16.10 - Day 275 - Mira incl Venice, ITA
Wednesday 16th October - Mira (Venice), Italy - Day 275
Some accommodation is simply the name of the house, but some is more factual to try and stand out on Booking.com. “Annahouse, 25 minutes by train from Venice” is certainly the latter.
It only has one bed and then a sofa bed in the single room kitchen / lounge, but it’s comfortable enough.
With the weather forecast better today than tomorrow we decided to push today's school work to tomorrow and so head out to Mira-Mirano station for 9am to catch the aforementioned 25 minutes train which smoothly drops us at Santa Lucia station having crossed the lagoon into Venice.
There is instantly a hustle and bustle under the overcast skies and after procuring a ferry pass we eschew the packed boat and gangway heading down the Grand Canal, instead heading counter clockwise on the loop ferry around the main island.
Venice is much bigger than I expected and there are all manner of boats tootling along from bathtubs to car ferries. We alighted at the famous Piazza San Marco, the square enclosed by thousands of stone columns on the front of five storey buildings, including of the Palazzo Ducale.
We head inside the Basilica San Marco - where the money has been spent on the inside and outside - to admire paintings adorning the walls, columns and domed roof - lots of golds and blues. Even the mosaic stone floors attract the imagination of Sienna and Seb.
After snacks outside we amble through the maze of pathways regularly crossing canals. The gondolas, black and sleek are much larger than I realised. Sienna says they’re like the ones in the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas (we suggest it might be the other way around).
The Rialto Bridge is as impressive as it is busy and soon we're at Fonte Nova to catch a ferry over to the glass-making island of Murano. The main but narrow canal has only glass shops all the way along all claiming to sell Murano, but with large variations in price we’re not 100% sure.
At least when we walk one street back you can hear and peer into glass factories, dozens of kilns glowing red and yellow.
Kate had heard about a place to make your own glass based trinkets, and the friendly bespectacled lab coat wearing host sets Seb and Sienna to work, choosing and stacking small cylindrical glass pieces inside a metal ring that is then heated to 750 degrees causing it to partially melt and combine together.
Seb’s magnet and Sienna’s bookmark both look very smart.
Sienna also spends a little of her birthday money on some glass earrings before we jump on a ferry to head further North East to the island of Burano.
Still the narrow canals are present but the drawcard is all the neat terraced houses that have been painted in pastel colours. After a brief mozy, the drizzle arrives and we scuttle back to the ferry back to Venice proper.
Alighting at San Elena we stroll through the gardens before catching a final ferry up the Grand Canal that is very busy, but does afford us views of all the waterfront houses, hotels, palaces.
On the train back to Annahouse in Mira we reflect that we enjoyed Venice more than expected even if the crowds were present (again, how bad is it in high season) and the weather was average.