On Saturday, May 4th, When we left our hotel in the Jewish ghetto area of Venice and took the vaporetto to the island of Murano, little did Doug and I realize what we were getting into.  Oye vey!  We were both thinking of perhaps procuring a nice little sample of Murano glass to take back home with us to remember this trip.  Unfortunately, Lynda and Barb were thinking on a much grander scale.  Not sensing that Doug and I were ripe enough for the killing yet, they took us on a shopping spree……in and out of every shop we see.  I finally got to the point that I would just step inside the shop and wait there as Lynda and the others would forge on ahead.  The rule apparently is that you have to at least “enter” the shop with the other person to have it qualify as “shopping together”.  After an hour or two……(or maybe it was ten hours) of this kind of “shopping together” I was willing to agree to about anything to call off this legally acceptable albeit disguised form of water boarding. I voiced my surrender.  Smiling and nodding knowingly at the effectiveness of their methods, the women marched us back to the shop with the BIG pieces of glass artwork that we had been in hours before.  I don’t really remember what it was that I bought……by that point my mind was numb, my eyes were glassy and my feet were achy.  I figured I had to buy my freedom and was more than willing to do whatever it took by credit card to accomplish that.  I do remember that they ship and we can expect a package to arrive at my office later on in the month.  Lord knows what that contains. 

Escaping the island of Murano, we headed by vaporetto to the island of Burano.  This is a very cool little island known over the centuries for its lace factories.  Since Lynda’s and my 39th wedding anniversary is approaching next month and the item assigned to this milestone is lace, this journey seemed like a perfect match.  The houses, stores and restaurants in the town are all painted in different bright and very vivid colors.  Legend has it that the wives of the fisherman who lived on the island started this tradition of wild colors by painting their houses a different but bright color so their husbands could see and identify their own respective houses while out at sea. 

What I didn’t know until I got here and saw it with my own eyes, was that the island of Burano has its own leaning tower, just like Pisa!  Built in 1704 this tower leans 5–6 degrees and seems like it will fall over.  So far it hasn’t fallen.  The amazing thing is that the bell tower still works.  On the hour it starts ringing for about 2 minutes or so.  I took some video that I will try and post of the tower bell ringing.  Hopefully this works as I have posted the youtube link on the bottom of this post.  If this link works and you enlarge the video to full screen, you can see the bells inside clanging back and forth. (maybe right click on the link and choose open link in new window) This 51 second video also captures a little girl who started swaying back and forth with the bells as soon as they sounded.  She kept it up for entire two minutes.  Very cute!   

At dinner in Burano, we were all so wooped, that we decided to take a private water taxi back to our hotel so we’d get there in 15 minutes as opposed to the 2 hour process it would take us with the vaporetto.  The cost was worth it.  Very very tired.  We can’t keep up this pace.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=HAwsRxR4nSw