Italia edition Day trips from Venice

Some people might think it a little odd to make Venice a hop off spot to other places because of how expensive it is but when you've been traveling as long as I have, knowing that you only have to take your luggage up and back down 3 flights of stairs once rather than doing it a few times it is definitely worth it. Plus, when you walk out of your front door there is the Grand Canal, how much better can it get?

Verona

On the train we hopped and although the temperature outside has you wishing you were inside, the temperature inside those freezing trains gets you wishing you had a coat! It is alot further away than expected on the slow trains, you can pay more and go on a fast train if thats what you prefer though.

Upon getting there and making our way to the tourist office, we picked up a map informing us where Juliet's house, Romeo's house etc are. It's weird that a place that has been immortalized by Shakespeare now has tourist attractions to places that were never owned by the fictional characters. But being the hopeless romantic that I am, it's nice nonetheless. I particularly enjoyed all of the graffiti on the walls going through to the courtyard where the statue of Juliet is where once you've clambered up onto her pedestal and grabbed her right breast you are meant to get good luck in love so it has the thousands doing it. It was there that I had the moment of wishing I knew the language so much it hurt when an old lady got herself up there, not for someone waiting for a camera to take a shot of here but to give the statue some love,instead of just grabbing her breast she rubbed her face, her neck, her hand. Then when she got down and came back over to the front of the crowd waiting their turn tojump up she said a bunch of words in Italian that I SO wish I could have understood.

Verona isn't just about Shakesphere though, it also has some amazing grave sites, the most complete roman colosseum anywhere and a bustling marketplace.

Burano and Murano

The Lace making and the glass making islands of Italy. Many people buy what they are lead to believe is real Murano glass while they are in Venice in the tourist shops but by coming here you know you're getting the real deal. You can find glass blowers doing thier work and sit and watch if you like, there is a glass museum (which I was told by the person on the front desk of the museum that it wasn't worth the admission fee), and plenty of pretty little streets and laneways.

A short boat ride from there gets you to Burano which is famous for it's lace-making. I had an overwhelming feeling of deja vu while I was there and I think it was probably because of a mix of recollections of lacy little dresses from when I was a child, doilies that clutter up the houses I grew up in and the crochet that my Nana would do around the outside of face washers and hand towels.

The brightly coloured buildings are a picture postcard waiting to happen and of all the places that I travelled over the summer this was the place that I could see myself living, isolated and making mounds of artwork until my need for processed foods tore me away. It was definitely worth the trip.

Italia Venice edition

All my life I'd heard of Venice, my Mum's favorite place she had travelled. I'd seen it countless times on television, even had scrawled in my travel journal to make sure I get to Venice before it all goes under water.

It was exactly as you imagine it. A city, surrounded by water. Big Italian personalities, Gondolas, canals and a few bridges.

It was exactly not as I imagined it.

A city, surrounded by water- Can be so still at night without the roar of car engines and the never sleep feeling that you get in most cities wasn't present at all. It sleeps.

Big Italian personalities- nearing the end of summer and tourist season I'm sure the locals can't wait to see the other end of another English speaking visitor who's only italian comes from the Dolmio adds, and in some places it showed.

Gondolas- you're told before you go that they are expensive, but what you don't expect is that just so that they can say that they have done it every other tourist jumps on a full gondola so that they can split the cost (and also, I think the experience) Gone are the days of a romantic gondola ride.

Canals and a few bridges- I generally have a good sense of direction. I did home delivery driving for a Chinese restaurant at one stage. We got SO LOST in Venice. By the time that we found someone to point us in the right direction we were 1 and a half hours walk from where we needed to be. But I'm not saying that is a bad thing. We probably saw more of Venice than a lot of visitors do there. Twice. At one point we somehow ended back in a Venetian glass shop that we had been in at the beginning of the day and not even realized it, we were even commenting on how weirdly the same as that shop we were in earlier it was. It was.

Memory Mondays Week 1

So I realized that unlike most Bloggers and well any other site on the internet I didn't do a '10 best of 2010' list or alike so I decided a good way to do something similar is that every Monday for the next 10 weeks I'm going to dig through the photo memories from the past year that I haven't blogged about before and share them.

Back in May my boyfriend and his friends graduated their undergraduate degrees and I loved going to the graduation ceremony, taking photos in the public gardens and near the Citadel afterwards and going to the party that Matt's parents had for them. Even though we hadn't been together for very long at that stage and I hadn't really seen all the work that he had put into his studies I was still incredibly proud when his name got read out with the highest honors.

I never got to go to my graduation, my world gypsy lifestyle got in the way of that. or at least my my thirst for the maple country did anyway, because I did exchange in Canada my marks were somehow missed for graduating in the semester when I would have actually of been able to attend the ceremony while i was still in Australia soattending a ceremony with people i care about was a great opportunity.

Italia- Amalfi coast Edition

Positano. Where? Dayna had looked at a great book and had seen about the Amalfi coast region and the tip was to stay at a smaller town called Positano. I was told it would have spectaular views and ocean. I was in.

Even while we were on our trip I still kept mis-pronouncing it. Now I can't see how I ever did. The $3 bus trip along the coast was probably the best value (and terrifying) thing I bought all trip. Its a good thing I don't mind highs or cliff overhangs welll far up above the water because that is what the bus ride from Sorrento to Positano had in store for us. We arrived late in the afternoon and were just happy gazing around the place at all the beautiful scenery that we could take in from our hostel balcony.

We spent a couple of days just laying in the sun on the (pebbled) beach, well that is if you call hiding in the shade of a boat laying in the sun. My pasty white skin just can't hack that kind of sun. We also checked out the shops around the town, my favorite for sure being the grocery and fruit and vegetable shops. We also spent a fair bit of time waiting for our turn to get on the tiny buses that brave the cliff face ferrying people up and down the mountain- we walked down it and even just that made our calf muscles quiver so we didn't dare walking back up.

Another day we spend the day at Pompeii. Hot, Dusty and Dogs are the three words that come to mind. It was the day when I was happy to not walk the extra mile to get to see the whole attraction because of the heat. The wind was hot and whipped the giant dust bowl which is Pomeii into our eyes and a little known fact is that they have a bunch of dogs which live there that are strays and they supposedly look after them but we only ever saw them lying on the ground trying to keep cool and didn't see any water bowls around. Apart from that I enjoyed it, but it's very true what i'd heard beforehand, that most of the artifacts now are in museums rather than being in the original positions.

Another day we took a boat trip to the Isle of Capri which was lovely going to the different grottos, getting off the boat to swim and sitting on the back of the boat feeling the wind in your hair. One tip is though, if they tell you it will be quicker to get from the island to the blue grotto, don't believe them, stay on the boat! It took us over 4 hours to get there and back and made the afternoon a whole lot more stressful because we didn't think we were going to get back to the boat in time.

Have you ever almost not made it to a plane/train/boat?