Venice, Verona & Sirmione, Italy

Last weekend when Rand had off for Veteran's Day we decided to spend a few days down in northern Italy. The Army actually has a small base in Vicenza where we stayed. We have some friends who used to be stationed there and were able to tell us a few things to do in the area. We enjoyed the beautiful drive down through the Dolomites (Italian Alps) and even spotted a few small castles along the way. The kids did great on the 6 hour drive. On Sunday we headed over to Verona (about a half hour west of Vicenza) to visit the Roman Colesseum they have there. It was pretty neat in the middle of a beautiful square and they still hold performances in there regularly. Verona is a much bigger city than we expected, they had a big horse race going on that day so there was a lot of traffic trying to get into the city. Pretty much all we did was see the Colesseum and let Owen chase a few pigeons. We skipped the fake Romeo & Juliet house that is there, I guess people like to take pictures of the balcony and pretend that the story was true.

Fair Verona




After Verona we drove a little further west to Lake Garda to visit the beautiful lake town of Sirmione. This little town is located at the end of a few mile spit of land that juts out into the middle of the vast lake. The lake was breathtaking with clear blue water, it was very peaceful. The town itself boasts an impressive castle fortress that was fun to explore and was filled with adorable shops and nice restaurants. We did have to sample the Italian ice cream (pretty much our tradition in every city we go to). We walked out along the lake and found a place for the kids to throw rocks in the water. Then we hiked up a hill to an area called "The Grotto" covered with tons of olive trees, the view was spectacular from the top of this cliff overlooking the lake. They also had some ruins of a Roman villa that had been excavated but was closed for the day by the time we got up there. We loved this little town and thought it might be a fun place to return in the summertime for a relaxing vacation.

One lonely sailboat on Lake Garda

Part of the castle

The tower (for some reason I never got a picture of the whole castle from the front)


View from the tower, you can see how the land juts out into the lake

Owen chillin' in The Grotto


Finally on Monday we visited Venice. We had the misfortune of going at a time when all of the public transportation was on strike. So instead of taking the train in we drove the 50 minutes to the outskirts of Venice. We found a parking garage a 1/2 mile walk to Piazalle Roma (where you can usually take the Valparatto or water taxies) but those were not running because of the strike so we walked all the way into the city to San Marco Piazalle. We did enjoy the walk through the city despite our tired shoulders from carrying our kids. We passed over the famous Rialto Bridge and marveled at all of the canals. We finally reached San Marco Piazalle and saw St. Mark's Basillica and Doge Palace. Before we toured those we had to feed the very friendly pigeons. We put some bread crumbs on the kids' pant legs and let the pigeons come up and eat it off of them. Owen was literally in heaven, he thought it was hilarious and even Evie had a great time. Well Owen thought it was especially funny when the birds started landing on Rand and me, perching on our heads, shoulders & arms. I only was able to take one picture of Rand but you get the idea- we did however get some great video which I promise to learn how to upload one of these days. We were disappointed that we couldn't get out to any of the islands in the Adriatic (again the strike), especially since we could barely see them because of the dense fog we had that day. Despite the disappointing circumstances we still had a good time and now have a reason to go back on hopefully a nicer day with public transportation up and running.

Owen checking out the gondolas, dream on, buddy.

Rialto Bridge

The Grand Canal

The pigeons sure loved Rand

St. Mark's Basillica


Doge Palace (the seat of the Venetian government for hundreds of years)