Welcome (back) to Venice!

Venice Post Cruise

It is always a sad day when you have to get off the cruise ship. We've experienced this before and knew better than to attempt to fly home that day. Compounding the depression from leaving the lap of luxury with the depression that vacation is now over and you are on your way home is just too much. So we decided to book a few days in Venice on the back end of our trip too to allow us some time to emotionally wind down from our vacation.

The second time around Venice was better, we were better acclimated to the heat and humidity. The day after we got off the boat was Colin's 5th birthday. We took him to the Natural History Museum where we saw all kinds of awesome things. He enjoyed looking at all the fossils, taxidermy animals and other artifacts from various cultures around the world. When we asked him what he wanted to do for his birthday he said he wanted to ride in a gondola. So we waited for the evening time after dinner to go on our gondola ride. Colin loved it and our gondolier was very nice, he had a young son just shy of Colin's age so he was chatting Colin up and at the end of the ride he let Colin wear his hat and help steer the boat. Colin thought that was fantastic!

Another thing we wanted to do during our stay was visit the other islands, specifically Murano and Burano. We took the ferry boat and wandered the cemetery, which is a small island off the main island of Venice, between there and Murano. The only thing on the island is the cemetery. It is of course very old and was huge. It was quite interesting to walk around and several famous people are laid to rest there, including the famous poet Ezra Pound and composer Igor Stravinsky. Next stop was Murano, the island famous for their glass. We watched a man make several glass figurines in the shape of a cat, unicorn, and more. It was incredible how he took a blob of melted glass and in a matter of two minutes had shaped it into a perfect animal! When we were done wandering the streets of Murano we boarded the water bus to take us to the island of Burano. A little further out, it is famous for it's brightly colored houses and high quality lace. The houses there definitely had a different style to them and it was gorgeous to walk around and look at them all.

Finally it was time to pack it up and early in the morning, just before sunrise we caught a water taxi to the airport. On our ride from the island to the mainland we watched a beautiful sunrise which was a perfect end to our trip. Our flight home had us land and change planes in Zurich, Switzerland. Just an hour in the airport there where I could speak and understand the language (German) and seeing the countryside from the air made me homesick for Germany. We passed over the Swiss Alps which were covered in snow even in August! Beautiful! While we were not thrilled to have to head back to the island and get back to reality I was ready to get home to my Cooper dog.