Burano, Italy, near Venice (Day 4)

The Colored Houses of Burano near Venice Italy

During our trip last week, we visited the neighboring fishing village of Burano. It is only about 30 minutes with the ferry from Venice, and it was recommended to my Mom and brother by a fellow traveler for being a very picturesque village (these photographer buffs live for a place like this... every street is an opportunity for ´shooting`). And boy was that an understatement.. it is more than picturesque... its so pretty I wanted to lick the houses. They are that lovely.

Burano is pretty much as quaint as they come although a bit touristy being so close to Venice. The biggest benefit was that the place was practically isolated compared to Venice. I believe the story goes that there were originally no street names or numbers so they color coded the streets. I can't say that I could make out the street separations still, considering it all looks like a box of crayons to me, but the colored houses were a pleasure to walk around and enjoy. And being 1.5 km wide at its broadest point, Burano is the perfect place for a leisurely stroll. It is a fishing village mostly... which means there are tons of toned men walking around the streets after a morning of fishing...and it is also only accessible by boat like Venice.

Locals out for a stroll.

This is the house I would live in if I found myself moving to Burano... The blue house with the blue door.... And I would have a blue boat just like this one and probably eat only blue berry smoothies three meals a day... one would have to go to those extremes, I think, to live in a heaven such as this.

After lunching at a super quaint place on the canal (you can't miss it on the main canal near all the souvenier shops - they have photos of these crusty bread pizzas outside, and they are as yummy as they look) my Mom went in search of reflection shots... and being inspired by the afternoon light I fired off this shot.

After eating my 16th Gelato of the week (lemon... it was refreshing, like lemoncello, which we also enjoyed for the first time on the trip!), we boarded the ferry back to Venice for some necessary souvenier shopping and a few masks and some artistic prints of Venice later we stopped for our last meal on the island... three cheese gnocci. Can you say ´gnocci` yet, Nate? :) Well, I guess we will just have to go back to Italy so you can practice!

Saturday we traveled the 8 hours by train from Venice to Zürich... no doubt I did not book the most direct connection - woops! I think it was a great trip.... I can't wait to go back to Italy but I think I have had enough of Venice, being a bit of a tourist trap and über expensive. Either way, I would highly recommend visiting Lugano and Venice... perhaps even stopping in Milano if you haven't yet been. Grazie!