We're back to Villa Barbarich tonight. Apparently we were in a deluxe room Wednesday night. Tonight we're in a normal room. Possibly even a handicap room. What a let down. After another sleepless night, I hope I get a good night's sleep tonight.
Achy knees kept me up last night. Almost 7 miles and lots of bridge climbing can do that to a person with bad knees. Carnivale Palace was an interesting hotel. Our room was darkly lit, the hallways were darkly lit. Quite a modern design. The bed was comfy, too. The hotel was in a great location for us. Away from the craziness of Piazza San Marco and the Grand Canal. Yet close to the Jewish ghetto and with super easy access to Murano and Burano. Lou did give me credit for making a good choice. Breakfast was the most varied, too. Scrambled eggs, some Italian ham cooked as bacon, Brie!
After breakfast, we checked out and left our bag in the luggage room so we could travel relatively unencumbered. The vaporetto stop to Murano was right across the canal from the hotel. We got off at one part of Murano, the island famous for glass and spent the next few hours walking in and out of glass shops, glass galleries and glass furnaces. I followed the rules and took no photos where they were forbidden. Now I wish I had some photos of the items we didn't buy - or that one of us liked and the other didn't. Those would be the more interesting photos. We played a game called If money was no object, what would you buy? I'd buy a chandelier even if it meant repainting the house. Lou would buy a sculpture or a fancy glass and carafe or pitcher set. I wanted something practical and Lou was focused only on beauty. When we saw a glass artist turn a blob of glass into a colorful squirrel, I was content to go with a squirrel. (In case you don't know me, I hate squirrels. But I think they are beautiful subjects of art.) We saw the same artist make a unicorn so we bought one of those as well.
After making our purchases, we hopped on the vaporetto to Burano, the island famous for lace making. What also makes Burano famous are the colorful houses there. It's like out of a fairy tale.
We strolled around, took lots of photos, went in and out of lace shops, ate lunch (Lou had the worst pizza either one of us has had so far. It was like basic NY pizza! Pizzeria Ciao Ciao in San Pellegrino Terme still has our top pizza so far.) and tasted "esse" cookies from two different bakeries. Who knew they were a dolce tipico from Burano?
We needed to take the #12 vaporetto back to Murano to connect to the 4.1.. or was it 4.2... back to Cannaregio. It started raining, our first rain so far, as we were making our connection. We had a small dinner in the neighborhood and then walked back to Carnivale Palace to retrieve out backpack and get directions back to the tram stop for our trip back to Mestre. (Walking back, we passed a sukkah where Chabad was getting ready for a holiday dinner.)
Carnivale Palace Hotel guy looked at our directions back to Villa Barbarich. He thought we could take the 5.2 outside the hotel to Piazzale di Roma and just hop on a bus. No need for the tram. I wondered by Villa Barbarich said we needed to take tram to bus. Villa Barbarich was right. Red tram to Mestre Centro, then transfer to the bus. It was easy enough to find the bus stop - but how would we know where to get off? It's great when kind strangers help out. We arrived back, safe and sound. Lou's comment about today, as we were walking to the bus/tram statio was that it was a good day except for needing to take all those boats. (What remained unspoken was ... and teams and buses.) He's a car guy, he likes to drive, and he's not a fan of public transportation.
We'll be back in the car tomorrow to drive 3+ hours to Siena where we'll stay in an agriturismo (farm stay) for a week I can't wait.
Before I wish you a buona notte, I want to add an observation. Italians don't seem to understand us when we say words that are written the same in English and Italian when we speak them with our American accents. Tram is tram and limoncello is limoncello, but they aren't pronounced the same. Blank stares met us. Silly us! And Lou, an Italian!
Ciao!
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