As I said a few posts back, Ryan was so well-organized in planning this trip that he had the foresight to buy two three-day all-you-can-boat passes (note: this is not what they're actually called) through Venice's vaporetto network. We took one such vaporetto early on our last day to a few other islands in the Veneto lagoon, including Murano, Burano, and Torcello. We got off at Burano, only a 45-minute boat ride from north Venice.
Burano, also called "The Colorful Island," is exactly what its nickname would suggest: a small island of very few streets, just as many canals, and homes of the brightest shades of the rainbow. White- and cream-colored buildings are rare, and shutters, doors, and flower boxes are almost always a shockingly different shade of contrast. There were jewel-blue walls with red flower boxes, golden yellow homes with purple doors, rust-red facades with pale green shutters and stained wood detail. Shops boasted lace, blown glass (a specialty of the nearby Murano), and carved wood, and homeowners and shopkeepers alike peered out of curtained doorways (open to tempt in a breeze--there was almost certainly no A/C on that island--while still allowing for privacy) at the literal boatload of passersby.
We got back to Venice in time for a pizza lunch (shocker) before heading to the Peggy Guggenheim museum, one of Italy's most well-known modern art collections. We had a 30-minute window to take off our shoes and enjoy some much-needed air conditioning in our bed and breakfast, and then headed back out to tour Frari Church (most known for its oil paintings and Donatello John the Baptist).
It was in front of this church that we met David, who is training for his sommelier exams this July. He took us through the center of Venice, showed us what wells would have looked like (and how they would have collected reliable water) in the 1200s, and led us to Bancogiro--one of Venice's oldest banks, now a bar just behind the Ponte Rialto (Venice's most well-known bridge). We paired a local prosecco (fun fact: just as is the case with champagne, prosecco can only be called such if it comes from a small region just north of Tuscany) with Venice's quintessential "cicchetti" (chee-KEH-tee), or tapa: baccalà mantecato, cod whipped with olive oil, spread on crostini.
From there, we went to Venice's second oldest bar (do Spade), took a gondola across the grand canal to a series of newer wineries in Venice's more local-centric area, and paired each Italian wine with the proper cicchetti to match. The evening was, hands down, my favorite part of our time in Venice: We learned so much about the food, the history, the culture, and the wine of Italy, and got to see a very different side of an otherwise highly touristy city.