Our last day in Venice (jewelry shopping)

Today is our last full day in Venice. After 3 days of window shopping and looking into countless shops, I bought my first piece of Venetian jewelry.
Here is the beautiful necklace that Uwe picked out for me, hand-made from Murano (Venetian) glass.

I've always wanted to purchase jewelry while traveling. Something that's unique to that part of the world; plus you've got a story to go along with it that reminds you of your vacation each and every time you wear it.

While strolling the streets of Venice we passed shop after shop that specialized in hand-crafted, glass blown, gorgeous pieces of jewelry. It wasn't a matter of "should" I get something. It was a matter of "what" should I choose.

Today, on our last day in Venice, Uwe stopped dead in his tracks in front of a display window and said, "You should get this necklace." It was in a tiny shop called, "domaghi" that could have passed for an art gallery, with hand-crafted pieces of jewelry on display that were works of art in and of themselves, with no two pieces looking alike. Since the glass is hand blown and crafted, each piece of jewelry was unique and one of a kind.

Uwe loves the color red and he was pushing me to get something a little out of my comfort zone, since I tend to be more conservative. I love it. (Not only does it remind me of Venice every time I wear it, but I tell everyone my husband picked it out, to which they respond, "Your husband has good taste." Yes, he does.)

Afterwards we had dinner by the canal. I love the 3 courses they have here in Italy. Each course is delicious and you get to taste 3 different dishes that compliment one another. They also have the perfect serving size (not too much and not too little - but just enough). We didn't realize it but in the end, the dinner we had the first night we were in Venice was the best. We had been walking for awhile and got hungry, so we literally stumbled onto this restaurant. We thought it was a tourist trap because the menu was in Italian, English, and German. (Later we found that since Venice caters to their big tourism industry, most of the restaurants do this.) We had a delicious meal and great wine, but didn't think anything of it. Every night thereafter we tried different restaurants recommended in Uwe's off the beaten path/not for tourists guidebook, but they all fell short of our high expectations from our first Venetian restaurant experience.

The waitresses were even so nice as to fill up Astrid's sippy cup with milk (and asked if we'd like it to be heated up for warm milk). We found that the people here are genuinely very nice and love children.

It'll be our last night sleeping in the Palace, and then in the morning we're off to Rome.