We decided we needed to get out of the crush of humanity that is Venice during the day so we took a boat over to see the painted houses of Burano.
We sorted out how to get tickets and board the boat and even get off the boat to catch the second boat that would take us to the island. It all went very smoothly and even though Cynthia is not a fan of boats, even she enjoyed the trip over as the boat was pretty big and not overly crowded.
The island is really something to see. The houses are each painted a different, bright color and when the sun shines on them they simply glow. There’s a few canals and some bridges which makes it a bit like a miniature version of Venice.
All in all, very cool. We hung out for most of the day wandering the streets. It’s very residential so you would see kids playing or women doing their ironing in an open doorway or cleaning old shoes out of a window. We laughed a bit as we speculated what it must be like for them to look out their window and see picture taking camera gawkers plodding around snapping photos of everything. We laughed as we tried to imagine the same thing back home.
After we were done we caught the boat back and the ride was fine till we found ourselves dropped on the far end of Venice. We had to catch the Vaporetto back to St. Mark’s Square. This ended up being a grueling adventure as probably twice as many passengers crowded on to the boat than it was designed to carry. At the end of the ride Cynthia mustered a joke about how pleasant it was for a claustrophobic woman who hates being on the water to be in this situation.
More photos can be found in my Flickr set Painted Houses Of Burano, Italy