【明報專訊】It was a mild October afternoon in Venice, we took a vaporetto — a small passenger ferry — across the Bay of Naples to the nearby island of Murano. For more than eight hundred years the island has been famous for its glass factories and its glassmaking artists. Known as Venetian glass, it's treasured throughout the world. Soon after visiting three factories, we found our way back to the dock to await the next vaporetto going to Venice. A slight mist had settled over the water, and the quiet scene reminded me of a painting I'd seen in the Louvre. Numerous stray cats kept us company as we waited, and eventually, looking across the water dotted with its squat green islands, we saw the boat coming.