Our final full day in Venice was planned around a trip to Murano, one of the islands in the Venetian Lagoon. We planned it this way in order to take advantage of the 24-hour water taxi pass (expensive - 18 euro per person - but better than buying individual ride tickets, which I believe were generally 6 euro). We bought the tickets so we could take the taxi to the train station the next day. And it was a good thing we did - the only time we got checked for tickets the entire 24-hour span was right before our train station stop, so it was good to still have a valid ticket.

Anyway, we didn't buy the tickets and head to Murano until 11am because of this, so we spent the first few hours of the day walking in the Arsenale areas of Venice. The Arsenale area is home of the naval shipyard - you can't see a whole lot (at least where we were at) but the Porta Magna, the Arsenal's main gate, is quite cool.


The area is one of the residential areas of Venice; it's definitely away from the tourist crowds. It was very cool to see a little more of the residential part of the island. We walked into a few churches and walked through a daily food market; it's definitely just one of those things that are fun and interesting to observe.


There is also a large park in this region - the Biennale Gardens. It's a beautiful spot and worthy of a walk-through (probably more than we gave it).


At this point, we jumped in a boat to Murano. We got on near San Zacharia; it's about a 20 minute ride from there. Murano is famous for its glass factories - most of the well-known "Venetian glass" originates from the factories on this tiny island. We visited the glass museum (one of the options on the San Marco Plus Museum Pass); it was okay, but not really that interesting. The better idea is to visit one of the numerous glass blowing demonstrations put on by one of the factories; we saw one at what I think was one of the bigger factories on the island. It was a short demo, but it was neat to see; it took about 5 minutes for the guy to heat glass...
...and mold it into this:

After leaving Murano, we took the vaporetto to San Giorgio Maggiore, another one of Venice's islands. The main attraction here is the church - it contains some beautiful paintings and the attached bell tower can be climbed for a couple euros. It gives you some fantastic views of Venice and is much cheaper and easier than trying to climb the tower in Piazza San Marco. We got a lot of fantastic pictures from this viewpoint; here are a couple:



Once we were done here, we jumped back in the water taxi for a ride up to Santa Lucia and then down the Grand Canal. It's one of those things that you have to do; a gondola ride is probably nice, but you'll get the same view in the much cheaper vaporetto. The architecture of some of the buildings is just amazing.

Our night ended with a drink at L' Olandese Volante, an English-style pub in Campo San Lio, and an adventurous walk to find a restaurant for dinner. We ended up walking all the way up to the Jewish Ghetto, finally settling on a place in a quiet square in that area. We finished the evening back at Piazza San Marco and listened to the music from the dueling bands in the square.


To see all of our Venice pictures, go to our Picasa Web Album.