Venice

We weren't going to go, but a new Swiss carrier started offering flights: Geneva to Venice in 75 minutes; entirely doable. That's Carolyn below, shadowed in the left foreground, holding Jack's hand, with Michael skipping along (typically) ahead of the pack.
Carolyn had been years ago, but my appreciation for the city was only rooted in John Ruskin's essays, who praised gothic architecture for its human flaws and craft over the mathematical precision of Greek ideals realized by slave labor, where humans were mere instruments, tools.

Part of the broader Arts & Crafts movement, along with William Morris - Ruskin was also both a reaction against and extension of the industrial revolution. An aesthetic counterpart to 19th c. feminism, which also critiqued modern industry - took labor out of the home - these "return to the natural" movements curiously owed their lives to the very phenomenon they opposed. ANYWAY, Michael and Jack's interest with Venice had to do mostly with gondola rides, gelato,
and non-stop, live orchestral music in San Marco square - all for a price (recurring Venetian theme). This outdoor cafe had a cover charge.

The gondolas (jet black with plush interiors) had a hearst quality to them - the last ride if you will - which, I understand, was their function at one time and the city was a water maze of narrow passages and bridges.
These newlyweds were in building-a-lifetime-of-memories mode, while tourists posed with pigeons. I recalled a grad student who told me that bird seed was being substituted for rice as after-wedding confetti; birds were fatalities of the uncooked rice which bloated in their stomachs. So, if you see an unusual number of fallen birds around a church, there was probably a wedding.
Venice was laid-back. The most enjoyable day was spent ducking in churches and underneath store awnings, escaping the rain. Impressive was the quiet (no motor vehicles), except for the occasional water taxi.

I don't know enough about Murano glass, except that there is serious marketing and rip-offs galore, but we visited the glass "museum," which was really a demo set-up to sell EXPENSIVE colored glass to tourists. Glass has been a motif of our lives: upstate New York's Corning Glass Musuem, then Tacoma's Dale Chihuly and Glass Museum. I bought an excellent tumbler set to hold gin and tonics. Michael tried his hand.