Italy is like a dream, or a fairy tale. It's so beautiful it doesn't seem real!
I finished up the ski season on Saturday with the official staff party- after a week of partying in Meribel after all the guests had left. It was crazy, but a lot of fun. Hard to say goodbye to a lot of great people from all of the resorts. I saw Maya and Olivier in Lyon for Sunday and Monday, and it was almost like home with them- it was so nice to be with 'old' friends again.
So Monday morning I caught a train to Milano. I was tired and a little sad to leave friends and go on my own. And nervous, I really had no idea what I was doing or where I was going. I tried to buy a Eurail pass for Italy I was told I could pick up there, but to no avail; "I tell-a you again-a miss, no pass-a for Italia!" Okay, okay!! Got it! But I made it onto the Metro, having been cheated out of one euro by a lady insisting on helping my buy my ticket, squashed and squeezed into a train that I eventually had to kinda back out of because I couldn't turn around with my pack on without injuring people, and to my stop 20 minutes away. From the station to the hostel, I was approached by a guy in a car that followed me all the way to the hostel with his window down talking to me in Italian and being generally intimidating. Anyway, I finally got to put my pack down, take a shower, and go back into town. It didn't get much better. I couldn't find the 'cheap-eat' I was directed to, another guy followed me down the road for about 200m, chatting me up and not taking the hint to leave me alone, and when I tried to get back to the hostel, the metro was closet at 8:30pm because it was a public holiday. So I waited in line for an hour for an expensive taxi! So I left Milan early the next morning.
However, I did love the shop windows, Feraris and beautiful women roaming Milan. The Piazza Duomo was beautiful and I scored a really good Italian Coffee!
I planned to go straight to Venice, but I like the sound of Verona, so intented to stay a few hours there on the way to Venice. I ended up staying the night. It was really beautiful to walk around, there was an exhibition with some famous artworks, including a small Michaelangelo, the hostel was delightful- a converted very old church with really pretty frescos, and it was all generally really friendly. I did see the famous Juliet balcony, which is not particularly interesting, but the whole atmosphere of Verona is very Romeo and Juliet and I loved soaking it up!
So after Verona, Venice for two days... O my God, Wow! I wasn't expecting to be so wowed because places don't usually live up to their hype and I had heard not-so-great things of Venice because it is over-run with tourists. It IS over-run with tourists, but the magic was not lost on me because of them. The water, the gondolas, the palaces, the churches and the incredible history that is everywhere is so incredible. I did ride a gondola as part of a tour I did- and met some strange Americans in the process, not exactly romantic, but nice none-the-less. The hi-light for me was going to see an opera- La Traviata in one of the palaces. It was actually held in the rooms of the palace, with a really small audience (about 30 people) and just three singers and a quartet playing. Each act, the audience would change rooms to suit the scene of the opera, the first was in a reception room, the second in a study and the third in a bedroom. It was the perfect setting, incredibly intimate and real to the point where I was reading the cellist's music and offered a free glass of champagne by the soprano in the party scene! Afterwards, I went for a walk around Piazza St Marco, where the lights were so pretty, more classical music was playing for the diners at the piazza restaurants, and a local Italian came by and bought me a rose. I did all the touristy things there too- the galleries, museums, Doge's palace and a couple churches- loved it. And my room-mate, Keiko from Japan, was lovely, and we had great pizza together.
