Day Eighteen

We were about to start the Italian leg of the tour by heading to Venice with a stop in Verona... This is where I got the first taste of Italian busyness and crush. There was just so many people!! And we weren't even traveling in peak season!

So you may ask what is Verona most famous for? Romeo and Juliet of course!! I got to see the Juliet's balcony and her wall. On this wall people from all over the world write their hopes or laments of love. Because who better to deal with questions of love than someone who committed suicide because she thought her man had died?
I felt like writing a few choice words to Juliet myself (maybe just to tell her off for giving me unrealistic expectations or maybe just to ask her to please explain). But what I wanted to ask would have taken up the whole wall and alas I didn't have a pen! There won't be any answers for me.

Verona was a most interesting city - built upon ruins (as I suppose most of Europe is). It was like something out of a movie - the quintessential Italian setting. This is what I thought of when I used to dream of Italy.
Leaving Verona we made our way to the island of Venice. Oh Venice!! What can one say about Venice? There's a lot of water (? - Stunning insight right there!)
As part of our Venice tour experience we were taken on a gonadal ride complete with musicians serenading us. I expected it to be trite and overdone - liking trying to live in a movie. Surprisingly though it was anything but! It was simply magical and it just seemed to fit.
The skill of the gondolier was phenomenal - ducking under low bridges and keeping the craft completely balanced while managing to navigate their way through the canals. My only complaint - it is exceptionally hard to get a photo that does the whole experience justice while stuck inside a narrow gonadal. But I wouldn't exchange that experience for the most beautiful picture in the whole wide world.

Next we have a day in Venice and Burano...