shopping for cute things in the shops, tasting things, some ice cream and buying a new suitcase, we made it to the bus station and were off to the Venice airport.

It was time to fly back to Zurich!