The Floating City
Venice was amazing, we saw a clever man create a wine glass with a colourful duck as it's stem. He made it by melting glass with a very hot blowtorch, using different coloured glass sticks. He then used plyers to stretch the melted glass which looked sticky and goohy into the right shape. The heat from his torch was so hot we had to stand back. The lady in the shop told us that the glass is heated to over 1000 degrees celcius.
The city of Venice has canals instead of streets and we crossed over many little bridges to get from place to place. Everyone has a boat instead of a car and we bought a boat ticket that was like a train ticket so we could get around the island by boat. Ben called them the bus boats. It was so much fun and nice and cool as the weather was sunny and hot. Because there are no cars, the police, fireman and ambulance all have their own boats. We saw the fire station with all the boats parked in a water garage. There are also lots of gondolas floating around the canals or tied up to candy-stripped posts in the water.
On our second day we caught a boat across to Murano, the island where most of the beautiful glass comes from. We saw another glass blowing display. This time they were making vases and said that the art of glass blowing is passed down from father to son and through the generations so it remains a family artform. While the glass was hot the man rolled it in colourful pieces of glass that make beautiful patterns in the vase when it is finished. In the middle of the island there was a huge glass sculpture and at Christmas time there is a massive tree made entirely out of glass.
We all loved Venice. It is so different to any other city we have visited.
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