CC Travel Blog

Contrary to the expensive transportation cost, going to Murano is FREE! There are glass factory tours available from hotels where the factory will pay for the water taxi to take you to the island and get a free tour of the glass factory. But the return trip is on your own (there are water bus #12 returning to the city).

Water taxi has a much more luxury setting compared to the water bus. Although on a cozy soft leather seats, we constantly slid from one end of the chair to the other end due to the wavy outer canal.

After about 20 minutes ride, the taxi docked near a small flight of stairs and someone in suit came out to greet us. He lead us inside the factory and there were already other visitors waiting for the tour to begin. The demonstration started with an old craftsman demonstrating how to blow glasses. The whole process was quick, less than a few minutes for the entire work to finish.

First, the craftsman heated up the material in high temperature oven.

Then he blew it into a round shape.

Lastly, he used his tools to quickly twist the still soft glass into various shapes. His pace has to be quick before the glass turns cold and hardened. In a few twists, this craftsman had a lively horse showing in our face.

Since the tour is free, it is expected that they’ll spend a lot of time hard selling their products. But don’t be afraid, you can walk out at any time if you don’t feel like it.

The tour guide brought us to the upstairs showrooms to check out all their products. As far as I could remember, they had a few showrooms and the prices were very much up to negotiation. All the marked prices were artificially raised up, the true price was the one when the salesmen pressed in from his calculator.

Since we couldn’t find what we wanted, we left the shop right away and walked around the island to find other factories. A lot of shops welcome price negotiations, but remember, most of the sales will not qualify for tax-refund.

Among all those glassware, we found it most amazing that some of them are made with Alexander stones, which are color-changing when they react to different light spectrums. We bought a glass vase which is purple in the day and blue at night. There are others that will turn red at night and purple in the day.

Summer in Murano is probably more scenic with colorful boats floating around. Since we went in November, it was windy and occasionally rainy, so the entire view was less colorful.

Murano glassware are also available for sale in Venice, But if you are intereted to see how glasswares are made, or you looking for some major glassware and want to negotiate a very low price, come check out Murano.