The hotel offers free trips to Murano, the island where Venetian glass is made, so we thought we should take a look. Of course, being slightly naive, it didn’t occur to us that one of the many glassmaking factories in Murano might have a deal with the hotel: they provide the means of advertising the offer to visit the factory and the free taxi boat to the island and, once you’re there, and given a quick tour of the factory (which is fascinating but brief), the “guide” starts trying to persuade you to buy at least one of the thousands of pieces on display. And, because the showroom is crammed full of glass and a reasonable proportion of it was to our taste - we love glass and pretend that we collect glass art (we have about 10 pieces altogether) - I started getting worried that the smooth salesman would actually persuade us to part with $1,000 or more! There are acres of gaudy chandeliers but still a mass of beautiful artworks and the salesman assured us that shipping to Australia was included in the price. I felt like blurting out “Look mate, we’re librarians for god’s sake!” as he pressed on with his unctuous charm. Just when things were looking desperate, we were saved by the American couple we’d made friends with on the water taxi ride to Murano. Larry and Melanie were a well-heeled, Republican couple from Laguna Beach, who have servants, a boat and another house in Mexico, but were even less inclined to buy any glass art than we were. They guided us out of the salesroom labyrinth and we discovered that Murano is a smaller version of Venice, with canals and piazzi and ponti and leaning towers. It’s a great place to walk around and there are hundreds of shops selling glass.
Glass-making factory in Murano
There are a lot of modernist glass sculptures in the streets and squares too.
The free visit to the island doesn’t include a return trip but we weren’t trapped as there is a vaporetto service going back to Venice proper, even stopping at “our” wharf, San Alvise.
A leaning tower in Murano
Murano is a 'little Venice'
Annette in Murano
Glass-making factory in Murano
A leaning tower in Murano
Murano is a 'little Venice'
Annette in Murano
We walked and walked ... and walked, in Venice, and each day and each night have almost melded in to one another. We walk all day, barely making it back to our hotel for a quick siesta and then walk to somewhere for dinner and then walk more and then stagger back home and collapse! We should be getting fitter each day with this incessant perambulation but it sometimes seems that we’re getting more and more tired, though I think that’s because each day and each night we walk even more than the day and night before! We have caught the vaporetti a few times, just to give our feet a rest. We stop for lunch and we sit of church steps and we look in shops and art galleries and churches and museums but more than anything else, we walk.
After the excursion to Murano we walked around the neighbourhood of our hotel, which is right next to the Ghetto Novo. Venice invented the word ghetto - it comes from the geti, which is the name of the area where the foundries were situated (and amazingly, there is a foundry right next to our hotel) which is where the Jews were obliged to live in the early days of Venice and there are still many Jewish people there, along with kosher butchers and synagogues. Our hotel is on the fringe of Venice proper, in the north and when we walk towards San Marco or the Grand Canal, we pass through many streets where local people predominate. It’s peaceful and charming and there are lots of children around, plus Venetians walking their dogs, of which there are many in Venice.
The Venetians are very stylish. They tend to be tall, slim, graceful and very fashionably dressed. You’ll often see men wearing elegant suits but often they’ll be wearing coloured trousers - red, yellow, lilac, and assorted other tints - with striped shirts, and almost all the men carry leather bags with long straps over their shoulders. We saw one guy with a striped lilac shirt, lilac trousers, two-toned shoes and his “handbag” or “manbag” or whatever. No Aussie men would have the nerve to wear what many Venetian men wear. The women are almost all impossibly stylish and elegant, slender with long legs. They’re all as stylish as Parisians but in a different, very-Italian way.
We walked to the Piazza San Marco on our second night and it was much more bearable than during the day, when the tourist crush was horrendous. You can get up close to the walls of the Basilica and the whole atmosphere is very relaxed and friendly and, of course, everywhere you look is spectacular!
After the excursion to Murano we walked around the neighbourhood of our hotel, which is right next to the Ghetto Novo. Venice invented the word ghetto - it comes from the geti, which is the name of the area where the foundries were situated (and amazingly, there is a foundry right next to our hotel) which is where the Jews were obliged to live in the early days of Venice and there are still many Jewish people there, along with kosher butchers and synagogues. Our hotel is on the fringe of Venice proper, in the north and when we walk towards San Marco or the Grand Canal, we pass through many streets where local people predominate. It’s peaceful and charming and there are lots of children around, plus Venetians walking their dogs, of which there are many in Venice.
The Venetians are very stylish. They tend to be tall, slim, graceful and very fashionably dressed. You’ll often see men wearing elegant suits but often they’ll be wearing coloured trousers - red, yellow, lilac, and assorted other tints - with striped shirts, and almost all the men carry leather bags with long straps over their shoulders. We saw one guy with a striped lilac shirt, lilac trousers, two-toned shoes and his “handbag” or “manbag” or whatever. No Aussie men would have the nerve to wear what many Venetian men wear. The women are almost all impossibly stylish and elegant, slender with long legs. They’re all as stylish as Parisians but in a different, very-Italian way.
We walked to the Piazza San Marco on our second night and it was much more bearable than during the day, when the tourist crush was horrendous. You can get up close to the walls of the Basilica and the whole atmosphere is very relaxed and friendly and, of course, everywhere you look is spectacular!
The next day the Gallerie dell’ Accademia beckoned and it wasn't crowded! (Some of the greatest interiors in Venice, such as many of the churches, are surprisingly sparse of tourists). The Gallery has a fantastic collection of pre-19th century Italian art, the highlights being Giorgione’s La Tempesta, Veronese’s enormous 'The Feast in the House of Levi' (over 12 metres wide and 5.5 metres high!) and a marvellous collection of huge canvases by Tintoretto, including the astounding 'San Marco Salva un Saraceno' (St Mark freeing the slave).
Tintoretto - Il sogno di san Marco
Tintoretto - Il sogno di san Marco
Then it was on to the Peggy Guggenheim collection for some Modernism. It’s a small gallery situated in her Palazzo on the Grand Canal and there are some great Picassos, Dalis, Klees, Kandinskys and Pollocks, including a few of the paintings done just before he went completely abstract. The Grand Canal entrance to the Palazzo has a Calder sculpture whose modernism contrasts well with the antiquity of Venice itself.
Next post will include the gondola ride past the birthplace of Marco Polo and Casanova's house.
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