We first headed out toward the Libreria Acqua alta so that we could funnel through the small bookstore with lots of other tourists. From there, we headed over to Ponte Chiodo which is a bridge with no side rails that is kind of cool. We meandered into Cannaregio and ate Cicchetti from a cool little bar (our favorite was the pumpkin / sweet potato with brie cheese on top). They were really quite delicious. From there, we wandered into the Jewish Ghetto, which was very somber, but full of Jewish people, Jewish restaurants, and delicious food. We ate desserts at a little Jewish bakery, and it was divine. We continued our wandering through literal neighborhoods with not a tourist to be found until we wound up at the Vaporetto station to take us over to Murano Island.
After passing the cemetery island, that no one wanted to visit, we landed on Murano. We were quickly ushered into a glass blowing factory to watch a little show on glass making. Overall, it was pretty cool watching the guy form a vase and then a cool horse out of a blob of molten glass. Seems like it would get old to make things out of glass, but maybe not, maybe it’s the best job in Italy. Either way, Madeline enjoyed it and she really enjoyed looking at all the little glass ornaments that you could buy in the gift shop. We started walking down the Murano canal and Sara declared that she was about to die of hunger, so we stopped in the first little pizza place we saw with a cute little courtyard. The rest of it from there sucked. The service sucked, the food sucked, and in the end, it was not good in anyway. I guess the good part was that everyone was full, so no more complaining. From there we wandered down to the clocktower looking at all the displays of Murano glass and then got back on the Vaporetto and headed back to Venice. We wandered back to the apartment so Sara could charge up her camera battery, then eased out to the Academy Bridge to get photos of Venice at sunset. On our way, we got Madeline some little glass figurines (three to be exact). Sara staked out her place on the bridge, and the girls and Mike wandered down to the Basilica di Santa Maria della Salute. We had a lot of fun in the little alleyways, took some amazing pictures of Venice at Sunset and since it’s the girls, used a bathroom in a swanky hotel much to the chagrin of the hotel staff. Once the sun had set, we met up with Sara and wandered back to the apartment, grabbing some granola for dinner since we were all tired and ready to turn in for the evening.