Lesson 1: Check the Opening Hours of Museums Before You Go
This particular brand of incident actually happened twice on our trip, but this was the first (and therefore more entertaining) instance. Whilst in Venice (photos) we went on a day trip to the island (ooh, sorry, archipelago of islands) of Murano. Murano’s main claim to fame (as I understand it) is the glass that is manufactured and moulded out there. The glass manufacturing was apparently moved to Murano originally because it was a rather dirty process and people didn’t want that kind of stuff happening in Venice. The official story is that the risk of fires was too high. Yeah right.
Anyway, I digress. We set off to Murano to see what there was to see about glass. As with most places that have a specialty, there is a museum in Murano dedicated to glass. “Great,” we thought, “we’ll get a bit of culture in whilst wandering around.” Unfortunately though, this particular museum was closed on Mondays, and only Mondays. And, you guessed it; we visited the Murano glass museum on a Monday.
I really didn’t get that. Why should it be open all weekend, but not open on Mondays? Wednesdays I would understand, no one really likes Wednesdays, but a Monday? We did manage to see some glass sculpture though, which almost made up for it. However, the lesson still stands: Check ye the opening hours of a museum before ye venture forth unto said museum.
September 4th, 2008 at 4:34 pm
I think you’ll find most museums in europe are closed on mondays…
September 4th, 2008 at 8:27 pm
Yes, well we found this out as we went along. Especially as we made the same mistake in Slovenia. You’d have thought we’d learn!
September 6th, 2008 at 12:08 pm
Never doubt an engineers ability to stubbornly ignore what is true and go on believing that it should be as he/she says it should… over…. and over…. and over again
Remember it did take most people a fair while to make sure they stayed away from me on stairs…. after all, it SHOULD be a relatively simple task of traversing them in a vertical position.
Museums should be open 24/7…. how dare they quash our aspirations to learn on a Mondayof all days!!!
Won’t somebody think of the children!!!
PS. About time you got back on here Mr Midgley, been a bit quiet
September 6th, 2008 at 7:55 pm
Too right Pete. Engineers do things the right way, why can’t everyone else?!
I think the problem with people recognising your inability to ascend stairs was that some people just refused to believe it. How hard is it to stay vertical and not fall down? Surely not that hard. People just keep underestimating your resourcefulness Pete.
It’s always the children Pete, no one ever thinks of them. I don’t know about 24/7, but I’d settle for them being open whenever I’m there. That would be just fine. Blimmin’ opening hours and such things.
As for my silence on here, well I’ve been off travelling the world dear boy, no time for plodding about on the internet!
September 7th, 2008 at 1:26 am
pish posh young william…. there is ALWAYS time for the interweb