Today is an adventure day! I loved the islands of Murano and Burano when we were here last so that is where we are off to! YES that does mean I have to climb the bridge however first thing in the morning it will be easier than after travelling all day! So off we go! First let’s have breakfast! Holy cow! Look at that price of breakfast! Forty nine euros PLUS eighteen for a GF basket of goodies? Yikes! Good thing that I get a complimentary breakfast with my Marriott program! But oh the view – almost worth every euro this morning! Now, walking back through the hotel, I took some pictures so you can see how beautiful the lobby really is before we get a map and off to the bridge we go to catch the vaporetto! Surprisingly, we catch the Number 1 vaporetto two stops with the intention of changing to another one (5.1 or 5.2) to take us to another stop which will connect us with the number 12 boat that will take us to Murano and Burano and we found number 7, which runs once an hour ready to board – direct link to Murano! Wow! Such luck! So we hopped on and were in Murano in 45 minutes. In Murano we went down an alley away from all the tourist traffic into a lovely shop and purchased a couple of item and took some pictures. Then we walked along the canal and had a spot of tea (did that for Julie!) which really was a Coke zero and beer and pondered our next steps to Burano! After finding a vaporetto to Burano, we arrived. Burano is my favourite of the islands as it has FLAT bridges! I can get from one side of Burano to the other with no issues! So after spending some time there and Andrew trying an Italian alcoholic drink called Aperol (it is orange) we got on another vaporetto and went to Torcello which is another island like Murano and Burano but only a few people live there as it is now primarily a nature reserve. Founded in the 5th century, Torcello is even older than Venice and was a very important island in ancient times, once having a population around 20,000. However, malaria hit the island and much of the population either died or left. As the buildings were dismantled for their materials, little remains of the palaces, churches, and monasteries. When we got there and I realized that the vaporetto will not return for another 30 minutes and we were still an hour away from Venice, we took some pictures and got right back on the boat to return to Murano in order to catch the once an hour boat back to Venice. An hour later (and two bridge climbs) we were back at the St. Regis! Unfortunately we got some bad news at that point. Holland America who was to transport us to Trieste, where our next cruise was departing from, was not able to confirm our transportation, despite already confirming it 2 weeks ago! So we then had to make alternate arrangements and take the train with our luggage. Oh joy. As we were tired, we ordered Room Service for dinner and got to packing up our stuff as compactly as possible for the journey!










































































