Italian Mapquest... FAIL.

Up and at it at 5:30 to make the trek of 1.7 miles to the train station to catch an early train. We had our directions in hand, which proved USELESS. We found not one single street listed on the directions. But it was still a day of discoveries. I discovered my friend Shandon has a major talent. Some people can juggle... some can play the trombone... some are ambidextrous... but Shandon's talent is taking a random street and leading the way for an hour and miraculously finding her destination. It was the most amazing thing I've ever witnessed. She'd say, "Let's try this way," and while everything in me was thinking she was wrong... she got us there with thirty minutes to spare.

So anyway, after a short stop in Padova, we made it to Verona. We bought a tourist map for 3 euros and again Navigator Allen took over and we took that city by storm. Definitely in the top 10 coolest cities ever. It still has a lot of its original wall around the city, and we climbed up the castle to get a view of the whole sha-bang. We also found Juliet's balcony... or, should I say "cama de Guillette" or something like that. People put love notes all over the wall under the balcony and use whatever they can find to stick them. There were no Romeos to be seen for us, so our contribution was just a "hello from verona" note.

We had lunch on one of the main drags and coffee at the piazza erbe where we checked off tourist spots on our map but we will have to go back to research what they actually were all about. We didn't have a clue.

Our train back to Oderzo was at 4, and we arrived at 7. Cousin Stefano was there to pick us up, and went to his house for dinner wtih his family. We had a fantastic Italian meal and stuffed ourselves silly.

Good times in Italia!

Ciao! Arrivederci!