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Last night we fell asleep to thunder, lightning and rain. This morning is warm and bright as we go a few hundred metres from the campsite entrance to the bus stop. Less than 10 minutes later we alight at the bus station in Piazzale Roma and stop to get our bearings beside the canal we last saw seven years ago.
We decide that today we will go to Murano, the island famous for glass blowing and sculpting, so we go to the ACTV office for our vaporetti tickets. The clerk tells us Nick goes free and Ali pays €1.30 per trip so we get 5 for now. We board the No.4.2 and about 25 minutes later we land at Colana and follow the route we found on the Accessible Venice website. Being September there aren't many people around, the wide canal and low buildings are easy to study from the quayside pavements. Along the canal every shop, except the odd food outlet, is selling glassware, ranging from huge bowls or vases to tiny dishes. There are colourful animals, figurines, necklaces, ear-rings and abstract shapes, and prices range from a few Euros for a paperweight to thousands for a enormous chandelier. One shop has a sign 'No Chinese glass here' leading us to wonder at the authenticity of others, but when we choose a small souvenir we're told that because Murano is separate from Italy, the 'Murano' sticker can only be used for island-made glass.
Although similar to Venice in some ways, all of the buildings are smartly painted, the paths are smooth and the boat traffic is less hectic. It's all slower and more peaceful than the Grand Canal.
We look inside the 12C church of San Pietro Martire. Apart from the marble floor and columns its most striking features are the enormous silver and glass chandeliers and the equally enormous paintings either side of the alter, which look about 35 feet by 20.
Away from the canal side we find little courtyards with gardens, no traffic and barely any people. We sit in baking sunshine while we linger over lunch near the vaporetti station; bruschetta and pizza and beer. Afterwards we head away from the canal around to the lagoon side and find a glass factory with a free public gallery complete with commentary [in English having established English, Canadian and US audience]. It is fiercely hot as the craftsmen extract a blob of red hot glass from the furnace on the end of their pipe and begin shaping it with pliers or wet leather, or blowing a bubble which another craftsman cuts off and continues to work into a vase or bottle. Glass is reheated and pulled into sculptures, pigments added, multiple colours stretched together to produce their artwork which, although displayed in the adjacent shop, there is no pressure to buy.
We get the boat back to P. Roma and then get the No.1 Grand Canal service to Rialto. Again there aren't many people around and it is far less crowded than our last time. We get out Route 2 of Accessible Venice and wander down the Grand Canal before turning into Campo San Luca and some of the other small squares and back streets around Rialto Bridge. We find the tiny courtyard which has the little known 'Snail Tower' in its corner. In nearby shops there are special breads and pastries, coloured pastas, designer clothes [or 'just' clothes here] and the ever present carnival masks. It is early evening and the gondoliers are out in force jostling for position under tiny bridges. Hotels are tucked away where you'd never find them and huge wooden doors hide who knows what behind.
Back near Rialto we stop for a drink at the canalside Ristorante Omnibus, a carafe of wine and large dish of huge olives whiles away time until twilight when the boats and buildings light up and send shimmering reflections across the water. And the flashes of lightning turn everything to daylight and back and the waiters start clearing away for impending rain.
We are safely inside the vaporetti shelter when the hails start pelting the metal roof. We board the boat when it arrives and watch the hails bounce off the water as we sail through 'Venice at Night'.
Thankfully it stops as we go from boat to bus but the lightning continues to flash all around, and it stays dry as we enter the site but we just reach the site building when the deluge starts. 20 minutes later we scurry 70 metres to the van. Frustration; the washing line pulled over one leg of the awning in the wind and rain. Half the washing lies in the mud and the fallen awning blocks the door. In the darkness Nick accidentally runs over Ali's ankle and as a day in the romantic city ends, peace and love are in short supply...
The storm rages as we eventually get inside and changed into what dry clothes we had left inside and after a warming burger all is well again.
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