Lake Como and Verona and Venice — Oh My!!!

…sorry if the pics aren’t ordered next to the corresponding text but sometimes it just doesn’t turn out that way in Word Press….you’ll just have to try to keep up!

Where to begin?  We have spent the past few days touring amazing cities – more beautiful than I had ever imagined they could be!

Lake Como, infamously the home of George Clooney (though we never saw him) – was gorgeous.  We spent about six hours there on a day trip from Milano.  The town was very relaxing and we really enjoyed our time lake and people-watching.  Here are some of the better pics from the day:

We really enjoyed our picnic lunch overlooking the lake – complete with music!

On the way to Venice, we spent a day-trip in the lovely town of Romeo and Juliet fame, Verona.  It was beautiful too, but in a different way.  The buildings were these amazing pastels and we enjoyed wandering the streets.

Okay, so of course we had to go to the real building that is supposed to be where the imaginary Juliet lived.  It was quite an experience – overrun with tourists trying to leave their graffitied love notes on the walls (yes, we did that too) and to rub the breast of the Juliet statue for good luck in their love lives (yes, we did that too).  The best part about our trip to this tourist mecca, however, was the random weirdness found within the house.  Here is what we found on the very top floor of the building – it was the only thing on the floor, in fact (look for gold):

Still, this statue was not the oddest thing we saw in the house.  This one made us and everyone else crack up too (skeletal):

But the absolute best was the one that made us gasp when we saw it:

Yes – this is a statue of the woman turned man from Oregon who recently gave birth to a child.  Anyone who knows us understands that we *really* didn’t see what the big deal was or why that made such a fuss in the news.  Good times!

After leaving the city of literary romance, we headed to the one overflowing with the real thing: Venice.  Before going we had heard from several people that Venice just wasn’t worth it – that we would be bored, that there were too many tourists, and that it stank.  We found none of the above to be true.  We were in heaven – it was so peaceful with the absolute lack of automobiles and bicycles – a true walking town.  We definitely took advantage of that – walking almost non-stop at all times of the day and night.  Sure, there were lots of tourists there but the mornings and evenings were empty and oh so beautiful.  We took over 300 pictures in Venice.  Here are just a few highlights – it was so hard to choose just these: