August 14 Venice and the islands

 

View from our window - a glorious tranquil start to the day

Today we set off to visit the colourful islands of Murano and Burano. Murano looked very different fromwhen the kids and I were there in 1984 and it was packed with tourists. We wandered through and found some back-lanes to explore before catching a waterbus back to ‘town’ for lunch – the line up for the Burano waterbus from Murano was simply too long for us to be bothered waiting in the sun. 

Murano

Glamour plus

The quiant brigge offered lots of selfie ops

This tiny lane hid some secret gardens

Instead we had a delicious lazy lunch at Algiubagio’s on the laguna https://www.algiubagio.net – watched by a cat! We started with a teaser of breads - charcoal, tomato, beetroot and grain served with a purée of celery and olive oil followed by a wee Bloody Mary jelly nestled in celery foam. My main course was delicious - burnt wheat fettuccine with salted buffalo butter and a huge flurry of delicate shavings of Tuscan black truffle sprinkled with truffle ‘caviar’. Wine of course - a glass of Cabinet Franc.  Then we stepped into a waterbus headed for Burano to look at lace - it was everywhere!  (When we got back to Murano en route to Burano, we calculated that we would still have been in the queue - without lunch - had we not decided to take the waterbus back to town.)

Leisurely lunch with a view!

That is not a strange=looking egg but a wee mound of Blood Mary jelly nestled in celery foan

A fascinating piece of land

Probably it is not widely known but Venice is a Ramsar site - a wetland site designated to be of international importance under the Ramsar Convention for bird and habitat protection. I'm not sure that piece of information gets on the tourist 'things to do' list.  Looking at an aerial view of Venice it is quite an amazing and watery environment, a perfect protection location for birds. 

This shallow island was host to a huge population of water- and wading-birds

The speed limit is usually adhered to fortunately

Isola di San Michele

The entire area is peppered with wee islands and spits of land. For instance, Isola di San Michele has served as the principal cemetery of Venice since 1807. It would have been interesting to stop off for a visit but the waterbus ploughed on for Burano - and we had no time to stop off as we had a time issue getting a return ferry.

Colourful Burano 

The leaning tower of Burano!

Gelati houses

These glass pears looked good enough to eat!

The pizzas served here at Devil Pizza were the biggest and best I have seen

I’m still digesting all that today was - amazing and exhausting, topped off with the most delicious peach I’ve ever tasted. Not to get too out of hand, dinner consisted of cups of Oyajata noodles (Japanese boodle we brought with us from Poland) with a bottle of red. Oh and plums and peaches. News flash! We discovered the supermarket.  Hooray