Burano

For my Birthday weekend, I invited 5 of my closest friends from different periods of my life to gather in Venice for the weekend. I didn't take into account the surprise Siberian winds that accosted us when they arrived but all in all it was a pleasant weekend. Despite the problems that the #beastfromtheeast brought with it.

One of our first stops on our Venetian adventure was Murano and Burano.  I have been to Burano before to see the beautiful houses. I didn't have much of an interest in lace so our main purpose for heading to Burano was to take some instagrammable shots of other people's houses. 

Burano is a province of Venice, an archipelago consisting of 4 islands linked by bridge with a population of about 2,700. Burano, like Giudecca is known as one of the five original islands of Venice  It is known for lace. From the 16th Century women who resided on the island starting using an intricate needle technique to make lace and Burano was able to join in with trade alongside Murano and the rest of greater Venice. Today Burano is more famous for the leaning campanile (for those of you who want to save yourselves a trip to see the Leaning tower of Pisa) at San Martino Church and of course the multicoloured houses which cover the entire island. 

We grabbed some hot chocolate on the island of Murano after having watched glass blowing demonstrations and hopped on the vaporetto to Burano which took us maybe 45 to 50 minutes to arrive on the island. It was beautiful and worth seeing. Luckily that day the sun was shining and apart from the arctic winds it was a clear and quite beautiful day. My friends were suitably intrigued by the multicoloured houses and tried rather respectfully not to get anyone's underwear in shot while taking photos of the houses. (In Venice, locals tend to hang their laundry up outside on ropes meaning that tourists can see everything and often unwittingly capture instagram-worthy pictures capturing a pair of knickers being hung up in the sun to dry.

Burano is a gem, I don't have food recommendations for the place so you just have to be brave and wander but, trust me it's worth it.