Italy - Day 8 - The Road to Paradise

Today we travel from Venice to Lake Maggiore. However, before we get to the lake, we have a couple really interesting stops.

Our first stop is in Verona. If you don't know this is the setting for Romeo and Juliette. Locals have attributed the story to actual families and places in Verona. Essentially, they have made this a true story. Not sure that I buy that, but it makes for interesting travel. We visited Juliette's famous courtyard balcony.

Juliette even indulged us for a quick photo. The entrance to the courtyard is marked by scores of messages from star crossed lovers.

From Verona we traveled to Milan, the fashion capital of the world. This is a very metropolitan city. A lot of glamorous shops.

Fashion is really important in Milan. It seems that everyone was really nicely dressed which made for sharp fashion statements... and a bit of self consciousness.

While in Milan, we toured The Galleria (shopping), the La Scala Opera House, and the Castello Sforza Museum (opera). All I keep thinking is, "We'll be watching Allison perform here someday."

We traveled from Milan to Lake Maggiore. This is a place I had never heard of. However, it turns out to be the most spectacular scenery of the entire trip. The massive lake is surrounded by mountains and dotted by small islands. The vegetation is lush and green. We even passed by a mountain where the Roman's quarried granite for their various building projects. The granite blocks traveled by barge over lakes, sea, and rivers to reach Rome. The entire journey took about 3 months!

Traveling to our hotel, we wind our way through a small village, pass many grand villas, hotels and resorts. Our hotel is very nice and the views from our room are awesome. We have a nice dinner in the hotel and venture out for a casual exploratory walk afterwards.

Finally, we turn in for the night. I can't wait to see more of this place tomorrow.