Today’s Activity and Journey (Tue, 14)

I’m writing this throughout the day as I took a trip to Venice, Italy.

(Not my boat) today I’m visiting three islands one is mainly for the production of glass

This is the glass factory I’m visiting for a demonstration on how glass is blown. There are many great artists throughout Venice that I have seen, a popular form of art here is glass blowing so I thought it would be cool to see it happen in real time.

Two days ago I was lucky enough to visit Split, Croatia where many game of thrones episodes were filmed I saw some of the real props and misc used in scenes, and visited filming places.

Some of the props used*

Currently a demonstration of glass blowing is happening. And we see the process in which artists go through to make glass art.

I plan to write about the process according to what I understood may be slightly off but here it is as I interpreted it as.

Step one: Roll the glass to the point where it’s clear and it will stand erect.

Step two: place in furnace heat and repeat the process till the dots in the glass are rolled out.

Step three: re roll and blow air into glass ball to expand and even the thickness.

Directly to step four where we separate the blown glass ball from the pole and spin it from the inside out.

Then to add details we pull out glass while it’s in its final stage to add finishing touches. Here’s our fantastic artists final work.

Once again thank you to our unnamed but fantastic glass blower for demonstrating his skills for all to see.

Now we move on to our second island where we explore and hope to see new people and share new experiences. I’m hoping this island isn’t also a glass blowing industry so I’ll have something to say about it but we will have to see. Something exciting about Venice is the number of things there are to see. I feel like Venice is well known due to its canal and the possibilities of it sinking.

We are now onboard the boat headed toward Burano our second island, which thankfully isn’t famous for its glass rather for its lace. If you don’t know what lace is I will explain. Lace is a more “luxurious” cloth used for decorations, clothing, and most notably table cloths. Lace is decently expensive and hard to make if made by hand there is of course less expensive machine made lace but it’s the handmade lace that’s worth money.

I don’t know if we will see a demonstration on how lace is stitched and used but if we do I will once again explain the process as far as I understand.

During the boat ride I will address the problem mentioned earlier about Venice sinking. If you didn’t know Venice is built on a lagoon called Venetian. The lagoon during the time Venice was founded by the Italian government was known to be quite muddy. This and the slow rise of Mediterranean Sea levels slowly rising are the main contributors to the city of Venice sinking.

However though the idea of another city sinking fully underwater by (approx. 2118 that is what is predicted at least) is concerning to the Italian government, they believe they have a solution which I will share with you. There are three main entrances to the Venetian lagoon, in which the Italian government is going to run a series of around 70 steel gates meant to raise the height in case of flooding or on account of dangerous sea levels. They then plan to increase the max height of the aqua gates every few years to keep Venice up and afloat.

Back to our exploration of island two we will soon be arriving. One more really quick thing I would like to address is the grammar and if there are any typos. I would like to apologizing as I am 1. A teen and 2. On an iPhone.

We are now docking at the second island, again known as Burano if you want the pronunciation it’s (bur-ra-no).

Well… we hit the dock 🤣 but anyways on to explore what the second island has to offer. Unlike many other islands in Venice this island appears to have some more uneven hills instead of Venice’s common flat land.

If you’re wondering about the vast variety of water color it’s because Venice actually has an estuary which is when salt and fresh water mix many different types of sea life thrive in estuaries which unfortunately we won’t be able to experience.

After visiting the second island (there wasn’t much to say) we find ourselves coming to a close with this morning and I have been informed the third is the same way so thank you all for reading and have a good day!