Sharing the Magic of Venice

Venice. One of the most unique and special cities in the world. And so very beautiful. We had been here once briefly before but it really left an impression on us and we’ve been wanting to come back every since we left. So when we had the chance to meet up with our good friends Nicole & Chris in Venice we couldn’t wait. We were a little worried that it wouldn’t be as good as we remembered and that all of the good things we’d been telling Nicole and Chris wouldn’t live up to the hype and they would be disappointed. Luckily Venice is such a charmer that it wasn’t a problem and we shouldn’t have worried.

We were still wowed by going back and seeing St Mark’s Cathedral and the Doge’s Palace, and it was great taking Nicole & Chris in to see them for the first time and seeing the looks on their faces when they saw them for the first time too.

We even got to take a tour of the special parts of the Doge’s Palace where we learnt that the Venetians liked to keep good records and copies of all documents, but they were so worried about secrecy that they hired illiterate people to copy documents by copying them as a ‘picture’. Turned out it was a bit of a failure so they had to come up with a different method which was to have literate people copy random pages from documents and never consecutive pages so they couldn’t work out what was in important treaties.

One thing Venice is famous for is glass-making on the island of Murano. Even today there are many glass-making families who have been passing down the knowledge and skills through the generations. We even got to watch a couple of the guys at work and they are tough bastards. No gloves, leather aprons, or any other kind of safety gear. They just grab the hot metal rod with their bare hands, spin it a few times, pull at the glass blob on the end with some tongs and snips, and 30 seconds later you have a glass horse.

One thing we improved on since our first trip to Venice was navigation. On our first trip we spent over 2 hours trying to find our accommodation, since we couldn’t find the ferry stop we used as a landmark, walked up and down the same area (walking straight past it each time) and seriously questioning our sanity once we eventually found it.

It was great catching up with Nicole and Chris and being able to share their excitement in seeing magical Venice for the first time. And most importantly the magic of Italian gelato!