Venice: Day 5

We started out our last full day in Venice with a tour of La Salute, which is one of the two churches built by the Venetians to thank God for saving them from the plague. During the plague of 1630, the Virgin Mary took pity on the city of Venice, miraculously allowing only 1 in 3 Venetians (46,000 souls) to die. The Venetians still celebrate Mary's intercession every November 21 when a bridge is erected across the Grand Canal to connect San Marco to La Salute. We took a Traghetto to reach the church, which the kids enjoyed.

We stopped for pizza and paninis for lunch, then we headed out on a boat cruise to visit 3 islands near Venice. We had originally planned on just going to Murano today, but it ended up being cheaper to take this 4 hour boat cruise than to get round trip tickets for us just to the one island.

First stop was Murano, which is known across the world for its glass making factories. We saw a demonstration where a glass maker made a vase by blowing glass and then a horse by sculpting the glass. The kids were very impressed with the demonstration; C.J. thought it was the highlight of his trip. After the demo, we had about 15 minutes to shop, and then we were back on the boat.




The second stop was the island of Torcello which was the birthplace of Venice. Only 20 people currently live on the island. We had just a few minutes to walk around. We chose not to pay to enter the church, thinking the kids had seen a few already this trip and needed the time to run around a bit. You can see the church bell tower under repair in the background.



The last stop was Burano, which is famous for its lace making. We realized that it had been a good 20 hours since our last gelato stop, so we rectified the situation immediately. One of Burano's bell towers leans at a 5 degree angle -- consistent with the leaning tower of Pisa.




It was about a 45 minute ride back to Venice. We headed straight to dinner at Barababao Osteria which was another recommendation from Karen, our walking tour guide. The dinner was amazingly good and reasonably priced. The kids had pasta, John had filet, and I had fried scampi and calamari. The vegetables that came with my fish were delicious. The kids talked us into another gelato stop, and then it was off for a (fairly) early bedtime.