"Our honeymoon!!!" a Venice Travel Page by Jerelis

This beautiful city is built on 117 small islands and has some 150 canals and 409 bridges. For us it was the perfect place to celebrate our honeymoon. When this precious place sinks, the world will be the poorer.

We can honestly state that the best way to explore the city of Venice is by foot and the second best way is also by foot! Besides giving you the opportunity to roam the narrow streets and piazzas, it is the quickest way too. If you really want to, you can cross the city in approximately one hour. Remember that sometimes it might be quicker to take a short-cut across the water instead of following the bends of bridges and alleys.

Before we visited Venice we already had a look at the internet. As we are from The Netherlands we are used to doing a lot by foot and we were pleasantly surprised that Venice is a city in which everybody walks and you're trully able to explore all the sights by foot. Our two feet were our best friends and therefore we were able to enjoy all the fascinating scenery Venice had to offer. While most tour guides don't recommend getting lost in the majority of cities, Venice is the place to get hopelessly lost for a day. We wondered off through mysterious alleyways leading us away from the crowds. We ended up in endless mazes of backstreets and deserted squares, the 'real' Venice!

Sleepy Murano is the largest of islands in the lagoon. It lies about 1,5 km across from Venice and was inhabitated since Roman times. The word Murano nowadays suggests glass factories and glass blowing. In fact the development of this island in the Middle Ages is strictly connected with glass. Murano was a commercial port as far back as the 7th century and by the 10th century it had grown into a prosperous trading center with its own coins, police force and commercial aristocracy. Then, in 1291, the Venetian Republic ordered glassmakers to move their foundries to Murano, because the glassworks represented a fire danger in Venice, whose buildings were mostly wooden at that time.

Finally do remember that visitors to Venice usually stay for only 1 day. They are so packed with things to see in the city that very few find time to visit the islands. When they do, they go to Murano, much closer to Venice and more famous because of the art of glassmaking. Making time to reach Burano rewarded us with an unique experience. The noise of boat engines, the queues of tourists from the package tours could not detract from the beauty of this place. Here, very little has changed.