Bright and early on a Sunday morning, we walked about half a mile to the train station, paid €12 each, roundtrip, and took the high-speed train to Venice! It was about an hour ride, nobody was onboard at 7am, and it was awesome!

This is what you see when you walk out of the central train station on the island.

We arrived on the island well before the tourist crush, and were able to get a lot of sights in easily. It was sooo nice to take our selfies without five hundred sticks in the way, and no kids underfoot running rampant.

So much marble, and sculpture, and architecture 😍

Venice may be a tourist trap now, but its neighboring islands, Murano and Burano, are still famous for their artisans. Wrought iron design is everywhere, securing doors, windows, gates, and as purely decorative wall hangings. There were, of course, Venetian masks everywhere. Beyond the typical Mardi Gras eye masks, these were full on, ceramic and glass animal heads! Every single store seemed to have a wall covered in them. And of course Murano glass is world famous. I’m still trying to figure out how they made these platters without destroying the plants inside! Bialetti, the little silver coffee pots, are from Italy and are a staple in most every store. There was even an official Bialleti store on the island that did engraving of your coffee pot.

By about 2pm, we had seen our fill of Venice and the tourist crush was in full swing. We headed back to the train station and were back in our apartment by 3:30pm! No parking lots, no taking your shoes off for security, it was great!