Close to Home

The past few weeks Dan and I have had some company, his Mother, Debbi, and her friend, Wanda, came to visit.  The first few days we hung around here, showed them the local sites and took them to Venice and Verona.  We love that Venice is so close because that is one of the places most visitors would love to see.

One their first day here is when we went to Venice. It was more crowded than we thought it would be, it was Easter, so we thought that nothing would be open and it would be empty. Wrong.  It was packed and everything was open. Before we got on the train we took them around Polcenigo and Gorgazzo, just to check out the area.

Polcinego

We walked up to the old castle

Dan walking up

The old Castle at the top, not very castle looking

Beautiful views though

I took this picture when we were coming back down the hill

Wanda and Debbi on the train, on our way to Venice

Bridge of sighs (under construction)

Debbi’s Lunch

Leaning Bell tower in Venice

Funny thing we saw…His underwear say “Love MY Italy”

This was too funny not to take a picture of. SO true here in Italy. At least they’re honest

Wanda and Debbi

I love seeing older gentlemen walking and talking or biking and talking.  I love how they both were walking the same way

Relaxing for a minute.  Not many places to sit in Venice, so you sit where you can. Beautiful church behind Debbi

Street Artist. He was siting there with a wall in front of him, so he was drawing from memory, amazing.

San Marco Square

Canals of Venice

While we were waiting for the train, we did some more people watching (It was just so much fun the last time).  We didn’t see as many “cool” people but this one guy made up for it all.  We are sitting there and Dan says, “Here comes Bam Bam.”  I look up and we see this.  Whhhhaaaaat?  Haha

On day 2 we went to Verona.  It’s about 2-2.5 hours from here.  We love Verona, it’s a neat town, always amazing to see.  Wanda and Debbi went inside the Arena while Dan and I wandered around. We’ve already been inside of it, so we decided to hang out outside while they went in. 

Debbi and her gladiator

We then went down the main shopping street and headed to Juliet’s house, then ate some lunch.  After lunch we headed towards the river and went over the Ponte Pietra Bridge to climb the stairs and head up to the church and castle on the other side. 

Juliet’s house

Dan and I by the river, the building we went over to is on the hill above us

The Ponte Pietra Bridge that we crossed.  People like to put padlocks on the bridge to “lock in their love”

While climbing stairs to get to the top of the hill, we got a great view of an old Roman Amphitheatre

Views of Verona from the top

On both days we had wonderful weather, so we were lucky.  Tomorrow I will write about Day 3, which is when we left for Florence, checked into our B&B and headed to Pisa!