Deb's Blog

My Viking excursion “The Island & the Abbey” included two destinations: The Church of San Giorgio Maggiore and the Island of Murano. On the way, we passed St. Mark’s Square in Venice.

THE CHURCH OF SAN GIORGIO MAGGIORE is a 16th century Benedictine church, built between 1566 and 1610, and designed by Andrea Palladio.

 It contains two Tintoretto masterpieces: “The Last Supper” (1592) (11.9′ x18.6′) and “The Gathering of the Manna” (1577) (17.06′ x 18.04′ x 21′).

MURANO is a series of islands linked by bridges in the Venetian Lagoon. It’s about 1 mile north of Venice. We visited Indusrtria Vetri Artistici, a glass-making factory on Murano. We watched two glass-blowing demonstrations by a master glass blower.

Then we were let loose to browse through the two floors of showrooms which contained an array of beautiful Murano glass products—jewelry, figurines, vases, etc.

CHIOGGIA is known as “Little Venice” with it’s elegant palaces and colorful houses overlooking the canals. Joe chose to do the walking tour of Chioggia instead of joining me for the Murano and San Maggiore excursion. But when I returned from my excursion, the two of us toured Chioggia together.