This is the day of the Vaporetto .
We have the day planned - to Burano to see the Lace Museum followed by time at Rialto, dinner and a night time ride home down the Grand Canal - the best laid plans of mice and men!
It all starts out according to plan - we catch the Vaporetto but somehow we take the anticlockwise route and find ourselves at Lido - let's get off here and have breakfast - there is a place - no we don't make breakfast- some toast?- out comes a badly made toasted ham and cheese sandwich glazed with carbon with the combination rescued by cups of Italian cappuccino.
We partake of breakfast and watch the people go about their business - where have all the stylish Italians gone? - the Lidostians we see at 10 in the morning have none of the style of their main island brothers and sisters - perhaps the stylish ones have been sent off on the Vaporetto to work in Venice - perhaps not - perhaps Lido is something different - after all it has cars and buses and all kinds of things mechanical with hardly a gondola in sight
There is a bike hire place - we can go to Burano later - we ride around the tiny island past the manicured beachs of the Adriatic with their bathing huts - past nice if not stunning houses of the middle classes - past residences for the relatively well to do working classes - save for the beggars and the north African refugees this appears to be a well healed community - we continue on past a small market and back to the pier - there is still no sign of the stylish Italians of Venice proper.
Off to Burano past Murano - there are words to a song right there! - what do I say about Burano? - I could say - "Toy World" - I could say "Venice World " at Disney Land - I could say the wonton destruction of a natural human environment in pursuit of the tourist dollar - I could say a lovely clean little island filled with quaint brightly coloured houses laid out along spotless canals and squares occupied by all manner of stalls and shops in support of a lace theme - the reality is that it is all of these things - the reality is also that much of the lace that is for sale bears no small measure of resemblance to lace produced in the mechanised factories of China - perhaps that is unfair since I saw no trace of the Chinese entrepreur and his north African collegues that caught our attention in Venice yesterday.
We said this was a be the day of the Vaporetto - it turned out to be true! - An hour and a half from Burano to Venice visiting every stop on the way including some more than once - too much of a good thing leaves you feeling jaded especially when it delivers you back into Venice in peak hour - thank god for the restaurant at Antica Locandar Montin - it washed away the memory of the return trip from Burano.
We head out of Venice tomorrow
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