Fair Verona ... actually better than fair!

Before getting onto Verona...I´ve just looked up some details on the Lady Moura that we saw in Monaco. It is the 6th largest yacht in the world and is 344 feet long!!! Oh, and it has a helicopter on one of it`s decks.

Verona: we arrived in Verona very late and found that the hotels were expensive. We found a reasonable on at 60 Euros for the night...list price was 95 Euros so I think we got a discount due to how late it was....about 10:30pm. We had hoped to spend a couple of nights in Verona but it proved to expensive. Even the hotel we were in was going to charge us 95 Euros for the second night. And it was only a 2-star at that.

We started our day in Verona by popping into a coffee shop that did these really nice croissants with ham and cheese filling and Oregano on top. Lovely. The coffee was top stuff too. A very good start to the day. We had some logistics to attend to after that. Organising trains and all that. After that we went wandering. The very hard to find tourist office had a good map (really needed that a bit earlier!) with a suggested walking tour. We followed that and saw the Arena (a mini-collegian where the opera Aida was being performed ... hence the expensive hotels), several churches, some nice bridges, Juliet`s balcony and some nice town squares. Yes, there is a balcony that is claimed to be the inspiration behind the Romeo and Juliet story. And the courtyard below the balcony was full of tourists. Lots of people had stuck little "me and you for ever" type messages to the wall. Quite sweet really.

For lunch we went to the cafe I`d been to when I`d been in Verona with my Contiki tour. Last time I`d had the most amazing tiramisu desert (a coffee sponge with cream). Could it live up to the image in my mind? You bet! Mel hates coffee so it was just me indulging in this. But it was simply fantastic. Our mains were really nice too. Look out for "Famous Zacs" in front of the arena if you are ever in Verona. Note that prices are something like 20-25% more if you dine outside. Although the view is good.

Since Verona hotels were expensive we had to choose a new place to stay. Bologna was in the right direction to get to Ancona for our ferry to Croatia so off we went...