We woke up early Saturday morning and went to the Rialto Market. They sell fresh fruit and vegetables, fish, meats, etc.... It was very neat to walk around Venice before the other tourists were out and about. All of the shopkeepers were getting ready for the day. Delivery boats were bringing supplies to waiting restaurant workers.
The fish market reminded me of the market last year in Kesennuma. It wasn't nearly as big (and almost all of the sea life were already dead), but it brought back a wave of memories from last year.
As we walked back to the apartment, we saw restaurant workers wheeling back big carts of seafood from the fish market to their restaurants. I haven't seen an obese Venetian yet. I don't they can exist given there are no cars and everything must be physically pushed/pulled from the canals to the interior areas of Venice.
In the early afternoon we went to Burano, the island of lace. It takes anywhere from 40 minutes to 70 minutes to get to Burano via vaporetto from the main island. The main church's tower is leaning (we saw another like this on Venice proper). The pilings under the islands are settling unevenly - leading to buildings and towers leaning in strange ways. Burano is a beautiful island with very brightly painted houses. They were originally painted so brightly by women so their fisherman husbands could recognize them from afar when returning to shore. It is a very cute, small island and we enjoyed a nice, inexpensive lunch at a little restaurant. We struck up two interesting conversations - one with a couple from Louisville, Kentucky and another with a female author from San Diego.
After Burano, the girls were pooped and I took them back to our apartment. Bill wanted to continue to explore and took another vaporetto to Torcello, an almost abandoned island near Burano. In the 10th century, it was more important than Burano or Murano, but the course of two rivers was changed and the area became swampy and malaria ridden. By 1680 it was almost deserted and only 30 or so people live there now.
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