Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Market in Venice
Today we are going to go to the local seafood market in the morning, and then taking the Vaporetto over to Murano to look at the glass artwork. The weather was really nice again today, and after a late morning breakfast, we headed out around 10:00 AM. The market was bristling with activity. There are two sections, one is for the vendors selling vegetables, and the other is for vendors selling fresh seafood of all types. It is really interesting to compare the seafood here to some of the item we normally may see at home, but there are a lot of other things here that we don’t normally see. There are especially interesting varieties of squid, some that look like normal squid, others that have a lot of the squids ink on them.
We spent about an hour wondering around and watching the locals buy seafood, and watching the vendors clean the fish. The vegetable market is also interesting, they have a lot of items there that we had never seen before.
Fresh Seafood Market
After leaving the market, we headed across the Grand Canal on a Traghetto, which is a gondola that is used to ferry people across the canal, just from one shore directly across to the other side. It is bigger than a normal gondola, and has two oarsmen. We went on it so we could take a shortcut by walking over to the side of the island closest to Murano, and avoid the one hour ride if we took the Vaporetto from this area near our hotel to the same place.
We rode the Vaporetto over to Murano and began looking around at all of the glass work. It seemed to me that there was not the large, really pretty glass that I had seen on my first trip to Murano in 2004. However, we think we found out why. We were trying to go to the upstairs area of one of the manufacturers, and we were told we needed to have an escort (read “pushy salesman’), and could not go up there just to look.
Stephanie on the Traghetto
They wanted to know what were were looking for, be it a vase, or some other specifics. Since we were “just looking”, we were not allowed to go. I think it is a combination of them wanting to get you corralled upstairs, and give you the really hard sell, combined with them not wanting to waste their time just showing off their glass. I also think that they do not want other competitors to see their glass since you are not allowed to take photos anywhere. I also think they are trying to protect their specific art style from being copied by the Chinese glass blowers. We saw lots of signs in the store proclaiming that there was “No Chinese Glass” in them, it was all hand made in Murano.
You can only look at glass so long, and most of the stores carry about the same items in the small glass pieces on display. Stephanie was looking for a glass ring, so we spent some time doing that. It was hard to fine a ring she liked, and for it also to be in her size since they are all just randomly made, and you have to keep trying various rings on to see if they fit.
Canal in Murano
We took a break for lunch, then bought a couple of other small items, and headed back to the Vaporetto stop to return to Venice. Once again, we took the shortcut walk across the island, and took the Traghetto back across the canal to the area where our hotel is located. We wondered around looking for places to eat near our hotel so we would have an idea of where we might want to go for dinner that night.
We headed back to the room to rest a little before going to dinner. We did get a couple of recommendations from the hotel staff, but when we found the restaurants, we did not see anything on the menus that we wanted to get. We did find another alternative, and sat down for our dinner. It was pleasant, and the food was good.
After dinner, we spent some time over near the Rialto Bridge taking pictures of the two of us with the camera on the tripod, and the bridge in the background.
Rialto Bridge at Night
When we finished that, we headed back to the room for the night to complete our packing. We will be checking out tomorrow morning, and then spending the remainder of the day in Venice, before heading out on the night train to Vienna, Austria.