Yesterday was a travel day and Ella and I ended up traveling by train and water taxi to

VENICE!

This really is the most incredible place. The city is an island, accessible by water taxis and water busses. Once you get onto the island, there are no cars or scooters (at least none that I have seen) because the streets are amazingly narrow. If you wander around you eventually come out into large piazzas, like Piazza di San Marco where there are hotels, restaurants, entertainments, all kinds of wonderful things.

We’ve been shopping quite a bit, especially today. We took a tour from our hotel, Hotel Kette, over to the island of Murano where they have the most beautiful blown glass in the world. We watched as a master artisan blew a glass vase and then made a glass horse–in two minutes! Amazing.

I bought a couple of small souvinirs (only a couple as they are quite expensive) and we took another water bus over to Burano, famous for its lace. I went a little crazy there buying things for myself and then we had a delicious lunch (I had pasta with tuna, olives, capers, and tomatoes, sooo good.)

Finally we headed home, did some more shopping on the way–there are shops literally every ten feet or less–and just returned to the Kette after another wonderful pasta meal.