Our hotel partnered up with a glass blowing shop in Murano. This offers guests a free boat ride from your hotel on the canal out to Murano, a demonstration of glass blowing, and an opportunity to buy glass, of course. Then they drop you off somewhere on the outskirts of Venice and you walk through the city to get back to the hotel. Brilliant relationship between hotel, glass shops, and local shopping.
Every city advertises what they are most known for. Greece is known for the eye of Horus, olive oil soap and olive wood products. Naples advertised a type of oversized fairy garden that is a replica of an Italian village that you can keep building onto with animated figures. Rome had biscotti and cookies in tins and wines. Florence has art and leather products. Slovenia has cave gifts and dragons. And Venice has Murano glass.
All of our time in Venice I kept saying, "No glass. It's too fragile. It's too much in my face here." But then, of course, we go out to Murano and after watching the demonstration plus walking through the many galleries we end up with glass. I did my best to make it useful glass though. With the help of Nolan, I now own a 20 Euro pizza cutter with a Murano glass handle.
The walk back to the hotel without any other shopping is 25 minutes.
With additional shopping, plus lunch, it's a three hour walk back to the hotel.
We decided to shop for the rest of our trinkets and then eat our final formal meal at a trattoria along the canals for lunch, and then went back to the hotel to pack.
Travel Tip: Recall, we had 4 hard luggage on the way out to Europe with one travel duffel bag plus a travel sized carry on stowed in our luggage. This is the ideal set up for bringing gifts home. Half of our clothes were packed in the soft duffel using the space savers, the other half in the largest luggage. All other hard cases were for gifts and souvenirs that would not break and for any liquor, oils, vinegars and other types of liquids. The travel carry on fits all the fragile items and we had no more than one checked bag per family member. Each less than 50 pounds. Success!
Very last meal of the trip: Take away Chinese food enjoyed in front of James' laptop watching The Grand Tour episodes courtesy Amazon travel abroad options.
Travel Tip: Pandora, not available in any of these countries. Listen on airplane mode to your offline stations. Hulu, not available in these countries. Download shows and watch along the way (for about the first 2 days). Netflix, not available in these countries. Amazon has limited access shows on their watch abroad station that you will get redirected to.
Then time to get some sleep before the 3:30AM wake up call from America saying: Time to come home.
Travel Tip: Recall, we had 4 hard luggage on the way out to Europe with one travel duffel bag plus a travel sized carry on stowed in our luggage. This is the ideal set up for bringing gifts home. Half of our clothes were packed in the soft duffel using the space savers, the other half in the largest luggage. All other hard cases were for gifts and souvenirs that would not break and for any liquor, oils, vinegars and other types of liquids. The travel carry on fits all the fragile items and we had no more than one checked bag per family member. Each less than 50 pounds. Success!
Very last meal of the trip: Take away Chinese food enjoyed in front of James' laptop watching The Grand Tour episodes courtesy Amazon travel abroad options.
Travel Tip: Pandora, not available in any of these countries. Listen on airplane mode to your offline stations. Hulu, not available in these countries. Download shows and watch along the way (for about the first 2 days). Netflix, not available in these countries. Amazon has limited access shows on their watch abroad station that you will get redirected to.
Then time to get some sleep before the 3:30AM wake up call from America saying: Time to come home.
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