We were off to Venice on Tuesday 🍕🍝
The Floating City in Italy!

It’s famous for it’s art and architecture as well as the many canals separating the 118 small islands on which it was built in the fifth century.
There are no cars or roadways so I was very excited to how everyone gets around.

We left Switzerland at 9am in the morning for the 7 hour coach ride into Venice. We had a stop off somewhere (can’t remember where) and had a Top deck picnic again.

We had salsa and corn chips, chicken pasta salad, crackers and cheeses along with a berry pie thing and these really nice chocolate covered biscuits which I had like 5 of haha! They were small though 😕

We had a surprise on the way to Venice, our tour driver took us to Verona on the way which is like an hours drive away from Venice city, it straddles the Adige river in Veneto, northern Italy and it’s where three of Shakespeare’s plays are set, Romeo and Juliet, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, and The Taming of the Shrew.

When we got to Verona, we walked to the Verona Arena which was built in the 1st century by the Flavian emperors for shows and gladiator games. Today it’s now used for public events, fairs, theater and open-aired opera during the Summer nights.

After the Colosseum in Rome and the amphitheatre in Capua, the Roman arena in Verona is the third largest Roman amphitheatre.
The Arena was built using a cement and rubble mix known as opus coementicum. They also used brick and stone blocks from Valpolicella set in square pillars to create an external façade of 72 arches, each spanning 2 meters. These led directly to an interior corridor 4.4 meters wide which runs around the Arena.After having a look at the Arena, we headed over to the balcony of Juliet’s house to rub Juliet’s left boob and write on the walls.
Juliet’s house has a balcony and in the small courtyard there’s a bronzed statue of Juliet. The metal of her chest is worn bare because there’s legend that if a person strokes the right breast that person will have good fortune and luck in love.
I did it! So I’m waiting for my good luck 🙂

Also – in the entrance of the court yard there is a wall where everyone writes the names of their beloved. Many believe that writing on that place will make their love everlasting which is sweet.

When everyone had written on the wall, our tour guide promised us all Gelato so we went to a Gelato place and got to choose 3 flavors each, yummy!

I got white chocolate, caramel and chocolate chip 😄 and I’m not gonna lie, it was pretty delish!

With our stomachs full of ice-cream, we headed back to the coach after our 2 hours in Verona so we could continue our journey on to Venice.

We’re staying at this camp ground in cabins called Jolly campgrounds. (Sharing with one other person from the group)
It’s about a half our coach journey from the city of Venice and it’s pretty big. They have lots of cabins and more ‘deluxe’ cabins as well. Thank god we have an en suite shower! I don’t think I’d want to walk all the way to use the communal showers.

Ever since I’ve been at this camp ground though, I’ve hated it!
As soon as we arrived we had to walk all the way to find our cabin (which was confusing enough with all the different pathways) and then when me and my room mate Georgia got to our cabin there was mold all in the shower and a missing light bulb. The room was tidy thank god, but we didn’t have any blankets for our beds – only a sheet each.

The people from our tour across the path from us weren’t so lucky- all their rooms hadn’t even been cleaned so like 4 groups had to go to reception and get new keys to new cabins that were clean.
It’s not as if we arrived early either, by this stage it was 6.30pm.

Then when I went to go and do my washing, a girl was already complaining to one of the staff members about the drier not working and taking her money. She told me after he’d left that they wouldn’t refund her even though it took her money twice already so she was left with no coins!

I went to put a towel and my gym pants into one of the free washing machines when I smelt this really bad stench coming from it. I reached in quickly to grab my 2 items out and reached my hand into the most disgusting water!!
It obviously hadn’t emptied properly and had the grossest, smelliest water in it!
I quickly knew why it was the only free machine.
What’s even worse is that the staff member who was in the Laundry watched the whole thing happen and didn’t say anything when I pulled my towel out and got drenched in this awful water. I was so annoyed!
It went all over the floor too and it was pretty obvious what had happened. No “Oh sorry about that” or “Yeah that machine isn’t working” Grrr.

Not to mention 4x driers weren’t working, the detergent dispenser wasn’t working either so I had to go to the camp supermarket to buy some off the rude counter guy. He wouldn’t even swap a €1 for two 50c pieces. Dick. He was too busy standing there chatting up his work colleague.

When I finally got my washing sorted I went back to my cabin to have a shower, (which was either Sahara desert temp or Antarctic) when the power went off!!
My room mate had to go to the reception to sort it out while i shaved my legs in the dark. Dinner was in half an hour so I didn’t want to waste any time.

Dinner was all good though. They have an actual Top Deck tent where we all had dinner so I think this is one of their regular accommodation places as there was another top deck group here as well as a Busabout Tour.

After dinner and the drama with my washing, I ended up having a good night at the Campground bar. The drinks were decent prices, they had good music and a happy hour. Plus since there was the other Top Deck group/Busabout group there was more people. It was my first night I actually stayed up until after 1am haha!

Me and Kara were the last ones at the bar from our group. It got pretty crazy though as one of the guys from our tour ended up getting waaaay too drunk and ended up falling on the dance floor and hitting his head then pretty much passing out. The mood was kinda killed after that as everyone helped him out and the ambulance took him to the hospital. Dramaaa. He’s all good though. Even if he did miss out on Venice the next day.

So that was my first day in Italy! 🙂
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