Day 2 - Venetian islands (Murano and Burano) and Florence

Today we woke up around 8:30 showered, ate breakfast, and made our way out to the vaparetto (taxi boat) station to meet up with Sarah and Pat at 9 am. We caught the next boat headed towards the Island of Murano. The boat ride took about an hour because of all the stops we had to make. Once on the island we went to two different glass blowing shops where they actually showed you how they made glass vases and a glass horse. It was really cool to see the process and how malleable the glass becomes when it is heated up, it's almost like the glass is play dough. 

Outside our hostel in Venice

On the vaparetto

Glass horse

Murano island (Venice in the background)

After an hour on the island we headed by boat to our next stop, the island of Burano. This island is much smaller than Venice and is known for all of the colorful houses it has. Both of the island have canals similar to Venice. After walking around for a bit we made our way back the dock to catch a vaparetto back to Venice. 

Burano colorful houses

Once we arrived at Venice we walked back towards the train station after stopping for a quick bite to eat from one of the street vendors. We boarded the train to Florence around 2pm for about a 2 hour ride. We ended up having different seats on our ticket but since the train wasn't too crowded we were all still able to next to each other. The ride was smooth except for the bottle of a mixed Mimosa drink spilling and making a mess!

Before the spill!

Once in Florence we made our way to our hostel to drop off our bags and then go explore the city. The duomo, a big domed church in the center of the City was closed early because it was a Sunday so we ended up going to the nearby castle. The castle was really interesting, we climbed up to the top of the tower for a great view of the city. 

The duomo (dome church)

In the castle tower

View from the tower

Next we stopped at the local gelato shop for a tasty snack. I had strawberry and it was delicious! We made our way across the river towards piazza Michaelangelo passing by the famous Uffuzi mueseum which was also closed early. The piazza Michaelangelo is on a hill just outside the city offering a picturesque view of the city as the sun set behind the mountains. 

More Gelato!

After the sunset we found our way to a nearby restaurant. The food there was so-so (I had a meat pasta), but we also got to see a free "show". There was a window open in the apartment the restaurant was next to and there was a naked couple...completely visible to everyone eating at the restaurant! This made for a much more interesting meal to say the least! After dinner we went back to the hostel to book some more train tickets and go bed.