Travels to Venice, Italy

The photographs are of a Venetian mask and a Murano glass factory.

The bridges of Venice vary from small brick-and-stone arches to the large, grand bridges that cross over the entire canal. A water taxi makes it hard to resist the temptation of turning around and feeling the salt spray on your face while seeing the waves the taxi makes. A water bus has a different feeling, though; it’s slower, and unless you’ve stood on the top, the noise is terrible. A gondola is even slower, though silent and very nice. When you go into the Doge’s Palace, or Palazzo Ducale in Italian, you will see the Golden Staircase, and the Doge’s Apartments, small but grand, with the ceiling decorated with thick gold adornments! You can also see the Bridge of Sighs, a bridge that connects the Doge’s Palace to the prisons. There is also Murano glass – it’s amazing! Every piece of glass there is hand made, with different techniques like “thousand flowers,” where you can put different decals on the glass, or dipping a vase into a different colored glass to make a layered look, or putting gold leaf into the glass. It’s fascinating to watch the glass being made. Starting from sand, it is heated up and molded. If you want to do “thousand flowers,” you roll the big glass on the small glass pieces. The effect is breathtaking. Venice is a very, very nice place to be!