This year I went to Venice on a mission.

I was last there around 15 years ago with my two boys, aged 11 and 9, enjoying the standard touristy attractions like riding in a gondola, visiting the Basilica de San Marco and eating delicious gnocchi. We took a ferry-taxi to Murano and during one quick burst of window shopping, I picked up an exquisite aquamarine ring that garnered many rave reviews back home. After many years, the ring broke and being distraught I promised myself that one day I would return to Venice to find my dear ringmaker. And that is how I found myself this past July, opposite the Rialto Bridge, being seated at an outdoor table at Osteria Bancogiro, a restaurant overlooking the canal. I looked around and noticed a Black woman enjoying her glass of Montepulciano and an appetizer. She looked pleased with herself and I turned to her and asked if I could join her for dinner. She acquiesced and soon we were drinking wine and sharing each other’s life trajectories relating to jobs, travels, partners and children.

Teryl of Venice (for privacy reasons, last names will be withheld), my moniker for Teryl, and I immediately connected. She was from Kennewick, a small town in Washington state made famous or rather infamous for the Hanford Nuclear Site, established in 1943, where plutonium was manufactured and used in the first nuclear bomb detonated over Nagasaki, Japan, in 1945.

Teryl was on a six-week Euro-vacation, well-earned after finishing her year as a 7th grade history school teacher. She began her travels in Copenhagen and then toured London, and would finish up in France where she would travel with her daughter. In Italy, she visited Rome, Padova and Assisi before crossing paths with me in Venice. What endeared Teryl to me was her interest and love of Murano; she had just visited the island and had purchased two exquisite glass sculptures — a cockatiel, which was to be a graduation gift for her freshman daughter Zoë who was entering Scripps College in California, and a blue heron for herself.

“Where we live there are a lot of herons, especially near the ocean,” Teryl said excitedly. “Hopefully one day I will have my own beach house and put my heron in it!”

Over a plate of seared tuna, Teryl showed me a video of one master craftsman creating a glass pitcher at the factory. She was fascinated with Murano, and I asked her where that affinity came from.

“You know I was an art history major in high school,” Teryl said. “I had heard about Venice and while studying glass blowing, I learned about these artisans and how they had been exiled to Murano. Their glass-blowing techniques were so protected and could only be passed down from father to son. Since college, I thought, ‘How amazing would it be to get an actual piece of Venetian blown glass from Murano!’ Thus, it was my curiosity that brought me here. Being a history major, I am always looking at a place’s backstory.”

The commonly-believed reason given for the Venetian glass blowers exile is that their furnaces were a fire hazard, but Teryl’s was the accurate version. Venetian glass had become a prized commodity in the 13th century and Italy’s prime export and, to protect trade secrets, craftsmen were banned from traveling abroad.

Murano glass is unique in that it is completely hand-made. The glass is made up of silica, sand, potash, soda and lime, and melted and shaped in a 1,300-degree oven using special tools. A glass blower normally apprentices under a master for 10 years.

Interestingly, both Teryl and I had arrived in Venice from two perspectives: for me, it was to find my ringmaker and for her, it was curiosity. This year she also enjoyed Copenhagen.

“Americans don’t usually visit Scandinavia, so this was culturally new to me,” Teryl said. “People there seemed different, calmer, and it’s clean. They have canals and are big on health care, social services and sustainability, all things I like. And it has the Tivoli Gardens, one of the oldest amusement parks in the world, which inspired Walt Disney.”

While enjoying a dessert of poached pears drizzled with alcohol and cream, Teryl disclosed her plans for the next summer. A friend had invited her to Switzerland and the Dolomites, destinations she’s partial towards because of the weather. Since Italy was brutally hot this summer, she is likely to focus on traveling within Scandinavia, but she has not ruled out visiting Mexico and Oaxaca.

As for me, I made it the following day to Murano, and miraculously after an hour of sleuthing, found my ringmaker. We spent time catching up, during which I purchased a yellow topaz ring that hopefully will last me for another couple of years.

Ramaa is a journalist who works in a multimedia landscape that fuses print, audio, video and photography. She is a graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism. Her pieces on travel, education, yoga, food, religion, aging, and lifestyles have appeared in Lena Dunham’s podcast, BBC, Huffington Post, NPR-The Salt, PRI’s The World, WHYY, WhoWhatWhy.com.In 2020, Ramaa taught a food, blogging, and photography class at Williams College, Massachusetts.

This story was created by Detour, a journalism brand focused on the best stories in Black travel, in partnership with McClatchy’s The Charlotte Observer and Miami Herald. Detour’s approach to travel and storytelling seeks to tell previously under-reported or ignored narratives by shifting away from the customary routes framed in Eurocentrism. The detour team is made up of an A-list of award-winning journalists, writers, historians, photographers, illustrators and filmmakers.

This story was originally published October 07, 2022 9:00 AM.