Venice - Day 2

Today, our agenda was to go and see St. Mark's Basilica, go to the top of the Bell Tower in the square, and visit the island of Murano, famous for its hand-blown glass. First though, breakfast on the patio of our hotel. The menu - warm cream-filled croissants and other pastries brought to our table, fresh fruit salad, a granola-type cereal, yogurt, and coffee. The coffee here is much tastier than I usually drink. A couple from Australia (nick-named banana benders because they are from New South Wales) were at the next table. we struck up a conversation with them. I remembered the term banana benders from when I went to Australia. This was their last day in Venice, but it just the beginning for us. Time to go and start our day. We made our way to St. Mark's Square, but not without passing through the markets first. We walked through the fish market, which smelled like, well, fish. We stopped at a few places before getting to St. Mark's. We both had to dress with our knees and shoulders covered because that is they way you are supposed to dress in a church here in Italy. As I type this, a police boat just sped by, complete with syrens and flashing lights. On with our day! The basilica was beautiful inside. The ceilings were painted, the floors and artwork was all done in mosaics. It's also huge. After we finished in the basilica, we moved on to the Bell Tower. It is a tower overlooking St. Mark's Square. It is so tall that it provides a spectacular view of all of Venice. Now, on to Murano. We took the Vaporetto to Murano and as soon as we disembarked the boat, an employee of the glass factory was there to greet us and guide us to watch a demonstration of glass blowing. I wasn't too thrilled at watching the demo. It was a lure into the overpriced glass factory. We just bought a small colourful paperweight for 15 euros. We started wandering around and ended up in another store selling Murano glass (well, almost every store sells Murano glass). To After Stefano, the store owner, showed us various lamp shades, we mixed and matched two lamps. He is going to make the lamps for us and ship it over to us. Another piece for our home. When we finished shopping on Murano, we took the Vaporetto back to Venice and then walked back to our hotel. I started to type my blog, but I couldn't keep my eyes open. It must be the air that makes me so tired. Tomorrow morning we check out and make our way on the train to Montebelluna. It'll be nice to chill out with family. I'm getting angry that I can figure out how to add pictures to my blog when my pictures are right here on my iPad. I have a feeling it is the Internet connection in this hotel. I'm going to try again tomorrow and then if I can't figure it out, I'm afraid I'm going to give up. Ciao for now!