AC Vicenza

... haut, on avait une tres belle vue sur toute la ville! Ensuite ca ete la visite de quelque eglises, puis le theatre romain de l'autre cote de la riviere. finalement, on a vue un tres beau pont attacher a un chateau en bordure de la riviere.

nous avons eu le temps de prendre quelques coupes de vin local, accompagne d'excellent bruchetta avant de prendre le train pour milan.

... l'universite qui ressemble plus a un musee
d'histoire qu'a une ecole! A l'exterieur, des etudiants se faisaient
initier a la bonne vieille methode : des oeufs, de l'eau et de la
farine! Meme les profs y participaient. Nous avons aussi vue quelque
eglise, dont une basilic qui etait vraiment drabe vue de l'exterieur,
mais l'interieur de la chapelle etait comme une fresque geante. En
fin de journee, nous avons pris le train pour revenir a venise

Verona photos here:
http://www.facebook.com/album. php?aid=163660&id=613699523&l=4 6b9c473c4

We figured we only needed to spend 1 night in Verona as there wasn't a lot to do, plus the lack of any hostels meant we had to stay in a hotel (La Magnolia). We were right.
Got to Verona from Venice early afternoon and wandered around town. The Arena was awesome. So huge and overwhelming inside ...

... of undying love to each other. Makes for quite a sight really. There were nice markets there and a sort of mini colosseum which is still used today for concerts.

There was also a statue of Juliet which is meant to bring you good luck if you rub her right breast. Her right breast is very polished!

Jumped back on the coach to the next stop!

I can't believe I've been in Italy for over two months now! It feels like much, much longer. How can so much happen in such a short amount of time? So let's see...the week after Barcelona, we carved pumpkins. Usually Italians just eat the pumpkins, so to have a jack-o-lantern was a novel thing. I asked the boys if they would like to help gut the pumpkins, but they were too grossed out by the slimy-ness (sliminess?) so I did them myself. They took them to ...

... own special charm, and lured me in!! Now of course, nothing that had to do with my love for this town...we did of course visit the famous balcony of Juliet, and Romeo's house, and Juliet's tomb. (Even though there is no physical evidence of people by those names ever existing...)


So we left the place of love behind and drove on up into Germany...

... Task Force and the 173rd Airborne Brigade. Historically the soldiers here did not get deployed to Iraq but instead went to Afganistan. Recently, as battle sites have changed, there have been many casualities which means that the families left behind have been living under a lot of stress. It is exacerbated by the fact that this year, as many of you might already know, the deployment time has been increased from 12 to 15 months. This means many of the men and women are ...

... a cup of cappuccino at one of the cafés surrounding Saint Mark's Plaza. It was starting to drizzle as the grey sky finally made true on its threat. We just watched life on the plaza consisting of many tourists feeding Hitchcock sized flocks of pigeons. After a couple of minutes we headed out into the drizzle to walk around the area and window shop. This was fun for a little while until it became clear we were not going to find anything in our ...

... to Venice, we finally arrived. This was actually my third time to Venice, and my favorite. My first time was too much of a fly by, I was only there for a few hours. Last time, Darren and I could barely stand it due to the crowds, and this time it has just been lovely. There are lots of crowds during the day (day trippers, cruisers, and 20,000 commuters from the mainland make it a crowded city) but you can get away from the masses on Murano or the side streets ...

So another semi-early morning in Milan... got to the train station and waited in line forever to get our reservations... JUST BARELY made it onto the train, but made it nonetheless. We shared the compartment with 2 other Italian women, who were very quiet. So we just chatted with ourselves, napped a bit, and listened to I-pods to pass the 3 1/2 hours or so on the train. (PS... when you pee on a train in Italy, it's just a hole ...