The magical island of Burano

At 9 am on a beautiful morning in Venice I decided to jump on a boat and head out to see the island of Burano. The first stop for the boat was Murano, where the famous Venice glass is made and hordes of tourists go there to watch glass being blown and buy little glass souvenirs from the factory shops. I've seen glass being blown a few times, and I equate it with watching grass grow or paint dry. You only need to see it once in your lifetime, I reckon. The ladies on the island of Burano back in the 1500's started to make lace as a way of earning extra income to supplement the fishing that the men did. There are it seems seven different stitches in lace making and so each woman learned how to do one sort of stitch perfectly and they got together and passed the lace around to make the patterns using the different stitches. It can and used to take weeks of work to make a small intricate piece of lace so it was always sold to the wealthy, or passed down from generation to generation as a family treasure. Nowadays most lace making is done in factories by machine, but Burano uses it's history of making lace to focus on that as a tourist attraction. After ten minutes of walking about the island I was absolutely blown away at how beautiful the streets looked, and round each corner was another one, and another. It is an amazing place and I think it is one of the best sights I have seen on my travels so far. It far surpasses any Disneyland, it is a real place, and people live here and work here and raise kids here. I take my hat off to the person who first thought of the idea to paint each house a different colour. It was pure genius. They have however been dead for several hundred years, and many of the houses have been painted the same colour for centuries ( they are not allowed to paint them in a different colour) It is a small island of about 3000 people which has been inhabited since 600 AD and it only takes an hour or so to walk around and explore it. Forty minutes later and I was back on the mainland having a cuppa and some lunch before heading out to have a look at St Marks square, and ride up the grand canal. I'll save that till tomorrow.

setting off for Burano island

can get a bit crowded out on the water

half way there, lighthouse on Murano

first sighting of land at Burano

a taste of things to come

and more

off the boat to go exploring

fishing and lace making the islands mainstay

one of dozens of small shops

cheapest factory made lace items

lace and more lace

some shops have collections of old lace

starting to get colourful

everywhere you look

the islanders love colour

in the little touches

and the big

with scenes like that

and that

and that

and that

and that

and this

and this

and this too

it's a colourful

extravaganza

which goes

on

and on

and on

and on

and it's almost like being in a dream

nature struggles to compete

but wins a round occasionally

do many people buy takeaway devils?..

one statue is nice but

two statues give double the blessing

little bits of glassware from Murano

I was tempted to buy in this shop

Al gatto nero (the black cat) restaurant

Jamie Oliver's favourite seafood restaurant