-W
Two countries, both alike in history.
To fair Verona we made our way.
And there ends my attempt at destroying poetry. After the night in Monaco, the bus ride followed a familiar pattern. Sleep. My cold was (hopefully) coming to an end, but my eyes were bloodshot. Actually that is an understatement. Normally when I get sick my eyes go bloodshot. This time my eyes were red. There were no whites left. So I slept and kept my sunglasses on. We were headed from France into Italy with Venice being our final destination. The drive was spectacular, when we weren't in tunnels. Winding around the coast looking down over cliffs. It was the best drive so far and I feel bad that I slept for so much of it. Our first stop in Italy just about made the service centre run out of pizza.
Our city stop on the way to Venice was in Verona. This meant that Baz Luhrmann's Romeo and Juliett was played on the coach, and meant that I got to sit there and quote it from memory after studying it so many times at school. As we were visiting, we took the obligatory photos of Juliett's balcony and the statue of Juliett. With that done I headed straight to a pharmacy and in a combination of english, italian and charades I managed to buy some eye drops.
The campsite in Venice I will remember for two reasons. One that I watched a couple of games of football at the bar (Athletico vs Chelsea and Bayern vs Real) and the other reason being the millions of mosquitos. They were both numerous and large. However unlike their NZ cousins these ones were slow and dumb, making them easy to squash. I realised, while there, how much I missed stars. This was the first time I had noticed them in the sky. Although apparently there were plenty at the chateau.
The day that we spent in Venice started differently to normal. Normally we are dropped off by the bus and go from there. However Venice doesn't have any cars. Instead we started with a boat ride from the campsite to the middle of Venice. There were two optional extras today that I didn't do, a walking tour of Venice and a gondola ride. We were given maps and told to explore. Starting in St Mark's square I wandered around behind the Doge's palace to see the bridge of sighs. Then knowing that getting lost in a city is the best way to see it, I walked down a couple of narrow streets and was lost. In the process I found the Rialto bridge, some more pizza and some gardens. I also explored St Mark's basilica, which I felt the ceiling had too much gold painted on it so that it looked tacky. The walls and floor however made up for it. The floor was composed of a huge colourful mosaic of tiles and the walls were made of marble with many different patterns and colours. Well worth the line to get in.
We were in Venice on a good day. The morning fog burnt off to leave a hot sunny day. I think that it could have been different on a cold damp day. Even on a hot day, walking down some of the alleys you could smell the mold and rot in the mortar of some of the stones. But it was beautiful with roads of water rather than stone and something that I noticed from the beginning was how much cleaner it was than other places we had been. I really wish that I had not forgotten my camera that morning...
Juliet's balcony
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