Murano

Hi all,

In an attempt to do more frequent, shorter blogs, I’m doing this post about today’s trip to Murano. Murano is one of the islands around the main island of Venice and it is famous all around the world for its glass. Walking up the main street, we must have passed at least twenty different glass shops, selling everything from tiny glass penguins for one euro each to massive chandeliers that probably cost at least a thousand. We also saw an amazing blue glass sculpture set in the middle of a square (campo), near the first church we went into, San Pietro Martire, which means St. Peter the Martyr. The church itself was very simple, but pretty, but what was especially interesting was that we ran into two other Americans in there who saw that my sweatshirt said “Purdue” and told us that they were from Valparaiso, Indiana, and that their two sons go to Purdue. So that was a fun little meeting. Strangely enough, that’s not the first time that someone has said something to me about Purdue when I’ve been wearing my sweatshirt. So far, it’s been a pretty great way to meet other Americans traveling abroad.

The second church we went into was Santa Maria e San Donato, which had the most beautiful floor I think I’ve ever seen in almost any church. There were all sorts of different mosaics spread across the floor, some with the tiles just making up different patterns, some making actual pictures. Unfortunately, because it is a church still regularly used for services, we were not allowed to take pictures, otherwise I would post one of the floor. The rest of the church was also very neat, especially the ceiling, which was made entirely of wood and resembled the inside of a ship. The entire place smelled like incense, which I thought was great. Apparently, the church is also said to contain the bones of a dragon which Saint Donatus killed (again, thank you Wikipedia).

After leaving the church, we went to the Murano glass museum, where our professor, Emily, had us all split into pairs and choose one item to tell the rest of the class about. My partner was Caylen and we chose one of the chandeliers because the parts that curved out to hold up the candles were made to look like fish, which was pretty cool. Other people chose another chandelier which had glass flowers on it that looked real, a bowl with images from Roman myths on it, a dish with glass fruit on it that also looked real, and several very small bottles and bowls that were made back in the first and second century AD. It was a fascinating museum and I wish we had had more time, but we had to rush to get lunch and then get to Italian class. As we were going into the museum originally, though, there was an old man sitting outside, just sketching the canal, with a building with really beautiful mosaics behind him, I just had to get a picture.

Lunch was interesting, because instead of going back to the cafeteria at San Servolo we stopped at this small restaurant where we got paninis, which are just small sandwiches with no crust. We each got two and mine were ham and egg and then asparagus and egg. I know those combinations sound really weird but they were actually really good. Other people got spinach and egg, tuna, and mixed vegetables. Then, it was on to Italian class, then homework this evening.

Thank you again, everyone, for your comments, I really love to see those. Also, if anyone is curious, on the poll at the bottom of the page, 38% of people who took the poll would most prefer to star in a movie, so that won. I tried to put another poll up, but Blogger was having technical difficulties. Or maybe it’s just me. Either way, I will try to have another poll up within the next couple of days, just for fun.

Buona notte (that means good night!),
Maria : )