The drive to Venice was pretty simple. This time we did not spend hours getting lost b'cos it's A4 highway all the way from Vimercate to Venice. We parked our cars on the mainland near Mestre train station and took a train into Venice. It is a car-less city; the only form of transport is your trustworthy pair of legs or a gondola (their famous boat). The city is very small... you can visit the whole of Venice within a day. It is actually like Sentosa but more compact. It's amazing that it is so tiny yet such a famous city in the world.
The gondola is a symbol of Venice. The boatman is dressed a typical Venician boatman uniform and sometimes in a square-topped hat. If you are lucky, the boatman may provide some entertainment by singing as he rowed away. It cost $45 euro for a trip around Venice on gondola but I was afraid of getting seasick hence skipped the idea. The houses in Venice are one of a kind. It actually reminds me of the story, Ali Baba & the forty thieves. The entrances to their homes are not a compound but merely a door that opens up to a staircase and leads to individual apartments. They are like a maze - narrow streets with colorful shop-houses and shops selling Venician masks.
Speaking of those masks, I fell in love with their exquisiteness and how they can create so many fanciful designs, some even with feathers! I wish I can bring home one of them and put them in my house but I doubt my luggage has enough space for that. Suddenly I felt so "arty-farty" that I bought 4 small masks, the size of my palm though.
Saint Marco square is also another highlight of Venice. It has the biggest cathedral (called duomo in Italian) with a rich history. The place is filled with tourists and pigeons! I wonder do people avoid the place when there is the bird-flu epidemic. The duomo, like other duomos in Italy, has many paintings and sculptures each painstakingly done up by famous artists.
On our way back from Venice, we passed by the town of Verona. It is a small town famous for the setting of "Romeo & Juliet" play. All of a sudden, the recollection of Shakespeare's stories during my secondary school days emerged. "... In the city of Verona, house of Juliet Capulet..."... I did not know that Romeo and Juliet were Italians! One of the streets stands the balcony of Juliet which Romeo tried to sneak in every night. Now it has become a tourist attraction. There is also a bronze statue of Juliet below her balcony. It is believed that if you touched her right breast, you will be lucky in love. Her left breast has now become silver instead of the original bronze-color after all the sweat from the tourists' hands. Poor Juliet.
