City of Love and Venezia

Alright so I made the trip with Won Ki, one of my best friends from high school so don’t imagine a romantic trip of the italian countryside but it was still a lot of fun. We flew into Milan on Friday and took a cab immediately to the train station to get to Verona. Maybe like 5 minutes into the drive, our cab driver is cut off and flipped off by the driver in front of him which sets both of them into a tirade in the italian language which was a dream come true.

Verona was pretty unbelievable, it was the smallest city we’ve visited so far but it was one of the more interesting. It wasn’t that there were a ton of cool landmarks or anything, but the layout and feel of the city just made it really different than the more metropolitan cities we have been to. We were only there for one night but we had some great food and had a nice chat with a couple from Oregon that was vacationing there. It was funny when the older gentlemen tried to explain to us this wine he had ordered which was probably like $60 while we were on the house wine grind. I’m sure one day I’ll have a clue of what he was talking about, but here are some pictures:

cool view except the crane kind of ruin it

view from the high point in Verona

cool view

Colosseum in Verona(still used for plays today!)

Venice was by far the coolest city I have ever seen. The way its situated is incredible, its pretty much like its own island. The canals run through the whole city as if they were roads. What they consider buses were actually nice ferries that had some nice views of the city(for a tourist anyway). As with the theme of the trip, we had some great food and pizza(3 pizzas in 3 days not to brag) and met a kid from Wisconsin on the train there. Funny note on the train, we payed about 75 euro total for our train travel and had our tickets checked 0 times. It’s a bit frustrating but they hit you with a hefty fine if they actually do check them and you don’t have them so its tough. Here are some pictures of venice:

This was our view for apertivo(drinks with snacks/food plate)

grand canal

Gondola at night

Milan was really nothing special to me. The duomo was extremely cool, as pictured below. But other than that, it seemed like a pretty underwhelming city to me. I will note that we were in Milan after Venice so it was a tough act to follow and we were only in Milan for one night so it may have been a small sample size. So maybe more time and preparation would have made the city a bit better.

cool building

Next trip on the agenda is Amsterdam! Halloween in Dublin was extremely fun, but I miss the candy back home. Until next time,

Ryan

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