Verona and Venice

Continuing our travels North, we visited the beautiful but very different Cities of Verona and Venice.

Verona is where the play Romeo and Juliet is based, you may of heard of it, it was written by a guy called William Shakespeare. We visited Juliet’s House (probably not original) with the famous balcony (definitely not original) and a non original replica statue of her outside, apparently the original was removed because of wear from too many boob grabs. The shop however was selling original souvenirs made in China.

In the evening we went to my first opera. It was in the old (original) Roman arena, so in the open. About half way, the rain started, they paused the show so the musicians could save their instruments. 10 minutes later the rain had stopped, they were back and the show restarted… for about 10 minutes. A few spots if rain…. the show stopped again… then they came back and restarted…. rain and stop again… we gave up and caught the last bus back to the van.

Next was Venice… now we had low expectations of this, we thought it would be very touristy, smelly and dirty. It wasn’t, it was touristy for sure but the way the city runs with boats and hand carts instead of cars and vans was fascinating. Even DPD and DHL have their our boats. It was also very clean, something Patty especially liked.

We are now on the Southern edge of the Alps at a beautiful area alongside a river. We will stay a few days before moving on to Slovenia and possibly Croatia.