Burano

We had a half day tour booked this morning to the islands of Burano and Murano, so we had to get up early to be at the other side of St Marks Square for 9.30am.

We met our tour guide Marco and the rest of our group, which was quite small - only 12 of us in total, and we had a nice little boat that took us to Burano first.

Burano has to be my favourite of the two islands with all the colourful fishermen's cottages. We had a walking tour which included a visit to a lace shop, which is a speciality of Burano, and watched a lace maker at work before being shown lots of items for sale. I ended up buying a lovely pair of hand made pair sandals for Violet (see my extras), made by the oldest lace maker in Burano.

We then rejoined our boat and sailed to Murano, which was very nice, but not as spectacular as Burano. Again, we had a walking tour followed by a visit to a glass factory where we had a demonstration. It's amazing to see how it's made.

On the way back to Venice, Marco offered to take us to a typical Venetian restaurant for lunch, that specialises in seafood, so mum and I, as well as another couple - Eric & Kay, decided to go along.

It's a restaurant frequented by locals, rather than tourists, and there were some gondoliers eating in there while we were there. It's always a good sign if the locals frequent a place.

We left the ordering to Marco and had a mixed seafood appetiser to start, followed by risotto with black squid ink. The risotto looked awful, but was delicious - even if it did stain our teeth lol! Apparently, the best way to get rid of the staining is to eat a very strong cheese which we had for dessert.

It was a really nice experience to do with a local, and Eric & Kay were lovely too. They're originally from the Midlands but have lived in South Africa for 30 years. They set off on a cruise tomorrow and had only flown in yesterday.

The weather has been fantastic today - really warm and sunny, although it's just started thundering.