Would you take a job knowing that once you started, you were prohibited from ever traveling outside the immediate region, under threat of death or perhaps having your hands cut off?

I’ve been writing about wife Gladys’ and my recent trip to Italy where we celebrated our 30th anniversary and visited relatives.

• On the island of Murano, a part of Venice, we saw the world famous Murano glass being made in dozens of places. There were pieces offered for sale from a low of a couple of Euros up to others that were 10,000 Euros or more.

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We attended a couple of demonstrations of pieces being made. It was almost like magic how the artisan could take a hot blob of molten glass and use tongs to pull here and snips to cut there, all the while spinning the molten glass back and forth, and suddenly the blob turned into some recognizable and beautiful item, like a horse standing on its hind legs with a flowing mane that shimmered in the light.

Glass blowing was an important trade in Venice, but because of the threat of fire to the densely built city, glass blowing in the 1200s was moved out of Venice and onto the island of Murano.

For many years, the glass blowers in Murano were reportedly the only people in all of Europe who could make mirrors, as well as being the only ones who knew how to make high quality glass products.

The artisans were said to be so respected, daughters of glassmakers were allowed to marry into blueblood families, something you’d not normally see for the family of a craftsman.

And indeed, to protect the secrets of Murano glassmaking, workers there were reportedly prohibited from traveling outside the region, under threat of death or “just” having their hands cut off.

• We visited a number of historic cathedrals, most all of which continued to house active Catholic congregations. There were typically attendants at the doors of these churches to ensure that women didn’t enter with bare shoulders or short shorts. At some of the bigger cathedrals, there were throwaway wraps made of some flimsy material that could be purchased to provide a temporary cover for over exposed areas.

• We toured the world famous La Scala opera house in Milan, built in 1778. It was beautiful, but I was particularly interested to learn that you could buy seats in the very top level, we’d call it the nosebleed section here, that offered no view of the stage.

They’d be for the true opera lover, who was content to get inside simply to hear the performance.

We were told the best tickets for the premium performances would go for $10,000 U.S. or more.

• Yes, there is an end to my columns on my visit to Italy, and this is it. It was a memorable experience for Gladys and me, especially the many cities we visited with historic areas that we observed were so pretty, they looked like something Disney would build to portray a beautiful Italian town — but they were real. Ciao!

Will Chapman is publisher of The Daily Iberian.