After breakfast we headed to Piazza San Marco for our Secret Itineraries Tour. This took you to some of the back areas of the palace, and gave some great history and background to the government of the Venetian government.
We learnt a lot about Casanova who was imprisoned here and famously escaped. We also saw where they would torture people.
Afterwards we were free to roam the palace. Each room you came to seemed grander than the one before.
The view from one of the windows was very good.
Near the end you cross the Bridge of Sighs.
After our tour it was midday and time for a rest to escape the heat. We then headed up to the Vaporetto stop North of where we were staying to venture over to Murano to check out the glass.
We got there quite late and the factories were closing, but we found a place that had one last demonstration of glass blowing for the day, so we watched that. “And now he will make a horse in under a minute” our host told us, which I thought kind of devalued how much a glass horse was worth, but it was still pretty cool (or hot) to watch.
We only got a few glass trinkets in Murano as it was late and the good shops had closed (Murano seemed to be overpriced compared with the same items in Venice), so we headed back to Venice. It was evening and the light was beautiful.
While looking for a place to eat we stopped by the Ponte Chiodo, the last bridge without handrails.
We picked a place that superficially looked good, but was a decided rip-off with average food and disgusting house wine. Worst I’ve ever had. I got Jess to collect their card so I’d remember to write a bad review on them later.
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