137_3745.JPG We spent two days in Venice.  Venice doesn't have any streets for cars.  They only have canals, and you have to use boats to get around. 

137_3750.JPG This is one of the narrower canals in Venice.  You can see that they have a sidewalk on only one side, and to cross the street on a "crosswalk", you need to find a bridge. 

137_3755.AVI We took a boat ride down the big canal of the city, named "Canal Grande". 

137_3759.AVI (Big movie file, might take a long time to load, don't try it over the phone lines!) This is a movie of us riding on a boat in Venice.

136_3620.JPG Because there are no streets in Venice, there are no cars.  So instead of cars, they have boats that do the same thing as cars.  They have police boats, ambulance boats, garbage boats, taxi boats, bus boats, mail boats, fire boats, construction boats, and a lot of other boats. 

137_3769.JPG We took a taxi ride to an island where they are famous for making glass.  This is a view along the way. 

137_3767.AVI (Big movie file, might take a long time to load, don't try it over the phone lines!) This is us on the taxi. 

137_3768.AVI (Big movie file, might take a long time to load, don't try it over the phone lines!) This is us still on the taxi. 

137_3780.JPG This is the glass-blowing shop that we went into and saw how they blow glass. 

137_3779.JPG On a wall there was a mosaic showing people blowing glass.  We didn't take any pictures of the glassblowing going on inside the shop, but we saw stuff like this going on inside.  We saw a man take a long, hollow metal pole and stick it in the fire and got it red hot.  He took it out with a big blob of molten glass on the end and rolled the red-hot glass on some gold foil.  He shaped the glass by blowing into the end of the pole, making a bubble in the end of the glass.  Then he put the blob of molten glass into a little container with grooves on it, and he blew thruogh the hole so the glass expanded into the container so the imprint was even deeper in it.  Then he swung it around to stretch out the glass piece while it was still hot.  Then he shaped it with some special tools.  Then he took a different red-hot piece and strung it around the opening to make the opening curvy. Then he put it on the cooling rack in another furnace where it had to sit and cool slowly for 24 hours, and then it would be done. 

137_3772.JPG These are some of the glass figures made in the glass blowing factory. You can make huge glass things, or tiny ones. It is very interesting.

137_3773.JPG The factory has its own special way of putting color in the glass. It is a secret that they won't tell anyone who doesn't work for them.

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