Venice

Posting from Venice, city of rivers. Tomorrow, we slam through the Doge’s palace before taking a water taxi to the airport and beginning the long journey home.

We tried the local specialty, sardines in oil with onions. To them, I say this: You’re gonna want to watch the spine on that. They show up whole (sans heads), and you sort of scrape the edible bits (everything except spine) onto your bread. The fish itself, pretty good. I have no need to eat spine.

Visited Murano, where they make awesome glass. Basically, all of the famous glassware you’ve seen comes from Murano. Found an out of the way furnace where we could (a) watch someone make little ornaments out of molten glass (b) buy a nice set of glassware. They promised that if they’re still in business and we break one of the pieces, we can send a picture of the remaining ones and they’ll craft a replacement. Naturally, we’ll be buying said replacement rather than simply receiving it gratis…but it’s a nice touch. Thanks Grandma, your birthday check is now Venitian glass.

Also took the boat (one takes the boat everywhere in Venice) over to Burano, a tiny island with brightly colored houses where they are famous for making lace. There, we ate in an awesome little restaurant and listened to the babble of Italian families having their weekly lunch get-together. For the first time on the trip, we had managed to escape the metropolis and just be part of local culture. It was pretty cool.

This evening, by contrast, we had sushi at the one Japanese restaurant in Venice. Fun and relaxing.

I haven’t read the news in a full week, and I feel great.