Jake woke me up to get the pin code for my phone that he was borrowing for the day. He needed it because he was going to meet his girlfriend, michelle to spend the day in Venice. Which meant, today was girl's day out!
We got up and going really early (by our standards), and first tried to hit the Minoan Lines to see if we could get deck tickets on the ferry to Patras for free with our Eurail tickets. We were contemplating this option because it would take us to our destination 5 hours earlier than the ferry tickets we had now. It was quite an ordeal getting to the Minoan Lines ticketing office. We took the water bus to the Tronchetta stop, and there we asked for directions. We were told to go toward the people mover. So we walked toward the bridge and there were signs along the way telling us that we were going in the right direction for the people mover. We reach the bridge, and the people mover turns out to be a tram that we had to pay 5 euros for. We refused to pay the 5 euros and walked the bridge to the other side and then to the MInoan Lines ticketing office. Once there, we talked to the lady behind the counter about getting tickets on deck with our Eurail pass. She told us it would cost 42 euros. It was technically free, but it cost 42 euros in fuel surchage, port taxes, peak season surcharge and so on and so forth. We argued with her, showing her the page in our Eurail guide where it said FREE, and she pulled up another piece of document showing us that it wasn't FREE. We tried to counter her evidence with another line in our Eurail guide and in true European fashion, she basically just said, NO.
We then headed out to visit the two islands surrounding Venice that were major tourist destinations: Murano and Burano. We took the water bus back to the Ferrovia station and waited for what must have been an hour before the direct water bus to Murano arrived. Meanwhile, we were in awe of the beauty of Venezia. Bridges, the canal, gondolas, italian men against a backdrop of awe-inspiring architecture (mostly churches and museums). We posed for photos using Marianne's camera and then started to get bored and hungry. Naturally, we start braiding each other's hair. Or rather, I start to braid Neha and Andrea's hair. And to fill the rest of the time we ate candy that Marianne had brought.
The water bus ride to Murano took about an hour. Once we were at the stop we were shepperded by an italian guy to a place where we could apparently watch a glass blowing demonstration. We were brought to what seemed like the back of an empty warehouse. Were we about to get robbed? Alas, an Indian-looking young man came out and told us that we had to pay 3 euros to watch the show. We were, again, obedient. We paid 3 euros and went into the warehouse and waited for the demonstration. Except for Neha, of course. There aren't many things in the world that Neha would pay 3 euros for. The young man put the end of a metal shaft into a burning furnace (at about 2000 celcius), and then blew into the shaft from the other end. (I know how this sounds but I cannot put it another way). A sort of maleable glass bubble formed and he twisted and manipulated the shaft so as to fashion the bubble into some sort of vase. We were impressed. Then an old italian man who looked as if he had just gotten out of bed, came out and took over with the glass blowing. IT was apparent that the young man was his apprentice. This old italian man did not even care to look at/address the audience, he just walked in there and started to blow glass like he was just doing his job. He made a horse! We were ultra impressed. Andrea now wanted a glass horse. The apprentice took over one last time and fashioned a three-bubble glass structure, which he broke violently on the ground to signal the end of the show.
We then proceeded to the glass shops. I slowly realize there are nothing but glass shops and restaurants in Murano. Of course, Murano is, after all, famous for its glass. After shopping for a while, we decided to eat at this semi-fancy italian place. We ordered baked sea bass, dory fish, and spaghetti alla carbonara to share. The sea bass was tender and delicious. The carbonara was good. The dory fish did not appear to be fish at all. We cut it open and realized it was pretty much medium rare. It took us a couple of bites to finally realize that it was steak, not dory fish. (Deductive reasoning is our strong suit I promise). If it looks like steak, and tastes like steak, it IS steak. It wasn't bad so we didn't send it back to the kitchen.
We then continued with our shopping. Marianne found a couple of souvenirs and bought a venetian mask for one of our friends back home. We took a couple of jumping photos in front of a giant glass structure. They turned out great on shivani/marianne's camera. We then hurriedly left for Burano, which was about another half hour away.
Burano is an island known for it's lace. By the time we got there, most of the shops were about to close already. We did some fast-paced impulse shopping. Andrea, neha and I bought a scarf each for ourselves, and I bought one for my mother too. We finally met up with Marianne and Shivani (we got split up earlier during the impulse shopping). We were trying to find our way to the water bus stand, but we somehow got lost, futher and further into the residential areas. But we didnt' mind, because the houses were quaint and they were all strikingly different, bright colors. Bright red flowers were found at the bottom of every other wooden window of those houses. Some houses were by a stream. Those houses were connected to its neighbors by an arched bridge. Boats, as brightly colored as the houses, were parked on each side of the stream. Photo ops presented itself at every corner, every alleyway, every turn. We procedeed to take emo-hipster looking portraits of ourselves in front of the houses. However, the sun was going down and we couldn't adjust the exposure on our cameras to make the photos work. Shivani's camera battery died and Marianne's camera memory was full. At this point we started missing Jake
The water bus ride back to the mainland was a sleepy one. Once we reached the mainland, we decided to grab dinner at a pizzeria, where we had a fun time trying to read the menu in Italian. We looked up certain words on Marianne's iPod touch to decipher the ingredients listed in the menu. We ended up getting the Australian (which turned out to be ham and pineapple), the Venezian (asparagus and egg), and the vegetarian (which was the most delicious of them all). I was rather impressed with the pizza, but the girls decided that american pizza was much better.
We then preceded to stroll along the alleys toward the opposite end of the island, where the water buses are. We somehow managed to hit a major tourist shopping spot. Souvenir shops presented themselves everywhere on that street. As we were walking, an Italian man pointed to a small alleyway that branched out from that main street and yelled "Riato!" at us. We yelled back, "what is Riato?", to which he replied in an italian accent "Parr-ty!". Neha and I started to follow the random stranger, but the rest of the group decided not to. So we decided not to. We either missed an amazing party with italian men and free drinks, or missed getting robbed in a strange alleyway. We will never know.
We stopped at some amazing Venetian mask shops and tried some masks on. Mostly, we just window shopped. Then, on the street, we see an italian guy in nothing but his underwear and a trenchcoat (classic creep I know) walk by us. His possie of guy friends were laughing openly at him. One of the guys came up to us and asked if we spoke english. He then told us that his friend was about to get married tomorrow, and then he became less and less comprehensible. He then took out this large band-aid looking thing and pulled down on the sticky strap. The girls said EWWWWWW and walked off. I did not know what this meant at first. But I was later told that the man had wanted us to wax his friend's chest. In retrospect that didn't sound that bad at all. Neha then went on to say how we had missed out on two opportunities today to do something fun. The next time a man offers an opportunity for us to wax his chest, we will surely say yes.
We came closer and closer to the Ferrovia stop when we found a wine/liquor store that was giving out free samples of its fruity cream liquor. Most of it was quite disgusting, but hey, we never turn down free alcohol. We went into the shop and picked out a couple bottles of white wine. The salesman was very thoughtful, he opened the bottles for us and gave us plastic cups to go. We finally got the the Ferrovia station and boarded the water bus.
Dreading the 40 minute ride ahead, we took the seats outside, at the end of the boat, and Neha decides that we should start drinking. Immediately. This was possible because the bottles were opened for us. So we all got poured a cup and we started drinking discreetly, because we did not know if this was illegal or not. We had about two cups when we finally reached our hostel. We sat ourselves outside the hostel by the water and started pouring ourselves wine again when Jake conveniently appears to join the group. We shared some wine with him and told each other about our days. There was only enough alcohol among the six of us for us to be almost tipsy, so we ended the night pretty early.
All in all, a good day out in Venezia.
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