Venice; Tuesday, 30 September, 2008

With my luggage sitting in the hotel reception, I headed back out into Venice for my final day. First stop of the morning, and less than 3 minutes walk from the hotel was the church of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari (better known just as Frari). This imposing structure comes up on you as a wall of brick, and it’s not until you have walked some way around it that you realise it is actually a building.

From there I had a wander through the alleyways towards the station, stopping off to pop into San Rocco church on the way. At the station, I caught the Vaporetto across the lagoon to Murano to visit the museums and churches on the island there.

After a quick visit to the churches, and a longer wander around the glass museum, and a very pleasant lunch by the main canal, I caught the boat back across to the main island to take in some more of the cities churches.

Having looked around the churches I found myself having wandered down to the gardens at the eastern end of the main island. After a short while looking around I headed back up to the Arsenal, which you can’t go into as it is still in active military service, but the are perfectly happy for you to take photos of! By the Arsenal was a very nice little café and I stopped there for a late afternoon pause, before starting to head back to St Marks Square. On the way it became clear that the good weather of the last few days was coming to an end, and as I approached the Vaporetto stop the rain started to come down quite hard.

I had thought about having another wander along the canals, and maybe a spot of souvenir shopping, but with the weather closing in I decided the easiest, and driest thing to do would be to pop back to the hotel, pick up my luggage and head off to the airport.