Bryan's Window

After a fantastic trip to Rome, we were ready for our last city in Italy - Venice. We left Rome in the morning, and just before arriving in Venice, we made a quick stop in Verona, the home of Romeo and Juliet. We got the chance to walk around a bit, see some shops, and stop at the main tourist site - the fictional Juliet's balcony.

We didn't visit the islands of Venice until the following day, but we did have a delicious group dinner on the mainland. The restaurant was in a residential district, so it was actually kind of cool to see a residential part of Italy, and the pasta we had was delicious!

The next day was so exciting. I had heard that Venice was known to disappoint, that it was an over-hyped, hot and humid swamp. My experience was quite the opposite. I had a wonderful time and thought the city was incredibly unique (it seemed like the entire city was a tourist attraction). For us, the weather was just fine (although it was January - I can imagine it being quite hot in the summer).

Once on the islands, we did a quick walking tour before getting some time to stroll around ourselves. It wasn't too hard to navigate. We saw the Piazza San Marco, along with St. Mark's Basilica and the Campanile. We also saw the Bridge of Sighs. Our tour guide even pointed out the Church where they filmed the scene from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. In addition, we also got our included gondola ride, which was a lot of fun.

Well, that's it for Italy - next stop: Austria!