Today’s post is a little more informal — sticking with the bullet point style :)

I snuck down for coffee & pastries in the morning while my parents finished getting ready. I was right - I am ruined forever on pastries after yesterday. These were objectively were good but in in comparison to yesterday, below par, which is especially wild since it was the same pastry shop.

• We took off in search of Krapfens, which besides having a hilarious name, were recommended by our Airbnb host as a "delicious pastry bomb" and he was 100% right. Tasty AF.

• Our water taxi (yes, Venice’s city bus system takes the form of boats) took us near Rialto bridge where we hopped off to continue our journey on foot to St Marks Square where we'd be hopping on a boat to our three other islands in the lagoon: Murano known for its glass making, Torcello as hosting the oldest church and settlement of the lagoon, and Burano for its hand-made lace and colorful houses.

  • The glass blowing at Murano absolutely blew my mind. We watched a guy literally breath to life a horse from a bulbous piece of hot glass. The skill and practice it that went into learning how to create art from glass was beyond my comprehension.

  • We ate a tapas style lunch in Burano before boating back. Mom and I napped.

• Once back on the main islands of Venice, we took one last long walk through Venice, stopping for gelato and to buy a few souvenirs before stopping at our place to get ready for dinner. My parents fly home early the next day.

• Dinner was an experience of Authentic Venetian seafood. I knew we were in for something unique when the restaurant only had menus in Italian since most tourist style restaurants in Venice have their menu in Italian. When our fish appetizer came out, we honestly weren’t sure what we could eat vs not because, for example, the anchovies came out friend and with their heads on. Do you eat their heads? Idk. Dad isn’t a big fan of seafood but he braved the seafood-only menu anyways and ordered a relatively safe bet of ‘fried fish’ plate. Their idea of fried fish is must different than ours. It was an excellent last meal together on our trip.

• We stopped for one last gelato on the way back to the Airbnb before packing up to leave early in the morning. I’ll miss getting to travel with them.